Animation World Magazine backs up rumours that the Academy Award winner, and director of Lifted, Gary Rydstrom is directing a feature length film at Pixar.
Rydstrom, who came to Pixar to direct a feature whose production is now officially underway (the logline is still secret), started down the traditional Pixar feature path by first tackling a short film. He pitched three ideas and Lifted was the winner.
says the article. The article then goes on to discuss Lifted and is very interesting.
Also working on the production is Jim Capobianco, story supervisor of Ratatouille at Pixar and Kiel Murray, writer for Cars, is also working on the production. This mentioned over the Screenwriting Expo website…
Most recently, he was a story supervisor on Pixar’s 2007 release, Ratatouille. Jim is currently working on the development of Gary Rydstrom’s original feature film.
That same website also tells us that Brenda Chapman, who worked as a story artist on films such as The Little Mermaid, Cars and Beauty and the Beast is also at work on developing an original feature film for Pixar as a director. Irene Mecchi, co-writer of The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame is also working on the same production.
We also learn that Ronnie Del Carmen is working in development on Pete Doctor’s original feature film. Also, Jason Katz, co-story supervisor on Finding Nemo and Ratatouille is working on Lee Unkrich’s original feature film.
So in production currently at Pixar we have…
- Ratatouille – Brad Bird
- WALL-E – Andrew Stanton
- Untitled Gary Rydstrom Feature – Gary Rydstrom
- Untitled Brenda Chapman Feature – Brenda Chapman
- Toy Story 3 – Lee Unkrich
- Untitled Pete Doctor Feature – Pete Doctor
UPDATE: I totally forgot about TS3 for Lee Unkrich. However, the website did say original film, and Toy Story 3 doesn’t seem original enough for that comment in my opinion. Maybe he was working on an original project and that has been put on the back burner while he does TS3.
That’s six. That accounts for all of the 5 or 6 films Brad Bird said Pixar had in production.
Last modified: April 26, 2007
isn’t Lee Unkrich working on Toy Story 3?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story_3
by the way, really congrats for all of the news in this blog! 🙂
I thought he was working on Toy Story 3, too. Perhaps the article just left TS3 out, and Lee Unkrich is working on a film after that.
Wow — well that’s some news for you…. So does this mean that they’re making a second “Monsters Inc.”? Interesting….
Thanks for the update, luxo jr.!
I personally don’t think it’s a sequel to “Monsters, Inc.” Keep in mind that, although they share a director, we also have Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton working on separate ideas.
The conference brochure is from pre-October 2006, so some information my have changed since then. Also, *all* studios have any number of announced and unannounced films in production at any given time. So from the viewpoint of whether this is news or not… it’s not really.
I don’t know if this is a good thing. I mean, how many people can you hand out original features to? As much as Lee Unkrich, Brenda Chapman, and the like have meant to Pixar. And Gary Rydstrom just suddenly made this decision to direct from out of sound design? And makes the leap in a single short film?? I don’t know..
Rats!!! I was hoping for a sequel to The Incredibles.