5. Back In The Fold

Yes, the big, shiny new deal that saw the Mouse House acquire Luxo’s home and the dream team of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull heading up both Disney and Pixar’s animation efforts (with Stanton running day-to-day operations in Emeryville while also working on Wall-E) meant that they had a lot more say in what Disney did with Pixar’s work.

After finding places at the main Disney Feature Animation unit for the majority of Circle 7’s staff (around 140 of the 170 were re-employed), the team turned their attention to future films from Pixar.

With the changes came a renewed appreciation for the possibilities of Pixar sequels, with Toy Story 3 chief among them.

Don’t forget, of course, that Lasseter had had the spark of an idea for a third film way back around the development of Toy Story 2. Which meant that the team wouldn’t be using Jim Herzfeld’s script, but could develop one of their own, one which, rumour has it, will provide closure to the story.

“The idea behind Circle 7 always put a bad taste in our mouths,'' Andrew Stanton told EW. ''We're glad to have a say again about how our kids will be raised.''

Herzfeld, understandably, felt a little slighted: ''I can understand that. Somebody took their children and dressed them up in clothes they didn't approve of. But it doesn't mean they're bad clothes.''

''We didn't read their script,'' says Unkrich. ''Not out of spite, but we wanted to start fresh, and not be influenced by what they'd done. We didn't look at any of the work they'd done. We really didn't want to know anything about it.''

Instead, Pixar turned to Michael Arndt, who had written Little Miss Sunshine, and scored an Oscar for its work.

Working from Lasseter’s basic concept, Arndt came up with a script…

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