A scrapped Pixar film is making headlines, and not for good reasons. Be Fri, short for “best friends,” was a Pixar project centered on platonic friends breaking up. It had been in development for years. Leaving the roughly 50 staffers who worked on it shocked when it was scrapped.
The film was the brainchild of director Kristen Lester, known for Pixar’s 2019 short Purl. Inspired by Lester’s real-life experience with a dissolved adolescent friendship. Be Fri was to follow two teenage girls drifting apart after discovering their favorite Sailor Moon-style TV show is real. Sending them on a universe-spanning quest to save humanity.
Also part of the core creative team were writer Blaise Hemingway and editor Nicholas C. Smith, who retired from Pixar in 2024 after nearly 20 years with the company.
Be Fri‘s Cancelation
The project was far along. A former Pixar employee who worked on Be Fri told The Hollywood Reporter that “the project went through four iterations after various sets of notes from higher-ups and would have been ready for the animation stage when Disney opted to pull the plug.”
The team didn’t give up without a fight. According to the former staffer, “There was a meeting that took place after BT3, where Kristen and Blaise made the case to Disney: ‘We know you don’t like where the film is at right now. Give us six weeks, and we’ll redo the entire film.'”
The staffer added, “Kristen, Blaise, Nick and a couple board artists spent six weeks of night and day, seven days a week, literally reformatting. Preproduction on an animated feature takes a year of storyboarding, so [they had] to compress that into six weeks for a fourth version of the film.” It still wasn’t enough.
Why?
The reason given by insiders is blunt. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an insider alleged, “Disney reps were like, ‘We can’t have a girl power movie.'”
A separate anonymous former staffer said, “The joke around Pixar is that, for such a tall man, Pete has no spine at all.”
The cancellation hit the team hard. A former staffer recalled that “When they canceled the film itself, it was devastating.” Employees even came together for a memorial of sorts to honor Be Fri.
The irony isn’t lost on anyone. Over the past 12 months, the animated feature that earned the most buzz was Netflix’s KPop: Demon Hunters. That movie, which beat out Elio to win this year’s animated feature Academy Award, carries similar themes to the now-canceled project.
Pixar has yet to comment on the recent news and allegations surrounding Be Fri.
