Why did it take Pixar 14 years to make ‘Wall-E’?

16 years ago, in June 2008, Pixar released “Wall-E”, an animation about an adorable robot created to compact trash who lives alone on Earth after the planet becomes uninhabitable due to heavy pollution, and ends up gaining a new purpose with the arrival of a new and more modern robot: Eva, which makes Wall-E face an intense journey across the galaxy.

Being one of the studio’s huge successes, according to data from Box Office Mojo (via ScreenRant), just at the worldwide box office, the plot about the little yellow robot would have grossed more than 521 million dollars, in addition to grossing, to this day, high amounts in official products sold internationally.

Since the release of its first feature film, “Toy Story”, in 1995, Pixar has been known for its animations full of details. For this reason, to be able to animate a film with high quality, following the company’s standards, it is common for producers to spend around seven years working on the same work, as pointed out by Collider.

However, this was not the case with “Wall-E”. The portal states that, from the emergence of its idea, until the day of release, exactly 14 years passed, being considered the film that took the longest preparation time in the studio’s history.

But why did this happen?

To understand the reason for the delay, you need to know the story of how the idea for the film came about. Collider explains that the concept of “Wall-E” came during a lunch held in 1994 at the Hidden City Café, located near the Pixar studios, which was attended by four of the company’s top directors: Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft, John Lasseter It is Pete Docter.

The main purpose of the lunch would be to discuss what the next releases would be after the premiere of “Toy Story”, which would arrive the following year. This collection of ideas resulted in the draft of four stories that would become great successes for the brand: “Finding Nemo”, “Monsters Inc”, “A Bug’s Life” and “Wall-E”.

It is important to highlight that, in this first conversation, despite being extremely productive, it included shallow ideas from the films, where some managed to be more elaborate than others. Like “A Bug’s Life”, for example, which came out with its main plot practically defined, while “Wall-E” had only a superficial idea, with a defined character (the protagonist robot) and the question “What if humanity had to leave Earth and someone forgets to turn off the last robot, and it doesn’t know it can stop doing what it’s doing?”

After all the ideas were approved, it was time to start producing the works. Stanton It is Doctor They started working on the Wall-E plot in 1995, initially calling the film “Trash Planet” (‘Trash Planet’, in Portuguese), but they didn’t make much progress. In this way, the features that were already more advanced in history gained priority, with “A Bug’s Life” debuting in 1998, “Monsters, Inc.” in 2001, and “Finding Nemo” in 2003.

Despite being the last one left among the ideas generated during the lunch, “Wall-E” would still take a few more years to premiere, as Pixar decided to prioritize other ideas that had emerged in previous years, thus launching the “Incredibles” films. ” (2004), “Cars” (2006) and “Ratatouille” (2007).

Collider points out that the film about the beloved robot began to be officially worked on in 2003, when the script was already much more advanced and similar to the work we know today. Even with the long wait, the delay would have been beneficial for the production, especially taking into account the studio’s evolution in terms of animation technologies, making the work even more impressive, especially in the representation of space.