The Good Dinosaur

Disney and Pixar invited a bunch of journalists to a screening room in New York City earlier today for an hourlong presentation about the film, its characters, and about Sohn himself, who discussed his life story and his journey from film nerd to full-fledged Pixar director. Here are a few notes from the event:

In addition to supplying the voice for Fear, the neurotic and anxiety-driven emotion inside the brain of 11-year-old Riley, Hader has also been spending time inside the Pixar writer’s room, where the so-called Brain Trust convene to work out their upcoming movies. The former SNL star (who also has a cameo as the running slug in Monsters University) has been making recurring trips to the Emeryville campus to contribute to the story process, similar to his role as a Creative Consultant on South Park. We spoke to Hader about working with (and for) Pixar, his contributions to their movies and why, even though he was cut out of the film, he still thinks The Good Dinosaur is going to be awesome.

It’s possible to talk about Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur without bringing up its troubled production, but it’s difficult. Aside from one very cute teaser trailer, everything we’ve heard about this movie has revolved around massive delays and directors being replaced and the story being radically reworked. Even the newly revealed voice cast includes major changes – Pixar has revealed the “official” cast for this movie before and it looked very, very different.

Like all of Pixar’s teaser trailers, the first preview for The Good Dinosaur is all about mood, emphasizing a distinct feeling over characters and plot. But as the title implies, it’s really all about dinosaurs. Colorful, adorable dinosaurs who, thanks to director Peter Sohn and the Pixar braintrust, aren’t wiped out by an apocalyptic asteroid 66 million years ago and live on to have all kinds of adventures. Take that, science!

As briefly mentioned in that post featuring the new ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ photo, Disney’s 2015 release slate is kind of insane. The studio is releasing 12 new films, averaging out to one new movie per month. If things go well at the box office (and they probably will), they might very well indeed be the highest-grossing studio next year, thanks to releases like ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’ two new Pixar movies, and two new superhero films from Marvel Studios.

Get a first look at Pixar’s long-delayed animated movie about dinosaurs, and find out why they had to replace its original director.

Just about a year ago, Pixar announced that their planned 2014 movie 'The Good Dinosaur' would be moved to November 25, 2015 following the departure of director Bob Peterson. This is not necessarily unusual at Pixar with both 'Ratatouille' and 'Brave' undergoing last-minute director changes, but none perhaps will wind up being as drastic as 'Good Dinosaur...

No matter how it happened, 'SNL' vet Bill Hader has become one of the go-to voices for animation, as he leads this weekend's 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2' as Flint Lockwood. On top of that, he's popular at Pixar and will do voice work for their upcoming films 'The Good Dinosaur' and 'Inside Out,' which we talked about, and the process of doing voiceover in the days while working on 'SNL' a

Shortly after Pixar revealed the first footage, art designs and additional casting for 'The Good Dinosaur' at D23 Expo 2013, director Bob Peterson was pulled from his position. According to the studio, the film still needs more production time and has, therefore, been moved to a later release date in 2015 -- but that leaves next year without a feature.

Filmmaking is always a chaotic process where things can go wrong (or right) at the drop of a hat, and this applies doubly to the world of animation. Since animated films take years to make, they're constantly evolving and being rewritten and often key members of the cast and crew are replaced as the project trudges on. We don't know the details yet, but it looks like the process has claimed anothe