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Pixar wants to explore South-east Asia

SINGAPORE — South-east Asia is a film market that animation studio Pixar would like to explore in greater depth. However, the company is not going create Asian movie elements just to pander to the audiences here. “We have no films set in Asia at the moment,” said Jim Morris, president of Pixar Animation Studios, who was in Singapore along with Andrew Millstein, Disney Animation’s president.

New animation feature Inside Out is co-helmed by Filipino director, Ronnie Del Carmen, whom Pixar boss Jim Morris says added an emotional depth to the story.

New animation feature Inside Out is co-helmed by Filipino director, Ronnie Del Carmen, whom Pixar boss Jim Morris says added an emotional depth to the story.

SINGAPORE — South-east Asia is a film market that animation studio Pixar would like to explore in greater depth. However, the company is not going create Asian movie elements just to pander to the audiences here. “We have no films set in Asia at the moment,” said Jim Morris, president of Pixar Animation Studios, who was in Singapore along with Andrew Millstein, Disney Animation’s president.

“It’s obviously a very vibrant area culturally,” Morris said, adding that Pixar doesn’t try “to tailor films to Asia”. “We just make films we want to see and hope we’re right (about others wanting to see them). But one reason why we’re here is because this is a market that has the most untapped potential. The population of young people here is not in a market that has been well served by animation. This is a market that has traditionally seen animation as for kids only, not as general audience entertainment.

“It’s a complex market when you look at the different countries (in South-east Asia), but we are trying to understand that and get informed about what the audiences here like and how we can appeal to them,” he continued. “Our history hasn’t been as strong on that front — animation hasn’t been as strong in general over here — so we’re finding ways to ignite that and open that up a little bit more.”

Interestingly, the next two films from animation studio Pixar, Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur, will have an Asian touch. Not in an obvious way a la Big Hero 6 and its San Fransokyo setting, but with the people helming the movies.

“The co-director for Inside Out is Ronnie del Carmen. He is from the Philippines,” said Morris. “The director of The Good Dinosaur, Peter Sohn, is from Korea. Ronnie has such as a facility with adding emotion to films and helping directors get to that emotion, we’ve asked him to work on all of our films. Pete, too, has this open emotion about him, you’ll see it in The Good Dinosaur. It’s a really emotional film — I know it seems funny, a dinosaur having emotions — but that’s what makes it interesting.”

What’s also interesting is the spate of sequels Pixar will be pushing out: Cars 3, The Incredibles 2, Finding Dory and Toy Story 4. Considering the bad rep that sequels sometimes invite, isn’t this a step backwards for the company? “But here’s the thing: People look at sequels like they’re unclean, but they still go to see them,” said Morris. “There’s nothing wrong with sequels. Some of my favourite movies are sequels.”

However, he added that audiences can tell if the primary reason to make a sequel was to capitalise on the success of the first movie. “Trying to ride on the shoulders of the original? People will know.”

At Pixar, Morris stated, sequels are determined not by the studio, but by the film-maker when they have an engaging story to tell. “The core of the films is that it’s the director’s story,” he said.

Toy Story 4, for example, came about because film-makers Andrew Stanton and John Lasseter — who’s also the chief creative officer at Pixar, “came up with a new idea”, said Morris. “We all felt when we finished Toy Story 3 (that) it was a perfect trilogy, you know, ‘let’s consider that complete’. Toy Story 4 (has) the same ideas and is set in the same world, but it has a different story thread, with a love story more that’s internal to the characters — and not so much the interaction with the outside world,” he said, adding: “I kind of like leaving that original trilogy alone.”

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