Disney has pushed the release of troubled Pixar production "The Good Dinosaur" from May 30, 2014 to Nov. 25, 2015. The move comes just three weeks after it was reported that "Good Dinosaur" director Bob Peterson had left the project.
"All directors get really deep in their films," Pixar president Ed Catmull said to the Los Angeles Times back in August. "Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors ... are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up. I would go so far as to argue that a lot of live-action films would be better off with that same process."
Moving "The Good Dinosaur" to 2015 will break a string of eight consecutive years with Pixar releases. The decision also affects the highly anticipated "Finding Nemo" sequel, "Finding Dory." That film was set to arrive in theaters on Nov. 25, 2015, but will now open on June 17, 2016. (Release plans for "Inside Out," which Pixar had set for June 19, 2015, remain unchanged.)
"Nobody ever remembers the fact that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film," Catmull said to the Times on Wednesday when the shuffling was announced. "Our conclusion was that we were going to give ['The Good Dinosaur'] some more time."
No replacement for Peterson has been named just yet. Pixar is currently using a group of studio elders, like Pixar CEO John Lasseter, to work on "The Good Dinosaur." That process was detailed in a lengthy 2011 New Yorker piece on director Andrew Stanton, who made "Finding Nemo" for the studio:
At most studios, filmmakers try to keep the execs at bay, but at Pixar the Braintrust of six to twelve story gurus is intimately involved in revising every movie -- “plussing” it, in Pixar’s term.
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“Toy Story 2,” “Ratatouille,” “Cars 2,” and the forthcoming “Brave” were all going so badly, midway through, that their directors had to be replaced.
In place of "The Good Dinosaur," Disney moved Angelina Jolie's "Maleficent" from July 2, 2014 to May 30, 2014.
