Before Pixar took audiences back to school with 2013’s Monsters University, a direct theatrical sequel to the original 2001 classic was actually greenlit, fully scripted, and pushed into active pre-production. Speaking with the The Wrap this week, screenwriters Bob Hilgenberg and Rob Muir broke their silence on Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost in Scaradise—the multi-million dollar Pixar follow-up that was completely killed by a historic Hollywood corporate war.
The report revealed the full, narrative structure of the lost film just as Pixar is fast-tracking a brand-new, legitimate third theatrical entry in the franchise.
The origin of Lost in Scaradise lives entirely inside the infamous, early-2000s executive feud between then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar head Steve Jobs. Looking to skirt film commitment parameters, Eisner aggressively claimed that sequels to Pixar movies “didn’t count” toward their distribution deal, leaving Pixar on the hook for longer.
When contract negotiations collapsed, Eisner made the radical decision to bypass Pixar entirely, founding a highly specialized, rogue computer animation division dubbed Circle 7 Animation explicitly to make sequels to Pixar properties without their involvement or creative consent.
Hilgenberg and Muir were hired by Circle 7 to construct two scripts: an early blueprint for Toy Story 3 and the definitive continuation of Monsters, Inc. However, when Bob Iger successfully ousted Eisner and orchestrated Disney’s multi-billion-dollar buyout of Pixar, Circle 7 was immediately shut down, and the script was permanently locked away in the Burbank vaults.
Unlike the collegiate prequel audiences eventually received, Lost in Scaradise was a direct emotional and chronological continuation of the original 2001 story, focusing heavily on the bittersweet bond between a monster and a human child.
“We stand by that script, we’re very proud of it. It’s one of those things where, when we were writing it, everything was falling into place. It was a labor of love and were very passionate about it,” Muir said. “We wanted to make sure we stuck with the Pixar brand. Our goal was, when somebody read the script, to not know if we were influenced by Pixar or not.”
The film picked up with Sulley managing the massive structural transition of Monsters, Inc. from scream power to laugh power, while Mike Wazowski was hysterically micromanaging the final stages of his upcoming wedding.
Overwhelmed by how much he missed Boo, Sulley decides to cross the door threshold to surprise her on her birthday. However, upon entering the bedroom, they discover a completely random stranger sleeping in the bed—Boo’s family had moved away.
Trapped in the human world, the duo set off on a high-stakes metropolitan road trip to track down Boo. Along the way, the script expanded the mythology by introducing “earthly monsters”—real-world creatures from human folklore that were stranded on our side of the door system.
Decades after the project was scrapped, Hilgenberg and Muir stand fiercely by their work, noting that their goal was to write a script so pitch-perfect to the brand that audiences wouldn’t be able to tell it didn’t come directly out of Emeryville.
Source: The Wrap
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