20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Pixar
11. Toy Story 2 Was Originally A Straight-To-DVD Sequel
Toy Story 2 is one of the greatest sequels ever made, arguably a lot better than the original. But in the same way that Disney cranks out a whole bunch of straight to video sequels to their movies, Toy Story 2 could have been a forgettable afterthought.
After the success of Toy Story, Disney chairman Joe Roth wanted to make a Toy Story sequel following in the same line as their straight to video movies like The Return Of Jafar. It wasn't even clear for a while if Pixar themselves would do the sequel or if it would be handed over to Disney's animation department. Either way, Toy Story 2 wasn't going to come to theaters at all, and it was going to be just 60 minutes long. Think about how disappointing that might have been.
But a bit into production, when ideas for the movie continued to grow, the studio decided to extend it to a theatrical feature. Initially Lasseter was asked to add 12 extra minutes to make it long enough, but less than a year before the movie's scheduled release, Pixar ended up reworking the whole story from the ground up during a two day "story summit." The result was a 90 minute feature film that expanded the scope of the original movie pretty significantly. Talk about going to infinity and beyond.