Pixar has hired Black List alum Stephany Folsom to write the script for “Toy Story 4,” an individual with knowledge of the project tells TheWrap.
Folsom is best known for her spec script “1969: A Space Odyssey Or: How Kubrick Learned To Stop Worrying And Land On The Moon” which made the Black List. The project is an alternate-history story of a publicist who convinces filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to work with NASA in order to fake the moon landing. Folsom was also one of the writers of “Thor: Ragnarok,” though she was denied credit by WGA arbitration.
Folsom steps in following departure of co-writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. Last year, Jones denied a report that she and McCormack resigned from “Toy Story 4” after Pixar and Disney animation chief John Lasseter made “unwanted advances,” but she acknowledged “philosophical differences” between her and the studio were to blame.
“We did not leave Pixar because of unwanted advances. That is untrue. We parted ways because of creative and, more importantly, philosophical differences,” Jones and McCormack said in a joint statement provided to TheWrap.
In a statement first reported in the New York Times, Jones and McCormack elaborated on those differences: “There is so much talent at Pixar, and we remain enormous fans of their films. However, it is also a culture where women and people of color do not have an equal creative voice.”
Folsom is repped by Verve, Kaplan/Perrone and Morris Yorn.
The sequel is dated for release June 21, 2019.
Deadline first broke the story.