Nemo vs Pierrot, Pixar News for April 2004

In November of 2002, a man named Franck Le Calvez published a book entitled Pierrot le Poisson Clown, starring a clown fish. Now, Le Calvez is waiting for a fall civil trial between Disney/Pixar and himself, as Le Calvez claims Nemo is a copy of his Pierrot character.

Le Calvez went to the extent of asking the court to stop the merchandising of Finding Nemo in France. A French judge ruled against the request, striking a major blow to Le Calvez's case.

Quite frankly, the court would have to be completely bonkers to rule in favour of Le Calvez. Production on any major feature film, Finding Nemo no different, starts three to four years before theatrical release, and formal studio development can begin as far a seven years before. With many original features, like Lilo and Stitch, the idea existed in the early 90s, over a decade before production even started.

To even start to think that Finding Nemo was created, developed, voice acted, and animated in-between November of 2002 and the movie's release in the summer of 2003 is pure non-sensical.

If you want to look at it another way, Monsters' Inc. was released for the American Thanksgiving weekend, in late-November 2002. Less than a month after Pierrot's release, Pixar had a teaser trailer for Nemo, preceding Monsters' Inc.

Disney-Pixar alliance once more? At Disney's recent stockholder's conference, Michael Eisner was demoted to just CEO. Once the dust settles around this battle, The New York Post confirms that Apple and Pixar head Steve Jobs may rejoin Disney. Jobs and Pixar broke off their relationship just months ago, deciding to look for a better studio distributor. Now, the Post divulged that Jobs has told associates that he'd prefer to remain with Disney, albeit it an Eisner-less Disney with a better contract.

Hitching on a trailer for Cars Animated-news.com is reporting that according to insiders, the teaser trailer for Pixar's 2005 film, Cars, will air ahead of this November's The Incredibles. The whole script has been recorded by its voice actors, according to the insider, and animation for the trailer is almost done. Cars will be the last Pixar film distributed by Disney.

Pixar switches to Macs Pixar Animation Studios, the people behind Toy Story and Finding Nemo, are owned by Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computers. So it's no wonder that the computer animation studio is now making a switch over their computers, from Linux on Intel systems, to Mac OS X on G5s. Pixar challenged Apple to come up with a way to review HD quality video on desktop computers,