‘Toy Story 5’ Co-Director Kenna Harris on Going From Jessie Superfan to Pixar Filmmaker — and the Two-Week Rewrite That Reshaped the Sequel — SkimNews
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- Kenna Harris was invited by Andrew Stanton in late 2022 to co-direct Toy Story 5, and took on co-writing duties despite never having tackled a feature script — ultimately earning a screenplay credit alongside Stanton on the Pixar sequel
- Harris campaigned for Jessie and Buzz to kiss during the film's perilous action sequence, recalling telling Stanton it "should be super duper hard" — and Stanton agreed
- Production was paused for two weeks after early screenings showed audiences were unmoved by Jessie's goal of simply winning back playtime with Bonnie; Harris and Stanton spent the first week diagnosing the broken act one and the second rewriting it
- The team reframed Bonnie's loneliness as the emotional engine and elevated Blaze — a character Harris helped inspire after drawing Jessie riding a real horse — into an essential role, a shift Harris said "turned an okay movie into a good one" after internal screenings improved
- Harris led what the crew called "playtime weeklies," rapid experiments pushing Pixar artists toward more painterly, spontaneous visuals for imagination sequences rather than the studio's usual meticulous realism
- A discarded draft had Jessie meet an elderly Emily at her former home; Harris felt it resolved the character's pain too neatly, so the filmmakers built the climax around the tire-swing tree from Toy Story 2 and a time capsule instead
Why it matters: Stanton's endorsement of first-time co-director Harris — and her willingness to fight for risky swings including a Jessie-Buzz kiss in a tentpole sequel — signals creative succession at Pixar, while the studio's two-week production halt to rebuild a soft first act around a child's loneliness rather than toy-level competition demonstrates that Pixar is still willing to stop a franchise release to protect its emotional stakes.
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