Untitled Pixar Musical

[bulgaross]

The studio is also developing its first-ever musical, from “Turning Red” director Domee Shi.
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/mons ... 236681473/

[Sotiris]

Pixar is also developing its first ever musical, from “Turning Red” director Domee Shi, according to people familiar with the matter. “One of the things that brought the initial group together here was a desire to rebel against the traditional Disney musical,” said Collins. “This next generation grew up on Pixar and they’re figuring out their version of rebellion.”

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/pixa ... r-80c57f9d

Q: Is there a title yet for Domee Shi's musical? Perhaps a tentative or internal title?

Ben Fritz: If there is, I wasn't able to find it out unfortunately.

Source: https://x.com/benfritz/status/2030488321949135082

[PatchofBlue]

This is interesting. I feel like this genre barrier was one of the last standing stylistic divisions between the two studios, and now that we're doing away with it at last, it does kind of feel like we're in the wild, wild west.

(Huh. Should Pixar do a western too? ...)

[Disney Duster]

Pixar can do whatever they want. As long as it was cooked up at their studio with their team, it’s theirs. Why not let Pixar try its hand at everything?

Of course, the one thing they should never do is be folded into Walt Disney Animation Studios. That is blasphemy. Sacrilege. I know some people feel differently. But it’s like…well, it just means Disney feature animation is not…sacred to you. I get you don’t feel it’s sacred, but that to me is like when someone doesn’t hold religion sacred so they say God is evil and such.

Not that today’s Disney didn’t already commit sacrilege already with the package features or Dinosaur being made Disney Animated Classics. And then Moana 2 and such. But I will be vocal against further sacrilage.

[DisneyFan09]

Pixar can do whatever they want. As long as it was cooked up at their studio with their team, it’s theirs. Why not let Pixar try its hand at everything?

Of course, the one thing they should never do is be folded into Walt Disney Animation Studios. That is blasphemy. Sacrilege. I know some people feel differently. But it’s like…well, it just means Disney feature animation is not…sacred to you. I get you don’t feel it’s sacred, but that to me is like when someone doesn’t hold religion sacred so they say God is evil and such.

Not that today’s Disney didn’t already commit sacrilege already with the package features or Dinosaur being made Disney Animated Classics. And then Moana 2 and such. But I will be vocal against further sacrilage.

True, Pixar could do anything they want. But remember how the purists whined when Pixar tried to venture into Disney`s territory with Brave a decade ago? How naysayers whined about how it was a proof of how Disney had destroyed Pixar, when the truth was much more complicated than that?

But remember that Disney has done their own blasphemy various times. And the list goes on and on with that.

[Disney's Divinity]

I'm glad Shi is involved. Not only because I like her, but it's a good test for her in the case they ever did just fold PIXAR into WDAS as jusy a sub that produced any further sequels for PIXAR IP. Because those there could work on original films at WDAS instead, as long as they can fit the different vibe. I was thinking the other day that, who knows, Domee Shi on a Disney musical film could be as magical as most of M&C's films were. They had a very creative outlook with a zany sense of humor, too, which made TLM, Aladdin, Hercules, and TP&TF so interesting. Part of it was they approached their films AS films, not "This a girl's film so we have to do this" or "This is a princess musical, so it has to be this." They were inventive within the confines of that type of film, which made them fit with the old films while also feeling fresh and new at the same time.

But they need to have good composers / songwriters, like the Lopezes. P&P were really good on Aladdin and SW. SW in particular makes me think they might be okay solo on an animated Disney musical. Before that, they had a couple songs I liked ("Million Dreams," "Never Enough," "This Is Me," "Speechless"), but they always felt more good in the way a song playing on the radio is good, not really theatrical. "Waiting On a Wish," "Princess Problems," etc. felt much more theatrical than I thought they were capable of. If they could stay more in that lane, I could see them working on an animated musical almost as well as the Lopezes and to a lesser degree Miranda (really more Encanto than Moana).

[Disney Duster]

DisneyFan09, yes, people said Pixar shouldn’t do Brave, but they were wrong, Pixar doesn’t have to listen.

Divinity, Alan Menken said in an interview “Speechless” was his “baby” so I think he wrote that, not Pasek and Paul.

[DisneyFan09]

DisneyFan09, yes, people said Pixar shouldn’t do Brave, but they were wrong, Pixar doesn’t have to listen.

