Thursday, June 26, 2008

Pixar Live!


Tomorrow marks the last time we'll know of Pixar as an animation studio...

Not that their adventures in live-action will be showing up anytime soon, but if you look around two of their big directors are headed into live-action or possible live-action territory(and from what I've heard at least one more has their eye on a live-action project). So the release of the ninth film from Pixar Animation Studios marks a line. From here on out, Pixar will be a film studio...

Wow, huh?

What I mean, it it's slowly going to morph into a film production company and all though animation will still be at its heart(like Disney itself), there will be other facets to the Lamp.


We all know that Brad Bird is working on "1906" and Andrew Stanton's next project, the first film of a new Pixar franchise(hopefully), "John Carter of Mars" is being written right now for possible live-action. Stanton won't decide until the script is finished.

This could essentially be Pixar's first "One, Two Punch" into a world beyond animation. Just as Walt Disney went into live action with "Treasure Island" and then followed it up with a spectacular adventure like "20000 Leagues Under the Sea", so too could Pixar. Bird's 1906 could be the Treasure Island and Stanton's John Carter could be the grand adventure of the next decade that Leagues was when it opened over fifty years ago.

Now, lets not think that these are the only films John Lasseter and Co. plan on making... it's just they're basically dipping their toes in the water... but should everything keep going well(like Wall-E, Bolt, P & F and Up), he'll have enough clout over the next few years to get a couple more films greenlit. And just as Pixar's path in animation hasn't always followed the same path, neither will its path in the live-action world...

The one traight that it will follow is that it will be a director-led studio. Where creativity is respected, nutured and encouraged. There will only be a few people that could or would pull the plug on a project... the most obvious of which is Lasseter.

I look forward to watching Pixar adapt to growing pains. Many things could happen, but I hope they succeed in taking the success they've gotten in animation and duplicating it another medium. The children that grow up today can tell their kids they remember when Pixar just made animated films.

Just like Walt Disney used to...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it is the new golden age.

Anonymous said...

I still wish 1906 was being released completely under the Mouse House (still don't understand why WB needs to be the distributor for it), but at least the Pixar name will be associated with it. I have faith that Brad Bird will make it work.

It's also somewhat surprising to me that they have not been 100% committed to making the John Carter of Mars series a live action hybrid yet. It would be really something if Pixar decided to make that a fully-animated feature.