Pixar's latest movie The Good Dinosaur arrives in cinemas this week after a tortuous production process that saw original director Bob Peterson replaced by Peter Sohn.
The film's central idea - a talking dinosaur who meets a grunting caveboy - had run off track and Peterson was having trouble finishing the third act.
Sohn, who had been working on the film since its inception, stepped up to complete it following Peterson's departure.
The Pixar veteran told Digital Spy that he wanted to bring the movie back "to the original concept of a boy and his dog and flipping that".
"Trying to understand what that really meant was the big real click for me.
"Once I understood that relationship and how to find that, that really helped me out a lot in terms of Arlo having a hole in his life and this dog would start to fill it."
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Sohn added that finding an emotional centre to the story helped him bring the troubled project together.
"It was kind of silly, this idea of a dinosaur boy that talked and this human boy that didn't," he said.
"As we got deeper into it, we would find all these emotional aspects to this relationship to fill it out. There was a lot of evolution to get there."
The only goal Sohn had for the refreshed Good Dinosaur? "Are you emotionally connected to Arlo's journey? Are you feeling all the decision and the growth-moments that he's going through?"
Producer Denise Ream, who spent 15 years working at ILM, added that the biggest difference between live-action and animation is the ability to rework a movie from scratch.
"With live-action, once you've gone out and shot background plates, you're kind of limited in what you can do," she said. "Whereas at Pixar we're creating everything so have more leeway to craft the scenes."
Ream admitted that the animation house's internal test process is vital in shaping the final cut.
"We screen the movie a lot for our colleagues at Pixar, and they have compunction about giving you notes and opinions," she explained. "We have regular test audience screenings and it's an extremely helpful process."
The Good Dinosaur opens in cinemas on November 27.
Movies Editor
Simon has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, writing on staff and freelance for Hearst, Dennis, Future and Autovia titles before joining Cision in 2022.
