After two years since their last film release — and three years since their last original story — Pixar reminded us of their imaginative genius and returned to form with Inside Out, the literal emotional journey of an eleven-year-old girl struggling with her family's move to a new town. And now, we can read the screenplay behind the film, thanks to Walt Disney Studios.

In case you missed the film this summer, here's the trailer for Inside Out:

A big reason why Pixar films are so good (and why we've had to wait so long for a new one) is that the animation studio isn't afraid to throw everything out and start over to get the story right. Prior to the film's release this summer, Inside Out director and co-writer Pete Docter revealed that he stood up in front of John Lasseter and the Pixar Brain Trust at a scheduled rough cut screening of the film in July 2012 and announced they weren't going to screen the cut because the film wasn't working after two years of work. Even though Docter was the third animator at Pixar and has writing credits going back to the original Toy Story, not to mention directing Monsters, Inc. and Up after creating the initial ideas for those films, he was still afraid he would get fired as he struggled to get Inside Out to work.

At this year's Austin Film Festival, I had the opportunity to hear Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) present his "Mistakes Made, Lessons Learned" talk about his experiences writing Toy Story 3 for Pixar. During his presentation, Arndt explained that Toy Story 3 was essentially made eight times with storyboards, animatics, rough animation, full animation, dialogue recordings and music so the Pixar Brain Trust and Arndt's team of animators could all watch the film unfold on the big screen to figure out what worked and what didn't.

Only after eight iterations of the film did Arndt and the creative team finally crack all of the story details with notes from the Brain Trust. This is the Pixar process for every film. So while Docter feared for his job in July 2012, he ultimately needed to push through this long Pixar iterative process with his co-writers Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, co-director Ronnie Del Carmen, and their team of animators to solve the story problems of Inside Out.

Here's a link to the finished screenplay for Inside Out, thanks to Walt Disney Studios:

If you missed our earlier posts about screenplays available for free, legal download this awards season, check them out here. Titles include:

  • Carol
  • Woman in Gold
  • Macbeth
  • Grandma
  • The Diary of a Teenage Girl
  • Infinitely Polar Bear
  • The Lady in the Van
  • Son of Saul
  • Testament of Youth
  • Truth
  • Room
  • Ex Machina
  • The End of the Tour
  • While We're Young
  • Mississippi Grind
  • Slow West
  • Remember
  • Straight Outta Compton
  • Trainwreck
  • Legend

As always, please use these screenplays for educational purposes only, and don't wait to download the scripts as we never know when the distributors will take them off the Internet.

We'll continue to post links to award-contending screenplays as they become available.

Source: Walt Disney Studios Awards

2015 Screenplays FYCInside OutpixarMichael Arndt
Screenwriting