Pixar was at one time the pinnacle of theatrical filmmaking, animation or otherwise. Hits like Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and Inside Out won awards and made tons of money. And while not every movie, especially once all the sequels started, was a masterpiece, they still proved a major success. Like so many things, the pandemic threw that into disarray. Starting with Onward in 2020, several feature-length Pixar projects went straight to Disney+. Once theaters began opening up again, Pixar movies returned to the big screen, but would end up on Disney+ very quickly. Pixar president Jim Morris recognizes this and isn’t happy with it.
As reported by Bloomberg, which we saw at ComicBook.com, Morris recognizes the perceived downturn in box office of Pixar movies and shares that the Disney+ of it all has confused the marketplace. “I hope that we will not release another feature film on Disney+,” Morris said. “If we do more stuff for Disney+, it should be a series, and then that makes a clean demarcation between what we do for theaters and what we do for streaming.”
I think it’s incredibly important, in an age when streaming services just need as many movies as possible to bolster their catalogs, to give quality films their proper context. As Martin Scorsese once said, without that, they get lost amid garbage and risk being forgotten. Pixar shouldn’t just be an enticement method for Disney+ subscriptions. Series? Go for it.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.