Why We Don’t Believe That PIXAR May Produce A STAR WARS Animated Film

There’s a new Star Wars rumor making the rounds today and it is certainly one guaranteed to get fans excited. Allegedly, LucasFilm is farming out a Star Wars movie to Disney’s Pixar animation division.

That does seem pretty amazing, right up to the part where there has been no official announcement or confirmation from Disney, Lucasfilm and/or Pixar and that the font of this story is the notoriously unreliable Latino Review and their usual cadre of suspicious “sources.”

The idea that Pixar could possibly produce a Star Wars film is, of course, a no-brainer. Lucasfilm owners Disney likes to keep things in house as we’ve already seen by the cancellation of The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network in favor of the upcoming Rebels series on the Disney-owned DX cable channel. Additionally, Lucasfilm did not renew their nearly two decades old licensing agreement with comic book publisher Dark Horse and instead have passed it on to corporate sibling Marvel Comics. Also in keeping with the corporate synergy strategy, Disney’s animation studio is in the midst of putting the finishing touches on their first animate feature based on a Marvel property, Big Hero 6, for release later this year.

Also in this rumor’s favor is that with Lucasfilm planning on pumping out a new Star Wars film on an annual basis, the studio is going to need to continually be pumping out product. Passing off one of these films to Pixar would alleviate some stress on the studio as well as add some interesting variety to their overall lineup.

But in addition to the usual caveats we have about any story originating from Latino Reviews’ “sources,” the one thing that really sticks out for about this story is that Pixar has never worked from material that didn’t originate in-house. There is a first time for everything, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Disney execs did not at least bring up the possibility to the folks at Pixar. But if there isn’t any interest on the part of Pixar, then I don’t see Disney trying to strong-arm them into it. After all, they have their own animation division and if they went to them for their Marvel film Big Hero 6, I tend to think that they would also turn to them for a Star Wars animated feature.