By Erin Free
When it comes to animation, Pixar is king – end of story. Though DreamWorks and Blue Sky might often shape up as admirable competitors, Pixar (the studio behind Toy Story, Cars, Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Up, The Good Dinosaur, and this week’s Finding Dory) happily sits at the next level of animated filmmaking, consistently delivering movies that appeal across all generations, and that often gain instant classic status. A box office titan, Pixar – led by producer/director, John Lasseter – has a track record that allows it to do pretty much whatever it wants. But in 2011, the company hit a brick wall with its intended project, Newt, which was slated to be Pixar’s major release for 2012. With Gary Rydstrom poised to make his feature film directorial debut, and Lasseter in his familiar mentor/producer role, the animated comedy revolved around Newt and Brooke, the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet. Forced together by science to save their species, trouble starts to bubble when it becomes obvious that they can’t stand each other. Though there has been much speculation about Pixar’s reasons for cancelling production on Newt, the most obvious (but still unofficial) cause appears to be the success of Blue Sky’s Rio, which bears more than a few similarities to Pixar’s film-that-never-was. “Our story was very similar to a movie that’s out in theatres right now with a blue parrot,” John Lasseter said of Newt to ign.com. “We were like, ‘Great minds think alike’, I guess. It was pretty similar.” Lasseter, however, has since tagged Newt’s ultimate extinction as a typical part of the filmmaking process. “We put movies into development, and some just get further than others,” he told ign.com.
