Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc.
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Pete Docter
Screenplay by	Andrew Stanton Daniel Gerson
Story by	Pete Docter Jill Culton Jeff Pidgeon Ralph Eggleston
Produced by	Darla K. Anderson
Starring	John Goodman Billy Crystal Mary Gibbs Steve Buscemi James Coburn Jennifer Tilly Frank Oz
Edited by	Robert Grahamjones Jim Stewart
Music by	Randy Newman
Production company	Pixar
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Release date	November 2, 2001 (2001-11-02)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$115 million
Box office	$562,816,256

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film directed by Pete Docter, released by Walt Disney Pictures, and the fourth film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, the film tells the story of two monsters who work for a company named Monsters, Inc.: top scarer James P. Sullivan (voiced by John Goodman)—known as "Sulley"—and his one-eyed assistant and best friend, Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal). Monsters generate their city's power by scaring children, but they are terribly afraid themselves of being contaminated by children, so when one enters Monstropolis, Sulley finds his world disrupted.

Docter began developing the film in 1996 and wrote the story with Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon, and Ralph Eggleston. Fellow Pixar director Andrew Stanton wrote the screenplay with screenwriter Daniel Gerson. The characters went through many incarnations over the film's five-year production process. The technical team and animators found new ways to render fur and cloth realistically for the film. Randy Newman, who composed the music for Pixar's three prior films, returned to compose its fourth.

Although the film suffered from two lawsuits against the filmmakers, filed by Lori Madrid before the film's release and Stanley Mouse in 2002 respectively, that were ultimately dismissed, Monsters, Inc. was praised by critics and proved to be a major box office success from its release on November 2, 2001, generating over $562 million worldwide.

Monsters, Inc. saw a 3D re-release in theaters on December 19, 2012. Its prequel, Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon, is scheduled to be released on June 21, 2013.

Plot

The city of Monstropolis is inhabited by monsters and powered by the screams of children in the human world. At the Monsters, Inc. factory, employees called "Scarers" venture into children's bedrooms to scare them and collect their screams, using closet doors as portals. This is considered a dangerous task since the monsters believe that children are toxic and touching them would be fatal. However, production is falling as children are becoming harder to scare, and the company chairman Henry J. Waternoose III is determined to find a solution. The top Scarer is James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, who lives with his assistant and best friend Mike Wazowski and has a rivalry with the ever-determined chameleon-like monster Randall Boggs. During an ordinary day's work on the "Scarefloor", fellow Scarer George Sanderson accidentally brings a child's sock into the factory, causing the Child Detection Agency (CDA) to arrive and cleanse him. Mike is harassed by Roz the clerk for never completing his paperwork on time.

While going to file Mike's paperwork, Sulley discovers that Randall left an activated door on the Scarefloor in an apparent attempt to cheat, and a young girl has entered the factory, much to Sulley's horror. After a few failed attempts to put her back, he places her in a bag and hides when Randall arrives and returns the door to storage. Mike and his girlfriend Celia are on a date at Harryhausen's when Sulley comes to him for help, but chaos erupts when the girl is discovered in the restaurant, and the CDA is called. Sulley and Mike escape the CDA and take the girl home, discovering that she is not toxic after all. Sulley quickly grows attached to the girl and names her "Boo". The next day, they smuggle her into the factory, and Mike attempts to return her through her door. Randall tries to kidnap Boo but kidnaps Mike by mistake.

In the basement, Randall reveals to Mike he has built a torture machine, the "Scream Extractor", to extract children's screams, which would make the company's current tactics redundant. Randall straps Mike to the chair for experimentation, but Sulley stops Randall from using the machine on Mike (replacing him with Fungus, Randall's assistant) and reports Randall to Waternoose, accidentally scaring Boo in the process. However, Waternoose is revealed to be allied with Randall, and exiles Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas. The two are taken in by the Abominable Snowman, who tells them they can return to the factory through a nearby village. Sulley heads out, but Mike, thinking that their current situation is Sulley's fault for ignoring his suggestions, refuses to follow him. Sulley returns to the factory and rescues Boo from the Scream Extractor. Mike returns to apologize to Sulley and inadvertently helps him defeat Randall in a fight.

