Pixar has been the focus of headlines over the past month as its original comedy Hoppers made a splash with a great critical response and pleasing box office results, offering optimism for the Disney-owned animation studio’s ability to launch an original property on the cusp of Toy Story 5 becoming a likely behemoth this summer.
But Pixar has also been the subject of recent debate surrounding the revelation of a planned movie that is unlikely to ever come to life. On the day Hoppers opened last month, the Wall Street Journal published a story looking at the future of the company and confirmed that a feature called Be Fri (styled as BeFri) had been in development for years until it was scrapped in late 2023. The article noted that Pixar employees were stunned that a project that involved 50 people and was three years in the making would be killed — becoming perhaps the longest-developed Pixar movie to receive such a fate — given that the studio had been previously adept at reworking troubled films, as it did with 2012 release Brave.
Be Fri was the brain child of director Kristen Lester, known for helming Pixar’s 2019 short Purl. Inspired by Lester’s real-life experience involving an adolescent friendship that dissolved, Be Fri was to focus on two teenage girls who were once besties but find themselves drifting apart after learning that their favorite, Sailor Moon-style TV show is real and that they need to set out on a universe-spanning quest to save humanity. Also part of the core creative team were writer Blaise Hemingway, whose credits include the 2021 film Clifford the Big Red Dog, and editor Nicholas C. Smith, who retired from Pixar in 2024 after nearly 20 years with the company.
One former Pixar employee who worked on Be Fri and asked to remain anonymous tells The Hollywood Reporter that the project went through four iterations after various sets of notes from higher-ups and would have been ready for the animation stage when Disney opted to pull the plug. A rough version of selected scenes from the film has made the rounds on social media and hints at the girls’ tension before a later sequence shows them in a car as an angry demon gives chase. The Pixar alum recalls that just after Be Fri’s Braintrust 3 — the company’s name for, in this case, the third of six check-ins with studio brass and focus testing throughout a film’s evolution — Disney asked for a major retooling.
“There was a meeting that took place after BT3, where Kristen and Blaise made the case to Disney: ‘We know you don’t like where the film is at right now. Give us six weeks, and we’ll redo the entire film,’” says the former Pixar staffer. “Kristen, Blaise, Nick and a couple board artists spent six weeks of night and day, seven days a week, literally reformatting. Preproduction on an animated feature takes a year of storyboarding, so [they had] to compress that into six weeks for a fourth version of the film.”
Then-Disney CEO Bob Iger (left) and Pete Docter attend the Elio world premiere in Los Angeles in June.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
The former staffer, who was not present for Disney’s feedback but has heard from others who were, remembers being amazed by the final footage that the Be Fri team created: “It was on Hoppers’ level. It befuddles me why they passed on it, but with each round of notes, Disney just didn’t feel like little boys could see themselves in the film enough. Basically, Disney reps were like, ‘We can’t have a girl power movie.’” (Pixar’s recent titles centering on female leads include the 2024 blockbuster Inside Out 2, which became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, and the Disney+ offering Turning Red.)
This decision to stop progress on Be Fri came in late 2023, months after Toy Story prequel movie Lightyear was a box office misfire in light of right-wing pundits causing commotion over its same-gender kiss. This was also around the same time that Pixar boss Pete Docter and the studio’s team decided to reconfigure their original sci-fi feature Elio, stripping away the queer-coded characterization of the titular lonely boy who longs to visit space. Shortly after these internal decisions, Docter spurred public debate when he noted in a 2024 interview that the studio should make the “most relatable films” possible, which some social media users perceived as pushing to shift away from underrepresented characters and voices.
“When they canceled the film itself, it was devastating,” says the former staffer, who recalls employees coming together for a memorial of sorts to honor Be Fri. “They had what amounted to a funeral for Be Fri at the studio. They had a little place where you could put notes or things that were really special to you. There was art all over the place that was really memorializing the film, and there was this outpouring of love for a project that everybody really wanted to see come to life.”
A scene from Pixar’s Hoppers.
Everett Collection
A different former Pixar staffer tells THR that some employees are disappointed that the studio seems to let concerns about public perception lead its decision-making on movies like Elio and Be Fri. According to the individual, “the joke around Pixar” is that leadership “has no spine at all.” A representative for the studio declined to comment for this story.
Pixar’s team has reason to be optimistic about the state of its original projects. After the tough situation with Elio that followed a slow box office start for 2023’s Elemental (although that movie ultimately collected a small profit), Hoppers earned sterling reviews and has surpassed $330 million at the global box office, giving hope to future originals like next year’s Gatto. Meanwhile, director Andrew Stanton’s Toy Story 5 hits theaters this June and looks primed to be another smash for the Oscar-winning franchise.
Over the past 12 months, the animated feature to have earned the most buzz was undoubtedly KPop Demon Hunters, which originated at Sony Pictures Animation but skipped theaters and debuted on Netflix through the studio’s first-look deal with the streamer. It isn’t lost on the former Pixar staffer who worked on Be Fri that the Netflix movie, which is the platform’s most watched title ever and beat out Elio to win this year’s animated feature Academy Award, has similar themes to the now-canceled Pixar project.
“The comparisons to KPop Demon Hunters are pretty undeniable because there were musical aspects to it, and it was a rip-roaring time,” the individual says. “I can imagine that whoever at Disney denied Be Fri to exist looks at KPop and is kicking themselves like, ‘Shit, I can’t believe Netflix is doing exactly what we wanted to do.’”
