Could Pixar Be Planning Their First Musical?

Composer and singer-songwriter Randy Newman may have just revealed that Pixar is working on their first musical movie. Newman worked with Pixar to make his music part of the Toy Story franchise, and was asked about the collaboration during an episode of Saturday Night at the Movies (via Film Divider). Newman revealed that he likely wouldn’t be working with the studio again, and particularly mentioned that Pixar wouldn’t be using him for their upcoming musical project:

I’m not so sure I don’t have a reputation for being a little trouble. Lee Unkrich isn’t going to use me, I don’t think.

And not only that, Lee Unkrich had Toy Story 3 temped with my music and it was limiting to me. It was fine, the movie did great and everything and maybe I’m wrong and if I look back on it I won’t know the difference, but it didn’t fit hand in glove the way I would have tried to do. And he fell in love with the temp, very much so.

Now he’s not going to use me to work with him again. He’s doing a musical now.

Unkrich, who directed Toy Story 3, was announced as working on an original film project for Pixar, inspired by the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead),” back at Cinemcon in 2012, but there’s been no mention of the film since then.

A musical would be a first for Pixar, and an interesting direction to go in. Pixar partly made a name for themselves by providing non-musical animated films, in contrast to Disney’s long legacy of musicals, with John Lasseter and Ed Catmull rumored to have fought Disney on the idea of making Toy Story a musical. Even Disney seemed to have moved away from the musical model for some time, but perhaps the success of Frozen is swinging things back around.

Pixar’s next film, Inside Out, opens in theaters June 19.