Randall pursues Mike and Sulley as they race to the factory and ride on the doors heading into storage, taking them into a giant vault where millions of closet doors are stored. Boo's laughter activates the doors and allows the chase to pass in and out of the human world. After Boo conquers her fear of Randall to stop him from pushing Sulley out of an open door, Sulley and Mike trap Randall in the human world using a door to a Southern trailer park, where he is mistaken for an alligator and beaten up by a pair of hillbillies.

Sulley and Mike are finally able to access Boo's door, but Waternoose and the CDA send it back to the Scarefloor. Mike distracts the CDA, while Sulley escapes with Boo and her door while Waternoose follows. Waternoose is tricked into confessing his plan to kidnap children in the simulation bedroom and is arrested by the CDA, although Waternoose blames Sulley for destroying the company. The CDA's leader, #001, is revealed to be Roz, who has been undercover for two and a half years trying to prove there was a scandal at Monsters Inc. Sulley and Mike say goodbye to Boo and return her home, and on Roz's orders Boo's door is then destroyed. Sulley becomes the new chairman of Monsters Inc., and thanks to his experience with Boo, he comes up with a plan to end the company's energy crisis.

Months later, Sulley's leadership has changed the company's workload. The monsters now enter children's bedrooms to entertain them, since laughter is ten times more powerful than screams. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has almost rebuilt Boo's door, requiring only one more piece that Sulley had taken as a memento. Sulley enters to find Boo there.

Voice cast

• John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan – Sulley is a giant furry blue friendly and sweet monster with horns and purple spots. Even though he excels at scaring children, he is kindhearted and thoughtful by nature. Sulley has a relaxed, outgoing and happy personality. In the film's beginning, he is "The Best Scarer" for several months running.
• Billy Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski – Mike is a green monster with a ball-shaped body, a single big eyeball, and skinny arms and legs. He runs Sulley's station on the scare floor, and they are close friends and roommates. Mike has an outgoing personality and is dating Celia Mae. He has an ego that often makes him forget something obvious, such as how his face is obscured in advertisements for the company. He makes cameo appearances in Finding Nemo, Cars, WALL-E, and Toy Story 3.
• Mary Gibbs as Mary "Boo" – A 2-year-old human girl who is unafraid of any monster except Randall, who regularly scares her at night. She refers to Sulley as "Kitty". The book based on the film gives Boo's "real" name as Mary Gibbs, the name of her voice actress. In the film, one of Boo's drawings is covered with the name "Mary."
• Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs – An impatient, multi-legged lizard-shaped monster with a chameleon-like ability to change skin color and blend in completely with his surroundings. He is Mike and Sulley's rival in scream collection.
• Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae – A gorgon-like monster with one eye, snakes for hair, and tentacle-like legs. She is Mike's girlfriend and the receptionist for Monsters, Inc.
• James Coburn as Henry J. Waternoose III – A half-crab monster with five eyes. At the film's start, he is CEO of Monsters, Inc., the job having been in his family for three generations. He holds a mentor-like relationship with Sulley, believing him to be the best scarer. This was Coburn's last voice role before his death in 2002.
• Bob Peterson as Roz – A slug-like monster with a raspy voice, similar to Selma Diamond's. She is the administrative clerk for Scarefloor F and "number 1" in the CDA, who has been doing secret work around Monsters, Inc. for about 2 years.
• Frank Oz as Jeff Fungus – Randall's red-skinned three-eyed assistant and reluctant participant in the plot.
• John Ratzenberger as The Abominable Snowman – A yeti who was banished to the Himalayas.
• Samuel Lord Black as George Sanderson – A furry monster with a horn on top of his head. He is the butt of a running gag in which he repeatedly contacts human artifacts by accident (due to his fur's static cling), triggering "23–19" incidents and humorously overblown reactions by the CDA resulting in his being shaved bald.
• Phil Proctor as Charlie - George's assistant with sea-green skin, two octopus like arms, four tentacles as feet and snail-like eyes. He is very friendly and admires Sulley and Mike's work, but calls out all of George's "23-19" incidents.
• Steve Susskind as Jerry Slugworth - A seven-fingered, red monster who is the Scare Floor Manager and Waternoose's good friend.
• Dan Gerson as Smitty and Needleman – Two goofy monsters with cracking voices who work as janitors and operate the Door Shredder when required; they also idolize Sulley.
• Bonnie Hunt as Ms. Flint – A snake-like monster who trains new monsters to scare children.
• Jeff Pidgeon as Thaddeus "Phlegm" Bile – A trainee scarer for Monsters, Inc.

