I hate to say we all saw this coming, but, well, we all kinda saw this coming. Pixar was supposed to debut a new, original film in 2011 called newt (and yes, the lower case is on purpose), but now it seems official confirmation that the film has been canceled has come via The Pixar Blog, who acquired the info from Dave Smith, a Walt Disney archivist. I'm not 100% sure he's the type of authority who can hand out this kind of news, but all signs still point to it being true.
See, newt – which was to follow a group of the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts as they attempt to band together to save the species -- was supposed to come out in the summer of 2011. However, Pixar recently announced that Cars 2 was now arriving in the summer of 2011, while making no mention of newt. Folks then assumed newt had been pushed to 2012 until, well, Pixar announced that Monsters Inc 2. and Brave (formerly The Bear and the Bow) were arriving in 2012.
So now you can see why this isn't really unexpected news, though it is sad to see that Pixar chose to can one of their original films versus another sequel. Part of why I love Pixar so much is that they are so inventive with their unique stories, and it's somewhat disappointing to see them getting wrapped up in the sequel game. Here's hoping they'll buckle down and give us some more original tales once they get these sequels out of their system.
Were you looking forward to seeing newt? Upset it's gone now? Which Pixar sequel are you looking forward to more: Monsters Inc. 2 or Cars 2?
