Pixar won't follow Disney with live-action remakes of its animated classics

Over the past several years, Disney has made bank by remaking many of its classic animated films as live-action features: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and in the future we're getting a Snow White remake. These efforts have somewhat divided critics, but they've been pretty successful at the box office. Might Disney cajole Pixar, the animated studio they bought in 2006, to follow suit? Are we in for live-action remakes of movies like Toy Story, The Incredibles and Up?

If Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter has his way, no. "[T]his might bite me in the butt for saying it, but it sort of bothers me," he told TIME. "I like making movies that are original and unique to themselves. To remake it, it's not very interesting to me personally."

"It would be tough. So much of what we create only works because of the rules of the [animated] world. So if you have a human walk into a house that floats, your mind goes, “Wait a second. Hold on. Houses are super heavy. How are balloons lifting the house?” But if you have a cartoon guy and he stands there in the house, you go, “Okay, I'll buy it.” The worlds that we’ve built just don’t translate very easily."

Docter makes some good point here. However, these principles didn't stop Disney from remaking, say, a movie about an elephant with ears so big he can fly, another very cartoony idea, so I can picture a future where Pixar movies get remade anyway.

Will Disney force Pixar to produce live-action remakes?

Pixar's reputation as an unstoppable animation juggernaut has gone down over the past several years, with movies like Onward, Luca and Turning Red not getting as much fanfare as older classics like Monsters Inc. or Finding Nemo. You can blame some of that on the pandemic, during which some of their newer movies were released straight to streaming. Maybe you can blame it on the fact that people seem less willing to spend time at the movie theater now that pandemic-era restrictions have ended. But it's a problem. To solve it, Pixar has decided to make more sequels.

"Part of our strategy is to try to balance our output with more sequels," Docter explained. "It’s hard. Everybody says, 'Why don't they do more original stuff?' And then when we do, people don't see it because they're not familiar with it. With sequels, people think, 'Oh, I've seen that. I know that I like it.' Sequels are very valuable that way. "

The next Pixar sequel on the docket is Inside Out 2, which comes out this weekend. But if it doesn't make a big chunk of money, I can imagine Disney throwing up its hands and just deciding to remake Ratatouille in live-action.

I may be overselling how dire things are. Pixar's 2023 movie Elemental did pretty well, and I'm willing to bet people will show up for a sequel to Inside Out. But if in a couple years we have to reckon with what in the world a live-action version of Cars looks like, don't say I didn't warn you.

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