Thank you for your great work, Ed Catmull. Enjoy your retirement next year!
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull announced this week that he is stepping down as president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios at the end of the year. He will stay on as an advisor during the transition to his retirement through July 2019, leaving presidents Jim Morris (Pixar) and Andrew Millstein (Walt Disney Animation) to continue in their leadership roles.
- Courtney (harmonicacave)
Pixar Founder Ed Catmull Talks Success And Failure
Ed Catmull’s tips about failure are a lesson for film companies and an encouragement to us.
“I’ve really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed, I had to be a student of failure, and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it’s still something I do.” -Ed Catmull
Read more of Catmull’s words of wisdom in this great article from Variety.
![“ When [John] Lasseter and [Ed] Catmull came aboard [the failing Walt Disney Animation Studios team], they were encouraged to consider shuttering Disney Animation altogether and replacing it with the ascendant Pixar. But Dumbo is Lasseter’s favorite...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/45b4bf4e2386aaadba0dcab4389fd379/tumblr_ne69whEqA31s9t02qo1_1280.jpg)
![“ When [John] Lasseter and [Ed] Catmull came aboard [the failing Walt Disney Animation Studios team], they were encouraged to consider shuttering Disney Animation altogether and replacing it with the ascendant Pixar. But Dumbo is Lasseter’s favorite...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/abc22a55710694b2cb9e5050b4062a2c/tumblr_ne69whEqA31s9t02qo2_1280.jpg)
When [John] Lasseter and [Ed] Catmull came aboard [the failing Walt Disney Animation Studios team], they were encouraged to consider shuttering Disney Animation altogether and replacing it with the ascendant Pixar. But Dumbo is Lasseter’s favorite movie of all time. As a child, Catmull spent countless hours imagining himself in the worlds of Pinocchio and Peter Pan. It was Disney that inspired their careers in the first place.
“There was so much pressure on us to close these doors,” Lasseter says. “Ed and I absolutely could not do that.”
If you’re needing a little inspiration for your week, you NEED to be reading this amazing article from WIRED magazine. It’s an in-depth look at turn of the 21st century Disney animation and the heart John Lasseter’s team has put into turning the studio around.
JUST LOOK AT ALL OF JOHN’S TOYS IN HIS OFFICE (in the first photo). We need to be friends with these men (Ed is on the left, John’s sitting down).
The second photo shows three more inspirational guys in Disney animation: Big Hero 6 producer Roy Conli and director Don Hall and Chris Williams.
Check out the full article here: Big Hero 6 Proves It: Pixar’s Gurus Have Brought the Magic Back to Disney Animation
- Courtney (HarmonicaCave)
Pixar cutting back on Sequels
According to BuzzFeed and SlashFilm, Pixar is planning on cutting back on their sequels with the goal of producing an original film every year, and a sequel every other year.
-By Chris
For artistic reasons … it’s really important that we do an original film a year…
Every once in a while, we get a film where we want or people want to see something continuing in that world — which is the rationale behind the sequel. They want those characters, which means we were successful with them. But if you keep doing that, then you aren’t doing original films.
-Ed Catmull, President Pixar Animation Studios
From what I hear from a lot of people, this is going to receive a lot of approval from the fans. I suspect people will never stop asking for a sequel to The Incredibles, though.
Does this decision excite or worry you?