A scene from ‘Ratatouille’
Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter has said that he doesn’t like the craze from animation to live-action. In an interview with Time he said, “I might get a shock for saying this, but it bothers me. I like making movies that are original and unique in their own right. Remaking it, to me personally, is not very interesting.”
The statement was a response to a question on the online campaign for Josh O’Connor to play protagonist Alfredo Linguini in the live-action adaptation of Pixar’s 2007 film. Ratatouille,
Dismissing the possibility of such a film and stating that “it might be hard to make a live-action rat cute,” he said, “Everything we create only works because of the rules of the (animated) world. So if a human walks into a floating house, your brain says, ‘Wait a second. Wait. Houses are very heavy. How can balloons lift a house?’ But if you have a cartoon guy and he’s standing in the house, you say, ‘Okay, I’ll buy it.’ The worlds we’ve created don’t translate very easily.”
Pixar’s next release is highly anticipated inside out 2Docter said, “If it doesn’t do well in theaters, I think that means we’re going to have to think even more radically about the way we run our business.” The studio’s last two releases, Light Year And fundamentalperformed poorly at the box office.
“Part of our strategy is to try to balance our output with more sequels. It’s hard. Everyone says, ‘Why don’t they make more original things?’ And then when we do, people don’t watch it because they’re not familiar with it. With sequels, people think, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that. I know I like it.’ Sequels are very valuable in that way,” Docter said, adding, “It’s a little cynical to say people want to watch things they know. But I think even with original things, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find something that makes people feel, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve been through that. I understand that I recognize it as a fact of life.’ And that’s been hard to do.”
