I'm kind of shocked that this did pop up when it did, but
Bloomberg UK just dropped an article about Pixar trying fix recent slump by doing a mixture of sequels and original films and its deciding to test it with Inside Out 2.
But people on social media are really going apeshit over this excerpt where Pete Docter
(or someone lording over him) says they need to cut back on more personalized stories like
Turning Red and
Luca and focus on films with whatever "clear mass appeal" means.
If you ask me, the problems with those two films (more so for
Turning Red than
Luca, I actually wanted to give the latter a chance until the LGBTQIABBQBYOBB+ bullied the director into compliance when they said that two MC's relationship wasn't meant to be gay) is that they're
too personalized and that they feel like $200+ million-dollar therapy session for the director.
To use the examples I'm seeing on Twatter: There uniformity with experiences like Ratatouille and The Incredibles partially being based on Brad Bird's struggles with Disney and both Monsters, Inc. and Inside Out being based off of Pete Docter's parental anxieties and they've been contextualized and written in a matter that makes them approachable from many different angles. Luca and Turning Red (again, more so the latter than the former) starter as this but they never went through the same refining process that past Pixar films have.