Production

Development

When production began in earnest on Monsters, Inc. in 2000, Pixar re-located to a larger building in Emeryville, California.

The idea for Monsters, Inc. was conceived in a lunch in 1994 attended by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft during the production of Toy Story. One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. "When we were making Toy Story", Docter said, "everybody came up to me and said 'Hey I totally believed that my toys came to life when I left the room.' So when Disney asked us to do some more films, I wanted to tap into a child-like notion that was similar to that. I knew monsters were coming out of my closet when I was a kid. So I said 'Hey, lets do a film about monsters.'"

Docter began work on the film that would become Monsters, Inc. in 1996 while others focused on A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2. Its code name was Hidden City, named for Docter's favorite restaurant in Point Richmond. By early February 1997, Docter had drafted a treatment together with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon that bore some resemblance to the final film. Docter pitched the story to Disney with some initial artwork on February 4, 1997. He and his story team left with some suggestions in hand and returned to pitch a refined version of the story on May 30, 1997. At this pitch meeting, longtime Disney animator Joe Grant—whose work stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs—suggested the title Monsters, Inc., which stuck.

Writing

Docter's initial concept for the film went through many changes, but he found the notion of monsters living in their own world to be an appealing and workable one. His original idea featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters that he drew in a book as a child coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears caused the monsters eventually to disappear.

After Docter scrapped the initial concept of a 30-year-old terrified of monsters, he decided on a buddy story between a monster and a child titled simply Monsters, in which the monster character of Sulley (known at this stage as Johnson) was an up-and-comer at his workplace, where the company's purpose was to scare children. Sulley's eventual sidekick, Mike Wazowski, had not yet been added.

Between the years 1996 and 2000, the lead monster and child went through radical changes as the story evolved. As the story continued to develop, the child varied in age and gender. Ultimately, the story team decided that a girl would be the best counterpart for a furry, 8-foot co-star. After a girl was settled upon, the character continued to undergo changes, at one point being from Ireland and at another time being an African-American character. Originally the character of the little girl, known as Mary, became a fearless seven-year-old who has been toughened by years of teasing and pranks from four older brothers. In stark contrast, Johnson is nervous about the possibility of losing his job after the boss at Monsters, Inc. announces a downsizing is on the way. He feels envious because another scarer, Ned (who later became Randall), is the company's top performer. Through various drafts, Johnson's occupation went back-and-forth from being a scarer and from working in another area of the company such as a janitor or a refinery worker, until his final incarnation as the best scarer at Monsters, Inc. Johnson was originally planned to have tentacles for feet; however, this caused many problems in early animation tests. The idea was later largely rejected, as it was thought that audience would be distracted by the tentacles. Mary's age also differed from draft to draft until the writers settled on the age of 3. "We found that the younger she was, the more dependent she was on Sulley," Docter said.

Eventually Johnson was renamed Sullivan and was also planned to wear glasses throughout the film. However, the creators found it a dangerous idea because the eyes were a perfectly readable and clear way of expressing a character's personality; thus, the idea was rejected.

