Director Dan Scanlon Talks Monsters University! #MonstersUEvent

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 ***Disclosure: I was not compensated or paid in any way for this post. I solely was provided travel, hotel, and the opportunity to meet with the filmmakers of this film by Disney. I am sharing this for the benefit of my readers. All opinions are my own. Photos Courtesy of Disney***

Hey All!

As you all know from previous posts on my visit to Monsters University aka Pixar Animation Studios, I had the amazing opportunity to chat with a variety of the voice talent and filmmakers of the new film Monsters University. One of the film makers I had the amazing opportunity to chat with was the Director of the film Dan Scanlon.

We only had a short time with him while at Pixar, but he shared so much with us about this fantastic animated movie. He was extremely passionate about this project and truly took on the challenge of creating a fun prequel to the film Monsters Inc. It was a very challenging task to maintain the feeling and heart of the beloved original film, while telling a unique and different story with these characters. He truly tried his best to touch upon things mentioned in the first movie like…

“In the first film, Mike and Sulley actually says, “you’ve been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade.”  And so it’s a thing that a lot of people have brought up, and we certainly noticed it right away when we, uh, started developing the idea.  And it can be really tough when you have a, uh, a moment like that.  We really explored it a lot.  We did several versions of the film where we actually showed the guys meeting when they were younger and one of the things that ended up happening is we ended up realizing that, in order to service that particular line, we were hurting the story.”

The story and maintaining the world of Monsters University was very important for Dan.

“We were hurting the story that we wanted to tell, which was the story of how these guys met, and how they, uh, became friends.  It became clear that in order to… to, um, respect that line, we would had to have made Monsters, Elementary, which was not a story we wanted to tell.  Um, so it was really Pete Doctor and John Lasseter who kind of came to me and said you’re… you kind of have to let that go. It’s going to in the long run, it’s gonna hurt both movies if you don’t tell this right.  And the spirit of that line in the first film was to say, these two guys have known each other a long time.  So we felt like, well, it still supports that idea to have them meet in college. So, let’s just imagine that you’ve been jealous of my good looks since fourth grade’s just a monster expression.”

Being that the film takes place in College Dan wanted it to feel like college also wanted it to be tasteful and family friendly. After all these are adorable Monsters in college. This is not your every day University.

Having seen the film in an advanced screening, I feel he truly captured the spirit of Monsters University as well as captured the spirit of Monsters Inc. A task that Dan Scanlon was trying to accomplish with this film.

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY scares it’s way in theaters on June 21st!

For more info on this amazing film Like MONSTERS UNIVERSITY on Facebook, “Follow” Disney/Pixar on Twitter, or Visit the website: http://www.Disney.com/MonstersU.