News of upcoming Pixar movies is always exciting, but some of these movies face hurdles in the production process that cause them to get scrapped. Pixar’s best movies are some of the best animated movies ever made, like Toy Story, Up and Inside Out. With such high standards, it’s not unusual for Pixar to completely restart a project if it just isn’t working. It’s a little less common for the studio to completely abandon a movie, but it has happened a few times before. Many of these projects remain unknown to most people, but some details have come out over the years.

Although Pixar’s movies encompᴀss a broad range of settings, characters and themes, they are united by the studio’s inimitable style. Audiences can be fairly confident of a new Pixar movie’s quality, no matter what it’s about. This isn’t the case with some of Pixar’s abandoned projects. If any of these movies had ever made it to cinemas, they would have represented uncharted territory for the studio. It’s not too surprising that some of these movies were eventually shelved, because they push beyond Pixar’s traditional boundaries to experiment with new animation styles, pre-existing characters and more mature content.

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Newt

Pixar’s Most Famous Abandoned Movie

Pixar announced four new movies in 2008, but only three of these were eventually made. Up, Cars 2 and Brave made it to the finish line – although Brave was originally named The Bear and the Bow – but Newt was eventually scrapped in 2010. While other Pixar ideas have been reworked into different concepts, Newt never amounted to anything more than some concept art. The film was supposed to be the directorial debut of Gary Rydstrom, who made one of Pixar’s best short films, Lifted. Pixar even released the following synopsis for Newt.

What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other? Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science.

Pixar’s chief creative officer at the time, John Lᴀsseter, noted that Newt‘s proposed plotline would have been very similar to that of Rio, the 2011 animated comedy from Blue Sky Studios about two macaws in a mating program. (via IGN) Pixar president Ed Catmull also suggested in a 2014 interview that Newt simply wasn’t working in pre-production. (via Slash Film) The project was pᴀssed to Monsters, Inc. and Up director Pete Docter, who pitched his own original idea instead. Pixar chose to run with this idea, which eventually became Inside Out, while Newt was abandoned entirely.

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Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost In Scaradise

Monsters, Inc. Almost Had A Sequel Instead Of A Prequel

Pixar has had a hit-and-miss record with sequels over the years. Although the Toy Story franchise and Inside Out 2 have been praised by critics, other movies like Finding Dory and Incredibles 2 failed to live up to the high standards of the original movies. Monsters University definitely falls into the second camp, but the divisive prequel only came about after the original plans for a sequel were scrapped. Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost in Scaradise would have seen Mike and Sully traveling through one of the doors on the scare floor into human civilization.

There have been many other Pixar sequel ideas that never came to pᴀss, but these were all repurposed into movies that did eventually get made. For example, an early idea for Toy Story 3 saw Woody and the gang traveling to a toy factory in Taiwan after Buzz Lightyear was recalled by the manufacturer, and there were plans for a Finding Nemo sequel in which Nemo finds his long-lost brother. Monsters Inc. 2 stands out because it was eventually turned into a prequel. To this day, Monsters Inc. is overdue for a proper sequel, and it would still be exciting to see Lost in Scaradise.

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Sam & Max

Pixar Might Have Pondered An Unlikely Adaptation

Steve Purcell is most famous for creating Sam and Max, a comic book series about two anthropomorphic animal detectives. However, he also worked at Pixar for a while, contributing to several short films and even co-directing Brave. Naturally, there were plenty of rumors that he might be planning to adapt the Sam and Max comics into a movie while at Pixar, since the characters have also appeared in video games and a cult classic TV series. Purcell ultimately left Pixar in 2023, with no concrete news of a Sam and Max movie.

It’s unclear how likely a Sam and Max movie ever really was at Pixar. There have been conflicting reports over the years, with some suggesting that the concept was being explored, while others stated that Purcell’s presence at Pixar had nothing to do with his previous work. Purcell has always been adamant that he was never interested in bringing the characters to Pixar, although he has also admitted that he would be open to a movie of some kind one day. The Sam and Max series doesn’t fit Pixar’s tone particularly well, so it would have been an unusual project if it ever did come to life.

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The Shadow King

Pixar Briefly Worked On A Stop-Motion Idea

Ever since Toy Story, Pixar has been leading the industry in 3-D computer-generated animation, but the studio flirted with the idea of branching out into stop-motion at one point. The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick teamed up with Pixar in 2010 with the goal of producing stop-motion movies. Their first idea, The Shadow King, was tentatively scheduled for a 2013 release, but it was abandoned in 2012 after a troubled production. (via Collider) Pixar still hasn’t expanded beyond the boundaries of their conventional animation style.

The Shadow King – also called ShadeMaker at one point during its production – would follow the story of a young boy born with elongated fingers who learned to create shadow puppets to battle a powerful enemy. Some concept art and test footage has been shared on the internet in the years since the movie’s cancellation, and it’s clear to see that this style doesn’t fit with Pixar’s wholesome aesthetic. Selick retains the rights to The Shadow King, meaning that he could potentially shop it around to other studios and get it produced.

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The Graveyard Book

Selick Also Explored The Potential Of A Neil Gaiman Adaptation

As well as The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride, Henry Selick is famous for directing Coraline, so it’s no surprise that he was working on another Neil Gaiman adaptation at one point. Even when Pixar abandoned The Shadow King, they kept Selick’s stop-motion adaptation of The Graveyard Book alive for a while. In the end, Pixar and Selick parted ways due to scheduling conflicts and disagreements over the creative direction of the project. Ron Howard was hired to take the reins, but the project fizzled out.

Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is an award-winning young-adult novel about an orphaned boy who is adopted by the ghostly inhabitants of a graveyard. Again, it doesn’t sound like typical Pixar material, so it’s not much of a surprise that the project fell apart. It would have been the studio’s first adaptation and first stop-motion film, as well as being much darker than anything else they have produced. Selick’s brief time at Pixar suggests that the studio is open to experimenting with new voices and styles, but it just wasn’t the right fit.

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1906

A Live-Action Pixar Movie Almost Became A Reality

1906 is Pixar’s most surprising abandoned project. It’s so unusual for the studio that it’s strange to think they were ever seriously working on it. It would have been an adaptation of James Dalessandro’s novel of the same name, which is a retelling of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. This is an obvious departure from Pixar’s norm, especially because 1906 was going to be a live-action movie produced in conjunction with Warner Bros. Brad Bird was attached as director before he started working on Ratatouille instead.

Bird’s handling of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol shows that he has the talent to work on a big-budget live-action movie, but 1906 soon proved to be more difficult to pull off than anyone initially anticipated. An estimated budget for the movie was given at $200 million, and Bird has spoken about the difficulties of condensing the narrative into a suitable script. (via Geek Tyrant) More recently, the director suggested that 1906 could become a TV miniseries, although it’s unclear if Pixar would still be involved.

A live-action historical drama would be a new venture for Pixar, but most of the studio’s abandoned projects would be unexpected in some way, whether they’re adaptations of other books, forays into stop-motion animation or something else. Most Pixar movies go through long productions which focus on what’s special about each project. There are plenty of stories about how movies like Toy Story and Finding Nemo were almost completely different, for example. What makes these abandoned movies interesting is that Pixar never tried to salvage them. Sometimes, moving on is the best option.

Sources: IGN, Slash Film, Collider, Geek Tyrant