Sohn Takes Charge Of Pixar's "Good Dinosaur"
By
Garth Franklin Wednesday November 19th 2014 08:06AM
First-time feature director Peter Sohn has officially been announced as the director of Pixar's 2015 animated feature "The Good Dinosaur".
Sohn, an artist at the studio, unofficially took over the film a few months after the original director Bob Peterson was taken off the project amid creative concerns.
For much of the past year, Sohn has been quietly streamlining the story and making changes to what's been described as a "buddy comedy about a teenage dinosaur and a human boy".
As in the earlier incarnation, an asteroid never hit the Earth and the dinosaurs never went extinct. Cut to today when a teenage Apatosaurus named Arlo takes a wild, young human boy named Spot as a pet.
Sohn has jettisoned some of Peterson's ideas and added new elements, such as nature being the film's antagonist. Sohn tells
The Los Angeles Times: "The heart of the story remains the same. It's always been about this young dinosaur growing up. But the world itself has changed a lot. Nature has become a character."
'Dinosaur' marks the fourth of the studio's last eight films to see a directorial swap, though this one took a major toll. A rather large eighteen month release delay left Pixar without a film to open this year, and pushed its other films like "Finding Dory" back.
"The Good Dinosaur" is slated to open next November.