Lee Unkrich, recent director of Toy Story 3 and co-director of Pixar’s Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo, used his Twitter feed to share a list of 16 rejected titles for the very first Toy Story saying, “These are randomly picked from a list of HUNDREDS of brainstormed titles. We had an open call to studio employees, out of desperation.”
- The New Toy
- Made in Taiwan
- Moving Buddies
- To Infinity and Beyond
- Wind-Up Heroes
- The Cowboy & The Spaceman
- Spurs & Rockets
Following that list he also gave the following nine titles saying, “Now for some bottom-of-the-barrel rejected Toy Story titles…” After which he tweeted, “If you thought those were bad, there were hundreds of others. None were better than plain old Toy Story, so that’s the title the world got.”
- Bring Me The Arm of Buzz Lightyear
- Wind the Frog
- Rex’s First Movie
- For the Love of Peep
- Toyz in the Hood
- Each Sold Separately
- Wings & Pullstrings
- Some Assembly Required
- The Favorite
It’s also curious to learn they almost titled A Bug’s Life as Bug Story, but as Unkrich puts it, they knew they’d “have to forever use that naming scheme.” As Pixar animator Catherine Hicks put it, “Hahah, that would have been gold. Bug Story. Monster Story. Fish Story. Old Man and Korean Kid Story.”
Thanks for the heads up from Slash Film.
