The movie that fired its entire cast, with the exception of Frances McDormand
For about the first 15 years of its existence as a movie-making studio, Pixar really didn’t have a single miss. From the original Toy Story to Wall-E to the amazing Ratatouille, everything that came out of the Californian animation house was essentially a masterpiece. But that changed with Cars 2 in 2011, and then a bit more with Monsters University, and then again with The Good Dinosaur featuring Frances McDormand.
Or rather, of course, Frances McDormand’s voice, given her character in the movie, was a motherly cartoon dinosaur. McDormand actually did very well to make it to the film’s release in the end, because rather like dinosaurs themselves, the original cast were made extinct less than a year into production, with only the Fargo actor left standing.
The situation came about due to a complete shift in tone required once Pixar had undertaken one of their internal reviews they do once one of their movies has started production. Famously rigorous, it meant that the movie, which was first conceived of as a comedic dinosaur family story with an ensemble cast including the likes of John Lithgow, Neil Patrick Harris and Judy Greer, wasn’t going to work as intended, and mass changes were required.
Even the director, Bob Peterson, who had directed the smash hit Up in 2009 and came up with the idea for the film, was out, a decision explained by then-studio President Edwin Catmull, who said: “All directors get really deep in their films. Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors … are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up. I would go so far as to argue that a lot of live-action films would be better off with that same process.”
Which sounds like a very fancy way of just saying, “He had to go”, let’s be honest. A new director and a new cast led to a two-year delay for The Good Dinosaur, with a story that was instead much more focused on the survival of a single young dinosaur lost in the wilderness. That called for an entirely new set of voices, including a much younger main actor for the lead, with only McDormand making the cut because her role didn’t really change. Also she’s Frances McDormand, and she’s way too good to sack.
The actors that Pixar brought in certainly weren’t as well known as the originals, and once the film came out, it seemed that all the behind-the-scenes turmoil had resulted in a product that simply wasn’t up to the usual standards. That or people just aren’t that bothered about dinosaurs. Not that it affected McDormand at all, the year The Good Dinosaur was finished she was busy adding an Emmy to her Oscar and Tony awards to complete the ‘Triple Crown’ of acting.
She hasn’t made a film since her acclaimed Women Talking in 2022 which she co-produced, but she did serve as the voice of God on the Prime video series Good Omens and is currently filming her husband Joel Coen’s latest effort called Jack of Spades. The pair previously worked together on the 2021 Denzel Washington thriller The Tragedy of Macbeth, which was nominated for three Oscars.
