Upon hiring Mullally to voice an undisclosed character in the movie, the crew discovered that the actress’s natural voice was of average pitch and that Mullally was unwilling to reproduce “the Karen voice” for the film. Chief among the character’s recognizable characteristics was her high-pitched voice, which Pixar producers apparently thought would be perfect for an animated fish. In the early 2000s, Megan Mullally was best known for playing the rude and eccentric Karen Walker on Will & Grace. MEGAN MULLALLY WAS FIRED AFTER PRODUCERS HEARD HER REAL VOICE.

Ultimately, this technique made the revelation obvious and anticlimactic while making Marlin feel substantially less likable, so the script changed. THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT HAD A DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR THE BARRACUDA INCIDENT.Īt first, Stanton kept the inspiration for Marlin’s overprotective attitude-the loss of his wife and all but one of their unborn children in a barracuda attack-a secret to reveal gradually through intermittent flashback sequences. The crew chose one of the most openly expressive members of the animal kingdom on which to model the eyes of its fish characters: dogs. The dull eyes of the average finned critter weren’t especially conducive to building expressive characters, so Pixar had to look elsewhere for its optical models. While the Pixar team’s extensive research on the denizens of the deep yielded a wide variety of spectacular shapes and colors perfectly suited to an animated feature, the underwater populace proved consistently lacking when it came to one anatomical component. DOGS WERE USED AS MODELS FOR THE FISHY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. In order to get the look and the feel of Finding Nemo’s characters and world just right, Pixar’s in-house art team was required to take courses and audit lecture s in marine biology, oceanography, and ichthyology while enrolling in scuba diving classes. THE MOVIE’S ART TEAM WENT THROUGH MARINE TRAINING PRIOR TO PRODUCTION. “You had me at ‘fish.’” That is precisely what Pixar’s chief creative officer told Stanton following his exhaustive pitch for his passion project. IT TOOK ONLY ONE WORD TO GET THE GREEN LIGHT FOR FINDING NEMO. Stanton already had a script completed before this second step took place, the only Pixar project to proceed in this manner.

Pixar’s multi-tiered film production process begins with a basic premise pitch to the creative higher-ups, followed by (for all greenlit projects) a written story treatment. ANDREW STANTON WROTE A SCRIPT LONG BEFORE HE WAS “SUPPOSED TO.” Stanton also had a love for all things aquatic that dated back to a childhood fascination with his dentist’s fish tank, so he used this lifelong interest as a funnel for a deeply emotional story about the challenges of being a good father.

As a relatively new father during the film’s development, Stanton found himself at odds with his proclivity to veer into overprotective territory, much in the way viewers see Marlin combating his neuroses in raising his son Nemo. “Autobiographical” isn’t exactly the first adjective you’d expect to assign to a road comedy about marine life, but Finding Nemo co-writer/director Andrew Stanton’s story came from a very personal place. THE FILM WAS INSPIRED BY THE DIRECTOR’S OVERPROTECTIVE NATURE. Here are a few little-known facts about the rocky road leading up to the film’s status as a bona fide blockbuster, on the 15th anniversary of its release. Although we now recognize 2003's Finding Nemo as one of Pixar’s most critically and commercially successful films, the underwater masterpiece didn’t exactly kick off production as a guaranteed goldmine.

Finding nemo fish tanks