The idea of a monster buddy for the lead monster emerged at an April 6, 1998 "story summit" in Burbank with Disney and Pixar employees. A term coined by Lasseter, a "story summit" was a crash exercise that would yield a finished story in just two days. Such a character, the group agreed, would give the lead monster someone to talk to about his predicament. Development artist Ricky Nierva drew a concept sketch of a rounded, one-eyed monster as a concept for the character, and everyone was generally receptive to it. Docter named the character Mike for the father of his friend Frank Oz, a director and Muppet performer. Jeff Pidgeon and Jason Katz story-boarded a test in which Mike helps Sulley choose a tie for work, and Mike Wazowski soon became a vital character in the film. Originally, Mike had no arms and had to use his legs as appendages; however, due to technical difficulties, arms were soon added.

Screenwriter Dan Gerson joined Pixar in 1999 and worked on the film for almost two years with the filmmakers on a daily basis. Gerson considered it his first experience writing a feature film. Dan Gerson explained, "I would sit with Pete and David Silverman and we would talk about a scene and they would tell me what they were looking for. I would make some suggestions and then go off and write the sequence. We'd get together again and review it and then hand it off to a story artist. Here's where the collaborative process really kicked in. The board artist was not beholden to my work and could take liberties here and there. Sometimes I would suggest an idea about making the joke work better visually. Once the scene moved on to animation, the animators would plus the material even further."

Casting

The voice role of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan went to John Goodman, the longtime co-star of the comedy series Roseanne and a regular in the films of the Coen brothers. Goodman interpreted the character to himself as the monster equivalent of a National Football League player. "He's like a seasoned lineman in the tenth year of his career," he said at the time. "He is totally dedicated and a total pro." Billy Crystal, having regretted turning down the part of Buzz Lightyear years prior, accepted that of Mike Wazowski, Sulley's one-eyed best friend and scare assistant. The casting of Steve Buscemi as Randall, the rival of Sulley, saw a reunion between himself and John Goodman; they had previously worked together on The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink.

Animation

The "door vault" scene is one of the film's most elaborate sets.

In November 2000, early in the production of Monsters, Inc., Pixar packed up and moved for the second time since its Lucasfilm years. The company's approximately 500 employees had become spread among three buildings, separated by a busy highway. The company moved from Point Richmond to a much bigger campus, co-designed by Lasseter and Steve Jobs, in Emeryville.

In production, Monsters Inc. differed from earlier Pixar features in that each main character had its own lead animator: John Kahrs on Sulley, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave DeVan on Boo. Kahrs found that the "bearlike quality" of Goodman's voice provided an exceptionally good fit with the character. He faced a difficult challenge, however, in dealing with Sulley's sheer mass; traditionally, animators conveyed a figure's heaviness by giving it a slower, more belabored movement, but Kahrs was concerned that such an approach to a central character would give the film a sluggish feel. Like Goodman, Kahrs came to think of Sulley as a football player, one whose athleticism enabled him to move quickly in spite of his size. To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a University of California, Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.

Adding to Sulley's lifelike appearance was an intense effort by the technical team to refine the rendering of fur. Other production houses had tackled realistic fur, most notably Rhythm & Hues in its 1993 polar bear commercials for Coca-Cola and in its talking animals' faces in Babe (1995). Monsters, Inc., however, required fur on a far larger scale. From the standpoint of Pixar's engineers, the quest for fur posed several significant challenges. One was figuring out how to animate the huge numbers of hairs—2,320,413 on Sulley—in a reasonably efficient way. Another was making sure the hairs cast shadows on other hairs. Without self-shadowing, fur or hair takes on an unrealistic flat-colored look. (The hair on Andy's toddler sister, as seen in the opening sequence of Toy Story, is an example of hair without self-shadowing.)

The first fur test had Sullivan run an obstacle course. Results were not satisfactory, as objects would catch the fur and stretch it out because of the extreme amount of motion. Another similar test was also unsuccessful, with the fur going through the objects.

