Being at the top of the creative heap isn’t easy, especially when success has been built on original storytelling and the meticulous quality. Pixar is now feeling some of this pressure, and may be taking the entirety of next year to perfect its future films.
The L.A. Times today reported that the Walt Disney Company is pushing its upcoming Pixar flick The Good Dinosaur to late 2015. The Good Dinosaur was announced just one month ago at Disney’s D23 fan club meeting. The movie was being touted with a May 30, 2014 release at the time, but the Times report now puts the movie’s release date at November 25, 2015. The more than one year delay places the movie after Pixar’s planned release of Inside Out on June 19, 2015.
Of course, Novermber 25, 2015 is the same date Pixar had previously given for the release of the upcoming Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory. The Times report states that Dory has now been pushed back to a summer 2016 release date as a result.
The delays come just weeks after it was reported that Pixar removed Bob Peterson, co-director of Up, from the director position on The Good Dinosaur. The studio reportedly brought in some of Pixar’s top talent (such as Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter) to fix the project and get it into shape for its 2014 release. It seems now that Pixar isn’t confident The Good Dinosaur can be brought up to snuff in time.
Though the delays could be seen as a bad sign for The Good Dinosaur, they could also be seen as good for Pixar in general. Delaying a movie rather than shoving it out the door shows that the studio still highly values quality. As the Times quoted Pixar President Ed Catmull, “Nobody ever remembers the fact that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film.”
(Image courtesy Disney Pixar)