Fans Angry at Pixar Leadership for Blaming Lack of Success on Pursuing Personal Stories

Pixar is a prestige animation studio, but it’s no mystery that not every movie they pump out has been a hit—just look at Cars 2 and Lightyear.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Pixar Chief Creative Office Peter Docter talks about how the studio wants to steer away from ‘personal projects’ to focus more on ‘relatable films’, but it’s not sitting so well with fans.

The specific quote that people are fuming about is this bit:

are you fucking kidding me https://t.co/kVP6N6KcaL pic.twitter.com/35CMoc36e0

— Delaney Jordan ❄️ (@DelaneyLJordan) May 31, 2024

“The studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis and instead speak to a commonality of experience, Docter says. “I don’t think we can ever let ourselves off the hook of making syre that we deliver the best possible and most relatable films.”

Already, fans online are getting angry, pointing out that the failure of original projects like Luca and Turning Red were due to its straight-to-streaming release. Elemental also didn’t make a splash when it opened, but eventually received great word of mouth.

Truly awful to see Pixar leadership badmouthing some of their recent works like LUCA and TURNING RED, which are two of the very best films they’ve ever put out precisely because they come from a specific place both personally and culturally. https://t.co/OnfVTMXCpv pic.twitter.com/QINOZOR2rb

— Carlos Aguilar (@Carlos_Film) June 1, 2024

I'm really glad to see so many of us angry about this kinda talk when it comes to Pixar and how Disney has been sabotaging them. LIGHTYEAR was the bomb and they didn't even release Luca and Turning Red in theaters and ELEMENTAL DID GREAT IN THE END despite the HORRIBLE MARKETING https://t.co/SBw2PNJ3xW pic.twitter.com/NLMrCHtNQa

— Lobo (@LahuLobo) June 1, 2024

The Incredibles, arguably Pixar's greatest film and universally considered one of its best, by his own accounts came out of Brad Bird's personal challenges in balancing work and family life. Finding the universal in the specific is how classics get made. https://t.co/D3CeQWKsAr

— Zack Stentz (@MuseZack) June 1, 2024

if anything, fans have actually pointed out that the movies that didn’t manage to make a splash were ones that were blatantly capitalizing on established IP—like Lightyear.

We don’t know if Pixar will ever want to clarify the statement, but fans are clearly upset that they want to move away from the Pixar brand of ‘quality family films’ in favour of commercially safe IP.

Maybe they’ll expound more on their plans after they see what happens with the release of Inside Out 2 later this month. Catch it in theatres June 14.