Eventually Pixar set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (for "physics tool"). After a shot with Sulley had been animated, the Simulation department took the data for the shot and added his fur. Fizt allowed the fur to react in a natural way. When Sulley moved, the fur would automatically react to his movements, taking into account the effects of wind and gravity as well. The Fizt program also controlled movement on Boo's clothing, which provided another breakthrough. The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth was also a challenge to animate because of the hundreds of creases and wrinkles that automatically occurred in the clothing when the wearer moved. It also meant solving the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled—that is, how to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect. Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. Boo would first be animated shirtless; the Simulation department then used Fizt to apply the shirt over Boo's body, and when she moved, her clothes would react to her movements in a natural manner.

To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Michael Kass, Pixar's senior scientist, was joined on Monsters, Inc. by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin and developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem. The complexity of the shots in Monsters, Inc. — including elaborate sets such as the door vault — required more computing power to render than any of Pixar's earlier efforts combined. The render farm in place for Monsters, Inc. was made up of 3500 Sun Microsystems processors, compared with 1400 for Toy Story 2 and only 200 for Toy Story.

Release

The film was theatrically released on November 2, 2001 in the United States, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002. As in A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, a montage of "outtakes" and a performance of the company play were made and included in the end credits of the movie sometime later. After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney and Pixar re-released Monsters, Inc. in 3D on December 19, 2012. The Disney Store also released a new merchandising line with plush toys based on the characters.

Monsters Inc. was released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002 and on Blu-ray on November 10, 2009. It was re-released on Collector's Edition Blu-ray and on Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray 3D on February 19, 2013.

Reception

Box office

Monsters, Inc. ranked No. 1 at the box office its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America alone. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%, making $24,055,001 that weekend for a combined total of over $525 million. As of May 2013, it is the eighth-biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.

The film made $289,916,256 in North America, and $272,900,000 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $562,816,256. The film is Pixar's sixth highest-grossing film worldwide and fourth in North America. For a time, the film went on to take the place of Toy Story 2 as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, behind only The Lion King.

In the U.K., Ireland and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579) in total, marking the sixth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country and the thirty-second highest-grossing film of all time. In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the weekend, on subsequent weekends it moved to first place due to exceptionally small decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office. It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as 2002's third highest-grossing film and the third largest U.S. animated feature of all time in the country behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.

Critical reception

Monsters, Inc. received very positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 96% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 190 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The critical consensus was: "Even though Monsters, Inc. lacks the sophistication of the Toy Story series, it is a still delight for children of all ages." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 78 based on 34 reviews. Charles Taylor from Salon.com stated: "It's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time." Elvis Mitchell from The New York Times gave a positive review, praising the film's use of "creative energy": "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc." Although Mike Clark from USA Today thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree," he thought the film to be as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors."

ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli, who gave the film 31⁄2 stars out of 4 wrote, saying that Monsters, Inc. was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids." Roger Ebert, film critic from Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, called the film "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups." Lisa Schwarzbaum, a film critic for Entertainment Weekly, giving the film a B, praised the film's animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios, the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit, looks really, really terrific, and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."

Accolades

See also: Table of Pixar awards and nominations for Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Randy Newman, after fifteen previous nominations, for If I Didn't Have You). It was one of the first animated films to be nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek). It was also nominated for Best Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor). At the Kid's Choice Awards in 2002, it was nominated for "Favorite Voice in an Animated Movie" for Billy Crystal (who lost to Eddie Murphy in Shrek). The American Film Institute nominated "If I Didn't Have You" in the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs category. The film was also nominated in the AFI's 10 Top 10 animated film category.

Music

Untitled

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Empire
Filmtracks
Movie Wave
SoundtrackNet

Monsters Inc. was Randy Newman's fourth feature film collaboration with Pixar. The end credits song "If I Didn't Have You" was sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal.

