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If you read the “Newt” logline and immediately thought, “Wait, didn’t ‘Rio’ have more or less the same plot, only with birds instead of newts?” then 1) Your teammates probably let you take the lead on most movie-related questions when playing trivial pursuit, and 2) You’re right! For those who’ve either forgotten or never seen Blue Sky Studios’ 2011 animated film, “Rio” centers on Blu, the last-known male Spix’s macaw who is transported from his comfy home at a U.S. bookstore to Rio de Janeiro and the jungles of Brazil to mate with the last-known female member of his species, Jewel.
In May 2011, almost exactly one year after “Newt” was formally canceled, ex-Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter commented on its similarities to “Rio” while, surprisingly, indicating that “Newt” was abandoned for unrelated reasons (via IndieWire):
“Its story was very similar to a movie that’s out in theaters right now with a blue parrot. Oh my! Wow, we were like … no, there was no … great minds think alike, I guess. It was really pretty similar.”
Three years later, as part of a 2014 interview with Fast Company, Pixar co-founder Edwin “Ed” Catmull shed more light on the behind-the-scenes events that led to “Newt” being canned. “‘Newt’ was another unlikely idea that wasn’t working,” he explained. As a result, Pixar’s current CCO Pete Docter — who, at the time, was hot off co-directing the studio’s celebrated 2009 animated film “Up” — was brought in to oversee the movie. (Rydstrom would instead go on to make his feature directing debut on Lucasfilm Animation’s 2015 jukebox musical “Strange Magic.”) However, Docter was more interested in fleshing out the concept for what would ultimately become the wildly-successful “Inside Out,” which Catmull said he and the other top creatives at Pixar agreed “was better” than what they had in mind with “Newt.”
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