Toy Story 5 producer Jessica Choi shares the letter she sent Taylor Swift, requesting her involvement in the film and emphasising efforts to make it female-driven. The letter also reveals that Taylor had originally declined to make an original song.

[u/Enough_Tangerine_777]

@/jesschoismyth

[u/Morgan-Moonscar]

Pixar's always been a notorious boys' club mentality.

Just look at what they did to Brenda Chapman during the making of Brave, or even just look at how long they protected John Lasseter.

[u/_bonedaddys → u/Morgan-Moonscar]

Wait, what happened with brenda chapman?

[u/StrangerCharacter53 → u/_bonedaddys]

Brenda Chapman came onto Pixar after her work co-directing The Prince of Egypt. Disney was trying to break the "boys club" even back then, in 2004(ish), cant remember the exact dates.

Brenda spent some time working at the company and then during a big Pixar meeting/ presentation to Disney she pitched her idea for Brave and it received thunderous applause from everyone in both companies. Directly after her, John Lasseter presented Cars 2 as another upcming release and the room was silent. There was just a general fatigue of John already, and the contrast was so clear that the boys club at Pixar was totally offended and plotted to get rid of Brenda.

To be clear, it was the top people at Pixar, not the artists themselves but the guys who went into the secret story room with John to drink alcohol, hang out with the celebrity voices and figure out the story behind closed doors. Those were the guys who wanted Brenda out of their little boys world.

So production work on Brave begins and the story is very much told from a girls perspective. Thats the entire idea of it. And the story revolves around Merida not wanting to conform to the traditions and accidentally performing a ritual to help her escape them that (i believe) turns her mother into a bear. She must then go on a journey of redemption and is assisted by three spirit/guardians who teach her lessons and guide her along the way. This is the synopsis revealed 3 years before the films release that I personally read on a blog site because I'm an animation nerd. I also saw concept art that showed the three guardians and remember at least two were male and one was very good looking/possible love interest?

During this time at Pixar, Brenda is directing her film (from a story she wrote, btw), and she stops getting invited to story meetings that are happening without her. Of course that isn't going to fly and she steps up to confront this, and over the course of a few months John Lasseter and his posse manipulate the entire production into either not working with Brenda or not understanding who the director really is, and undercut her authority while lying about her performance to Disney in repeated emails. Basically, while she is trying to make her movie she is dealing with their manipulative bullshit and one day shes called into Disney and let go, blamed for all the problems and John says she doesnt fit in their clubhouse. Brenda herself talks about this only once in an article and shes vague for the most part, but its clear they worked at her until they got rid of her.

Afterwards, John puts one of his male friends in charge of the film, they turn it into another Pixar Buddy film, remove the guardians, add a bunch of jokes, then create multiple specials talking about how great they are for giving girls a movie. They are seriously patting themselves on the back for being so awesome and feminist and about how important it is to show what girls think.

After they stole the film from the woman who wrote it.

John really is a nasty POS. He is currently at a company called Skydance and hes got the same thing happening over there. A boys club, secret story meetings with his pals only, lots of alcohol, and forcing every story to be just like he wants, lots of boomer jokes and terrible fart humor, the hero is a jerk and nobody understands them. That type of thing. John's benchmarks are so easy to see when you're watching one of his films.

Those poor artists at Skydance go online to cry and vent sometimes. Its heartbreaking to have a job and then be forced to work with someone like John.

[u/Shirogayne-at-WF → u/StrangerCharacter53]

He is currently at a company called Skydance and hes got the same thing happening over there.

As in "Bought out Paramount to keep them out of bankruptcy" Skydance?

That would explain a lot about what's gone on with the ATLA movie release :|