The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. The score lost both these awards to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but after sixteen nominations, the song "If I Didn't Have You" finally won Newman his first Academy Award for Best Original Song. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

All tracks are written by Randy Newman

No.	Title	Length
1.	"If I Didn't Have You" (performed by Billy Crystal and John Goodman)	3:41
2.	"Monsters, Inc."	2:09
3.	"School"	1:38
4.	"Walk to Work"	3:29
5.	"Sulley and Mike"	1:57
6.	"Randall Appears"	0:49
7.	"Enter the Heroes"	1:03
8.	"The Scare Floor"	2:41
9.	"Oh, Celia!"	1:09
10.	"Boo's Adventures in Monstropolis"	6:23
11.	"Boo's Tired"	1:03
12.	"Putting Boo Back"	2:22
13.	"Boo Escapes"	0:52
14.	"Celia's Mad"	1:41
15.	"Boo Is a Cube"	2:19
16.	"Mike's in Trouble"	2:19
17.	"The Scream Extractor"	2:12
18.	"Sulley Scares Boo"	1:10
19.	"Exile"	2:17
20.	"Randall's Attack"	2:22
21.	"The Ride of the Doors"	5:08
22.	"Waternoose is Waiting"	3:14
23.	"Boo's Going Home"	3:34
24.	"Kitty"	1:20
25.	"If I Didn't Have You" (performed by Newman)	3:38
Total length:		1:00:30

Lawsuits

A drawing of a character for Stanley Mouse's "Excuse My Dust", a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998

Shortly before the film's release, Pixar was sued by children's song writer Lori Madrid of Wyoming, stating that the company had stolen her ideas from her 1997 poem "There's a Boy in My Closet." Madrid mailed her poem to six publishers in October 1999, notably Chronicle Books, before turning it into a local stage musical in the summer of 2001. After seeing the trailer for Monsters, Inc., Madrid concluded that Chronicle Books had passed her work to Pixar and that the film was based on her work. She filed the suit in October 2001 against Chronicle Books, Pixar, and Disney in a federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her lawyer asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would forbid Pixar and Disney from releasing the film while the suit was pending. In a hearing on November 1, 2001 — the day before the film's scheduled release on 5,800 screens in 3,200 theaters across the country - the judge refused to issue the injunction. On June 26, 2002, he ruled that the film had nothing in common with the poem.

A year after the film's release, Stanley Mouse filed a lawsuit in which he alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings of Excuse My Dust a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998. The lawsuit also stated that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000 and discussed Mouse's work with him. A Disney spokeswoman responded by saying that the characters in Monsters, Inc. were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams, and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights". The case was ultimately settled under undisclosed terms.

Prequel

Main article: Monsters University

A prequel called Monsters University is scheduled to be released on June 21, 2013. John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi and Frank Oz are reprising their roles of Sulley, Mike, Randall, and Fungus, while Dan Scanlon is directing the film. The prequel's plot focuses on Sulley and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become best friends. Boo will be absent in the film, as it takes place before they met her.

Other media

An animated short, Mike's New Car, was made by Pixar in 2002 in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of Monsters, Inc., and on Pixar's Dedicated Shorts DVD. In August 2002, a manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it went out of print. A series of video games, including a multi-platform video game were created based on the film. The video games included Monsters, Inc., Monsters, Inc. Scream Team and Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena. A game titled Monsters, Inc. Run was released on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on December 13, 2012.

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Walt Disney's World on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007. Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world. In 2006 Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California. In 2007 Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, replacing The Timekeeper. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians and submit jokes of their own via text message. In 2009 Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disney Resort's Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, Japan.

See also

• List of animated feature films
• List of computer-animated films

References

Bibliography

• Price, David (2008). The Pixar Touch. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-307-26575-7.

External links

• Official website
• Pixar website
• Monsters, Inc. at AllMovie
• Monsters, Inc. (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Template:Bcdb title
• Monsters, Inc. at IMDb
• Monsters, Inc. at Rotten Tomatoes
• Monsters, Inc. at Metacritic
• Monsters, Inc. at Box Office Mojo