There are some really good points in this essay. I’m glad that Katzenberg’s non-animation background was pointed out, since that’s one of the things that jumped out at me too, when I read that interview.

One of the things I love about Pixar is that they take risks. They could have followed the same formula over these years, and chosen the safe options and still would have been moderately successful in all departments. But they choose to go to different places and tell stories that haven’t been told before in order to learn and grow as a company. That takes more courage than to play it safe.

With Ratatouille they had a bit of a marketing nightmare on their hands – the main character was a rat of which people have somewhat negative connotations beforehand, it was mostly an adult’s movie, but it had to be marketed towards kids, as well as the fact that in the US, it went up against the biggest blockbusters of the year. But rather than do what is best for Disney, and trying to simply get people in the doors, they do what is best for the story and then make marketing makes adjustments around the story instead of vice versa, which is what Dreamworks does.

The Kung Fu Panda reviews are just coming in – supposedly it’s Dreamworks’ best film to date, but even then I bet it’s nothing on WALL-E. Also, the bar wasn’t set that high with any of Dreamworks’ last few films so it’s not that hard to go up from where they were.

But anyway, that was a great read. A+