Pixar’s new movie is available to watch at home this week.
Toys come to life when humans aren’t around.
A fish loses his son and travels across the ocean to find him.
Superheroes have family troubles too.
A lonely robot tries to clean up an over-polluted Earth.
When you put them like that, they don’t sound like much. But when they’re brought to the big screen, with the mix of often-unmatched storytelling and visuals, the folks at Pixar have given us some of the very best films of the last few decades.
But we get the impression that the Pixar campus must be absolutely overflowing with geniuses, each of them with their own potentially mind-blowing original idea… so how do they decide which ones to make, and which ones to pass on?
In the run-up to the release of their new movie Luca, we were lucky enough to sit down with (via Zoom, obviously) director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren about the Disney+ release.
You can check out that full interview right here:
Over the course of the conversation, we really wanted to know about some of the behind-the-scenes decision-making at maybe the most-successful movie-making company in Hollywood right now.
We asked how do Pixar decide which projects to do next, and Casarosa told us the following:
“Yeah, it really comes down to… pitching a few different ideas, so you’re kinda like ‘Could I pitch?’, and then the fact that you’ve gone through the steps of making a short [with Pixar] is certainly a big part of it, and so you have to be invited to pitch.
“But then once you do pitch, it really is them looking for a diamond in the rough, and where is the potential? ‘Is it personal?’, is often a question that gets asked. ‘What is it that you’re trying to say? Is there something interesting here that you can direct?’
“Because definitely for first time directing, that is definitely going to be a leg-up on finding your way. You’re leading your crew towards something that you’ve experienced. I have had that luck to have that opportunity to direct something that I knew a lot about.
“And then, yeah, it doesn’t feel like a big group of geniuses, it just feels like we’re all here racking our brains. And usually what you get from a lot of smart people is a lot of great notes but also some gut-punches! The bar is set high, as you all know! There is a lot of Imposter Syndrome. Do I belong in here? Do I not?
“I think that first spark was like ‘Oh, that’s interesting, I remember feeling like a kid, and its really interesting that these kids have a sea-monster side, and there’s something to hide’. So there are these little sparks that you can tell people are really looking into.”
Luca will be available to watch on Disney+ from Friday, 18 June.
Clip via Disney Ireland
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