Pixar scrapped Be Fri in late 2023, ending a three-year effort on the feature after a team of about 50 people had spent years building it from Kristen Lester’s idea. The film, created by Lester after her 2019 short Purl, was meant to follow two teenage girls who were once best friends before they drifted apart and were pulled into a universe-spanning quest to save humanity.
That pitch came from a personal place. Be Fri was inspired by Lester’s own experience of an adolescent friendship that dissolved, and it carried the kind of emotional hook Pixar often tries to turn into a crowd-pleaser. Blaise Hemingway wrote on the project, and Nicholas C. Smith edited it before retiring from Pixar in 2024 after nearly 20 years with the company.
What made the collapse sting was how far the movie had already traveled. A former Pixar employee said Be Fri went through four iterations after notes from higher-ups, and that the team had been ready to move into animation when Disney pulled the plug. Disney asked for a major retooling after the project’s Braintrust 3 check-in, known internally as BT3, and Lester and Hemingway asked for six weeks to redo the entire film.
“We can’t have a girl power movie,” an insider said, capturing the pressure the project was under as the studio pushed for changes. The former staffer said there was a meeting after BT3 in which Lester and Hemingway told 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.” Six weeks later, the team had reformatting work for a fourth version.
The story matters now because it exposes a familiar fault line inside modern studio animation: even a project that has already absorbed years of work, multiple rewrites and executive notes can still be reset at the finish line. The had previously reported that Be Fri had been in development for years before it was scrapped, and the public glimpse of rough scenes on social media only sharpened interest in what might have been Pixar’s next big original feature.
Pixar has survived difficult course corrections before, including on Brave in 2012, but Be Fri appears to have hit a limit that rewrites could not solve. The canceled film is now a reminder that in Hollywood, a promising idea can survive four versions and still never make it past the gate.
