Disney/Pixar's 10th film "up" in remarkable streak

CEBU, Philippines – “Up,” the uplifting tale of 78-year-old balloon salesman, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure, is the 10th film from Disney•Pixar, which has gone nine for nine with an unprecedented streak of hugely successful films, including “WALL•E,” “Ratatouille,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Toy Story 2,” “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story.”

Pixar now has nine of the 25 top grossing animated films of all time domestically, and all nine have been #1 at the box office on their opening weekends of wide release. “WALL•E,” “Ratatouille,” “The Incredibles” and “Finding Nemo” all earned Academy Awards® for Best Animated Feature, an award that was introduced in 2001.

 “I am so proud that ‘Up’ is Pixar’s 10th film,” says John Lasseter, executive producer and chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. “I think it’s the funniest film that we’ve ever made, and also one of the most beautiful. We have a main character that is an amazing hero. Carl Fredricksen is 78 years old and he travels the world in a flying machine of his own design and still has dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon. He’s the most unlikely hero you can imagine in an action picture. He is a character who learns that the big adventures in life are all the small things that happen in everyday life. Russell is one of the most appealing and charming characters that we’ve ever created. Together with Carl, these two characters light up the screen.”

The film is directed by Pixar veteran Pete Docter, who joined the studio in 1990—just the third animator to be brought on board. Along with Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, Docter developed the story and characters for “Toy Story,” Pixar’s first full-length feature film, for which he also served as supervising animator. He was a storyboard artist on “A Bug’s Life” and wrote the initial story treatment for “Toy Story 2.” Docter made his debut as a director on “Monsters, Inc.,” which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Animated Feature Film. As one of Pixar Animation Studios’ key creative contributors, Docter garnered another Academy Award nomination for his original story credit on Disney•Pixar’s Oscar-winning “WALL•E.”

Docter says he’s learned a lot over the course of Pixar’s 10 films. “It never gets easier,” he says. “There are always new ways that the story conspires to trick us, to fool us into thinking we have the right solution. It’s only with a lot of reworking—and reworking and reworking—that you get good stuff.

“We still don’t know everything,” he continues. “But we allow ourselves to make mistakes. As Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, says, ‘if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks.’ I hope we never think of ourselves as experts—we learn something new on every film.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Up” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.