Disney Hired Pixar’s Brad Bird and Michael Arndt to Write Pages for June TRON: LEGACY Re-Shoots

by Brendan Bettinger Posted:July 13th, 2010 at 12:48 pm

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As Disney positions Tron: Legacy as the major tentpole of the holiday season, the studio wanted to make sure they utilized all available to make the film something special. Enter Ratatouille writer/director Brad Bird and Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt. Disney had scheduled Tron re-shoots for June to beef up “character, emotion, and theme.” In preparation, the studio screened a very early working cut of the film for Brad, Arndt, and fellow Pixar colleagues John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. Subsequently, Disney hired Arndt and Bird to write some pages in collaboration with original writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost) for the re-shoots, which lasted six days. More after the jump:

Disney President of Production Sean Bailey remarked,

“Tron is very much [director] Joe Kosinski’s vision, a vision which is thrilling to me and I hope is thrilling to the fans. What I give Joe and the filmmaking team immense credit for, is this was all born out of how do we give the fans the best movie we can. We were very fortunate that Pixar wanted to play a part in it.” [EW]

Darn right. As endless critical adoration has suggested, the folks working up north at Pixar Studios are a fantastic group of creative minds to have on hand. As long as Disney doesn’t bump into the “too many cooks” theory, I would imagine Arndt and Bird are great script doctors.

Notably, it doesn’t sound like this is the last instance of intermingling between Disney if Bailey has his way. To wit:

“Certainly being able to have an open dialogue with our formidable partners in Pixar, Marvel, and Dreamworks is really interesting to me.”

A hypothetical Pixar/Marvel collaboration did not go unheralded upon the announcement of Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel; I hope we see the fruits of that relationship in the near future.

All in all, it sounds like we’re in for a treat when Tron: Legacy hits 3D theaters on December 17, 2010.