Pixar Chief Says the Studio Is Addressing ‘Major Issues’

Inside Out, the first release from Walt Disney’s Pixar in about two years, is a hit with critics and at the box office—even as the animation studio has been working through “major issues,” according to Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. For example, he said, Pixar had to redo The Good Dinosaur, a film that had been slated to come out last year before it was postponed and taken over by a new director. “There are major issues we’re addressing at Pixar now,” Catmull said, without elaborating.

Catmull spoke at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., where he previewed the upcoming movie set in an alternate reality where dinosaurs and humans coexist. The Good Dinosaur is scheduled to hit theaters on Nov. 25. Catmull said other Pixar projects faced similar crises during development, including Toy Story 2 and Ratatouille. After the studio redid those movies, they went on to be wildly successful. “We have to iterate internally, because once you release the film, you can’t actually go back and fix it,” Catmull said. “We’d rather face the failure internally than release it that way.”