Agreed. People and purists whined about Pixar doing a fairy tale for the sake that it simply wasn`t Pixar`s territory. But so what? Does it mean that Pixar aren`t allowed to make a fairy tale with a Princess? No, Pixar are completely allowed to do so and there`s absolutely nothing wrong by them to make one. And it never meant that Disney destroyed them.

[Disney Duster]

I totally agree, DisneyFan09.

[PatchofBlue]

"Brave" wouldn't be a very effective point of argument to sell me on Pixar borrowing Disney's toys. It doesn't score high on my Pixar ranking at all.

Mind you, I don't think that actually had much to do with Pixar using a more Disney-esque template. I think that a fairy-tale style story under the hand of Pixar might have worked really well, but the end product has some of the sloppiest writing to come out of the studio, and so the whole experiment was just kind of wasted.

I guess we can hope with this film that they won't fire Shi and replace her with some dude who's going to fill the movie with boob and butt jokes.

[Disney Duster]

I didn’t think Brave was that good either, but I’m curious to know what you say is the sloppy writing.

[PatchofBlue]

It's been about five years since my last viewing, so some of the details are vague to me. But from what I remember ...

Characterization is really shallow. People only have like one and a half characteristics, and they are constantly signalled in the least uncertain terms lest the audience forget that Merida is not your average princess--even though even in 2012 this was already a very popular go-to for children's entertainment.

Merida as a character has also always been deeply unlikeable for me. She's everything people hate about Ariel, but without any of Ariel's redeeming qualities--or really any redeeming qualities herself. She doesn't feel like a character forced into a hard situation that I'm supposed to feel for. She feels like a child who expects to go through her life facing no consequences and making no compromises.

And I get that she was designed to be different from other fairy-tale heroines, but there is also precedent for this kind of character being not only "not annoying," but quite endearing. Other tomboy characters from movies I love from the top of my head include the likes of ... Gracie Hart from "Miss Congeniality," Matilda from "Leon the Professional," or Lady Bird from "Lady Bird," (and there are some others that I'd say are borderline tomboys, like Rose from "Titanic" or Tiffany from "Silver Linings Playbook"). There are absolutely ways to write a flawed, nonconformist girl/woman without making her seem whiney or selfish.

And the other characters aren't much better. I feel like a lot of films think they are somehow flashing a special face of progressivism by supercharging their female characters and making their male characters aggressively incompetent (i.e. Elinor vs every male character in "Brave"), which feels really slanted. If that model is true to life, it's only because men in the real world can get away with being absolute numbskulls without facing consequences while women are held to a much higher standard, and so it just kind of feels like they're rubbing it in. But I guess more important to the narrative itself, it's just a really tactless way to stack the deck. I mean, Ferguson's at least like a benevolent idiot. But he's still an idiot.

I think Mulan probably stretches this the furthest while still landing in the green zone for me. Something like "A Girl Worth Fighting For," or even "Honor to Us All," just kind of rehearses things we've already known about the patriarchy without daring to add something new. But Mulan still features Shang as a likeable, competent character, a character we want to see grow because he's tied into our hopes, not just our frustrations. And his larger character arc, a part of which has something to do with confronting his latent misogyny, is situated in a much fuller psychology. Yao, Chien-Po, and Ling are much less complex, but I find their failings much more endearing than those of the three Lords in Brave in part because I feel like they also have much more in common with their film's protagonist. Like Mulan, they are trying hard to fit into a certain construct of manhood but have to learn to be comfortable in their own skins and reject archaic notions of what it means to be a hero. Meanwhile, I have no connection to The Lords in "Brave."

A lot of the movie's dialogue also feels very contrived, in a way I wouldn't describe other Disney movies. Like, Strange World was also very much written to communicate a specific message, but even there I feel like the dialogue is emerging from the situation the characters are navigating. It's just that the situation itself was designed around a very specific angle. Here, I just feel like with both Merida's constant reference to changing her fate, both in the dialogue and in her voiceover narration, just feels like framing that's trying too hard.

I honestly think that "Turning Red" does many of these same things much more gracefully (including the bit about family curses and turning into a giant bear). I buy into the mother-daughter conflict much more, and I think that it's just much more enjoyable as a film.

[Disney Duster]

Thank you, PatchofBlue! Very insightful read! I hated Turning Red though, while I didn’t hate Brave. I guess I didn’t “get” Turning Red and thought it was just about periods.