Inside Pixar’s Scrapped Movie ‘Be Fri’ and the “Devastating” Aftermath – “Disney reps were like, ‘We can’t have a girl power movie,'” an insider tells about the animation studio making the rare decision to cancel the feature after years of development.
by SanderSo47
18 Comments
we gotta put a pin on that “we can’t have a girl power movie” comment for when disney/pixar tries to do a female-centered animated movie in this post-kpop demon hunters world
edit: wow i commented this before reading the article and the last stretch cinches it:
>“The comparisons to KPop Demon Hunters are pretty undeniable because there were musical aspects to it, and it was a rip-roaring time,” the individual says. “I can imagine that whoever at Disney denied Be Fri to exist looks at KPop and is kicking themselves like, ‘Shit, I can’t believe Netflix is doing exactly what we wanted to do.’”
They should’ve pitched it in 2017-2023 when all Disney cared about was girl power
I think Disney has made enough girl power movies. I think we all will be able to stomach this loss.
*Turning Red* was the second-most streamed movie of 2022, after Encanto. Not just second on Disney Plus plus but second across all streaming services combined. We don’t know what the box office take would be because it never went to theaters, but by every metric we have, Pixar’s girl movie was a total success.
I actually saw the leaked footage which was up for a day. Jules and Birdie’s adventure honestly sounded depressing and mean spirited, with the latter coming across as unsympathetic.
I think the “tumblr” story telling model is flawed and I think BeFri would have been an Elio level bomb. Hoppers, which isn’t based on a real life escapade of the director, is a rejection of that formula and the way forward.
Whenever I read these Pixar articles I notice the majority of sources comes from former employees. I always wonder how much of this is sour grapes from people bitter about being laid off
I’m sure politics played a part, but I think Pixar saw that these coming of age movies about their creators’ childhood trauma just weren’t making the kind of money they wanted, and they pivoted back to non-human focused plots.
Also I get the wordplay but I hate the title be fri, if you’re a regular person seeing that on a poster or hearing it on an ad without context it just sounds stupid.
Don’t love the reasoning but my God the leaked footage for this on Twitter looked absolutely terrible and I’m almost certain this would have rivaled Cars 2 and Lightyear for Pixar’s worst. I was not one to complain about the bean mouth style for Luca, Turning Red, and even Win or Lose, but I think this would have been the breaking point for me on that. The implied story I got from those clips just sounded so stupid as well. The whole thing came across like a C-tier Cartoon Network Show and not a Pixar production.
Meanwhile Kpop Demon Hunters wipes the floor.
All the inside info coming out of pixar these days feels so weird & gross honestly, this statement is kindof bizarre honestly have they not looked at WDAS and the kindoff succes the Frozen, Moana & Disney Princess brands have had ??? Pete doctor maybe great but he’s pretty spineless
Turning Red was the second most streamed movie of 2022
Disney’s biggest franchise is Frozen
Barbie was 2023’s biggest movie
Inside Out 2, a therapy session about anxiety is the biggest animated movie of all time domestic
KPOP is probably one of the defining movies of 2025
It’s sad to see Iger and Docter cave to bigots and creatively sterilize themselves.
There’s leak artwork going around the internet about this project. I know that people were upset about this being cancelled, but I have a feeling that they’ll make jumped on it since it has the “bean-mouth” style
people who compare this to kpop demon hunter clearly do not get it. kpop demon hunters jet fuel is its great soundtrack. when’s the last time pixar has ever done a musical? oh but this one was gonna be it? nonsense.
to blindly say “girl friendship + fantasy/demons = profit disney is kicking themselves having lost” is the same stupid mentality people claim studio execs do when chasing trends.
this movie seems to have failed on its own merits and that’s ok. it happens.
Incredibly surprised that Be Fri got scrapped instead of Elio considering female-skewing films is one of Pixar’s biggest things.
I would bet my house that Be Fri would’ve outgrossed it.
“Rare decision”
Laughs at Newt and many other projects scrapped.
Pixar films being entirely canned in general is such a rarity. The only major one before this was Newt, so it’s kind if crazy we’ve reached another point where this has happened.
Reason *why* it was canned feels more than a bit flimsy to me but I gotta be honest, if this film ever did come out it’s **begging** for a better title. That does not roll of the tongue at all
While the reason for the cancellation is truly horrendous and embarrassing, especially when taking KPDH’s existence into account, at the same time if I were president of Pixar I wouldn’t have greenlit this concept in the first place with the premise alone. It doesn’t even scream “it has to be animated”. I respect the dedication at letting the artists tell personal stories, but they also have to tell them in a more accessible way that appeals to everyone. Not in a bland way like Elio, but in a creative way like The Incredibles: it’s a superhero story on the surface, but Brad Bird was also inspired by his own struggles to balance between work and family. I’m not saying Be Fri would have been bad, but I don’t get why spend 150-200 million dollars and a theatrical release to make it.
> “We can’t have a girl power movie”
> One just made Netflix and Sony billions of dollars, and will likely make billions more as sequels and spinoffs come online
What did Pixar mean by this?