According to Movieline.com, there is now a reason why Disney/Pixar’s “Newt” (which was supposed to open in theaters this summer until they switched the date with “Cars 2”) was cancelled last year. One word: “Rio”.
John Lasseter (Pixar’s Chief Creative Office and the director of the first two “Toy Story” films, “Cars” and “Cars 2”) said to IGN.com that the studio never ended-up making the film because “its story was very similar to a film that’s out in theaters right now with a blue parrot. Oh my! Wow, we were like… no, there was no…great minds think alike, I guess. It was pretty similar.”
Obviously Lasseter is talking about “Rio”, and the two stories are very similar. For those of you who don’t already know, “Rio” is about a the last male blue macaw who can’t fly, who travels to Rio de Janeiro to meet the last female blue macaw, in hopes that they can repopulate the species.
“Newt” would have told the story of the last two blue-footed newts, that are forced to be together to overcome their challenges and save their species by mating.
“Rio” didn’t go deep into the “mating” part, in fact it’s hardly mentioned at all, because there are many other subplots that evolve. It would’ve been interesting to see how deep Pixar dealt with the subject.
Maybe “Newt” will be taken off the shelf someday down the line, but right now Pixar’s pretty busy. “Cars 2” opens June 24, “Brave” comes out June 22, 2012, and “Monsters University” (the sequel to “Monsters, Inc.”) will be in theaters June 21, 2013.
“Hoodwinked Too!” was shelved for over a year, but was finally released in theaters last weekend. The same could happen to “Newt”. Unfortunately the killing of “Newt” ends a nice Pixar streak, as June 20, 2014 now belongs to DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon 2”. It could have been four years in a row that Pixar would have had that June weekend same weekend. But the next three should still be pretty good.