Pete Docter assures fans Pixar isn’t getting into the live-action remake business

We’re relieved to hear that Finding Dory won’t be getting the Little Mermaid treatment

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  June 12, 2024 | 1:40am
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Pete Docter assures fans Pixar isn’t getting into the live-action remake business
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Pete Docter and the cast of the live-action remake of Up
 Photo: Kevin Winter

While it is safe to assume that standards at Pixar have been, at best, steadily declining since the 2011 release of Cars 2, the studio has yet to cross the remake Rubicon. As its parent company, Walt Disney Studios, continues to mine its past masterpieces for live-action remakes that often consist of computer-generated animation made to resemble realistic creatures, Pixar has stood defiant. Pixar would sooner make an origin story for the real guy named Buzz Lightyear than produce a live-action remake of Monster’s Inc. Just ask Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter, who told Time that he likes “making movies that are original and unique to themselves.” Unfortunately, we can’t confirm whether he caught the irony of saying such a thing while promoting the company’s latest sequel, Inside Out 2, he did say he isn’t interested in a Ratatouille remake, even if Josh O’Conner has spent the Challengers press cycle campaigning for the role of Linguini. Docter says that while this might “bite me in the butt,” remaking the movie is “not very interesting to me personally.”

Aside from the difficulties of casting a rat for a live-action remake, Docter understands why artists actually like making animated movies and have no qualms with their chosen medium, even as the industry, including Disney, of all places, continues to devalue the work of animators. Regardless of Mickey Mouse’s vengeful plot to remake all the cartoons he wasn’t cast for, Docter says, “so much of what we create only works because of the rules of the [animated] world,” which is the whole point. Animation frees the audience to suspend our disbelief faster because we aren’t looking at the world just like our own, we’re looking at an artist’s interpretation of it.

“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.” We guess Docter has not booked a stay at Disney X Airbnb’s floating deathtrap yet.

Well, at least we don’t have to worry about a live-action remake of Cars 3 anytime soon. God, we can’t even begin to imagine the nightmarish hellscape a “live-action” version of Lightning McQueen would do to the community at DeviantArt. Kachow, indeed.

 
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