Another one bites the dust. Yet another director/long-time employee has left Pixar to join a rival studio. Brad Lewis is joining a new studio (run by Digital Domain) to direct original animated movies.
Oh, look at this…
1 Brad Lewis announced as director of Cars 2.
2. John Lasseter announced as new director of Cars 2, with Brad Lewis reduced to co-director.
3. Brad Lewis leaves Pixar.
I can’t be the only one thinking like this, right? 
This sounds a lot like the Jan Pinkava-Ratatouille situation. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen with Brenda Chapman and Brave. (I don’t think she left the studio. I saw her name with the Brain Trust in Cars 2.)
Reminds me a bit of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois leaving Disney over the whole American Dog/Bolt fiasco. I enjoyed Bolt and I loved How to Train Your Dragon, so on that front things are fine, but I always have to wonder what would have been if American Dog was released and Sanders & DeBlois stayed with Disney. I think they’re both really talented, and I loved both Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, but it worries me a little bit that DreamWorks has them working on separate projects, especially since one of those projects is How to Train Your Dragon 2, and 9 times out of 10 DreamWorks sequels are garbage.
You can’t expect Chris and Dean to work together on every project. But I read somewhere that Chris will be executive producer on HTTYD 2. So I’m sure he will have some influence over the film.
Dang, is anyone who isn’t John, Andrew, Pete, Brad, or Lee ever going to be able to make a movie at Pixar and stay the whole way through?
I guess Mark, but he’s kind of the shadow of Brad Bird or something…
My problem is I don’t trust DreamWorks. If that’s really what they wanted to do than that’s great, but I know a lot of collaborative filmmakers really have no desire to work apart from each other. Take Ron Clements and John Musker, they’ve made several really great films together and both say that they work much better in collaboration than they do apart.
I’m just afraid that Katzenberg is once again thinking with his wallet and saying to himself “well now we’ve got this great team of directors, so if we split them up we suddenly have two great directors for the price of one” thereby undermining the benefits of a collaboration.
I understand, and I completely agree with what all you said as well. I wish Chris was directing with Dean, but he’s working on The Croods with Kirk De Micco.
So hopefully we’ll see them team up again soon.
I don’t trust Katzenberg either IOL. He has been very financially routed since the get-go and splitting Chris and Dean up looks like a recipe for disaster.
I’m sure Lasseter and co. had their reasons for letting Pinkava, Lewis and perhaps Chapman go, but it all seems a little hypocritical, considering that he had a bad experience at Disney with people higher up telling him to shut up and do it like everyone else, and that would logically be the last thing Lasseter wants for a young director right?
Ah, my narrow minded opinion of Dreamworks was justified!
I just read on Wikipedia that Gary directed Hawaiian Vacation, so perhaps they will give him another go on a feature sometime soon.