Excerpt from my article: “Imagine Sulley, a scrawny little monster dreaming of becoming the star of a live TV show. Sounds different from the big, strong, and the already successful Sulley we all know, right? When the story for Monsters Inc. was first pitched at Pixar it was drastically different than from the final outcome that we saw. This early version of Monsters Inc. wasn’t even called Monsters Inc. It was originally titled Monsters. Main characters’ general positions remained in the final cut of Monsters Inc., but even they were very different. Sulley has the same general role of not so scary Hob, Boo takes place of eight year old fearless Raymond, and Mr. Waternoose became the new J.L. (as in John Lasseter) , who was the TV Broadcast’s director.” want more? read the rest of the article:
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I am SO glad they refused this plot, i have read it and it is HORRIBLE. Who would write that??? 
I’m really glad MI ended up the way it did.
I read The Pixar Touch. I was interested to see how many transformations what we now know as Boo went through. First she was a male. She eventually became an Irish girl (with an accent and all!), an African American child, and finally as the Boo we know today.
Odd! Usually when people talk about early versions of Monsters, Inc., I think of what they tell us on the DVD. I think that’s a later draft of the story, though. This one sounds quite different. I’m really glad they kept working at the story the way they did until it felt just right. Letting go of initial concepts, that’s a tough thing to do.
tats quite interesting though… but i admit “monster inc.” is a more attractive name than “monsters”…
Interesting thing is, I still have some old issues of Broadband Monthly lying around and one of them from November 2002 happens to be on the DVD release of Monsters, Inc. and features an interview with Pete Docter. In it, he talked about another first idea for the story that’s different from that:
“The first idea that I came up with was a 30-year-old guy who gets a bunch of old keepsakes from his mom, and there’s drawings in there of monsters. That night, the monsters show up, and it turns out that they’re fears that he never dealt with as a kid. When he does conquer them, the monsters (with whom he’s now become friends) go on to help other kids. So it’s a little bit of a bittersweet ending.”
At the end he also talked a little bit about the other films Pixar was working on at the time (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars) and when he was asked what his next film would be he sort of hinted that he had “a couple ideas” (without saying what they were) that he was planning to pitch, most likely referring to Up.
That’s actually a pretty interesting idea. I wonder if any ideas from this will end up in Docter’s next film (Inside Out).
Come to think of it, that concept does sound pretty intriguing and not unlike something that could figure its way into Inside Out. I’m looking forward to that so much!
I actually really dig all the original story concepts for Monsters Inc. Where they ended up was best of course, but the earlier versions could make for other good material.