Why original script of "Toy Story 4" got cancelled and rebuilt

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]So, you remember Toy Story 4, right?

[00:00:02]Forky, the road trip, Gabby Gabby, that sad ending where Woody leaves Buzz. But, here's the thing nobody told you at the time. That wasn't the movie Pixar wanted to make. For almost 3 years, they were building a completely different Toy Story 4. Think about that. No Forky, no trash philosophy, no moving on breakdown, just Woody trying to win back his girl. It was going to be sweet, funny, classic Pixar. They announced it in 2014.

[00:00:27]The release date was supposed to be summer 2017.

[00:00:31]Then, everything fell apart. The story starts from John Lasseter hiring two brilliant writer to work on the film.

[00:00:38]Rashida Jones from The Office and her partner, Will McCormack. Pixar hired them because they wanted fresh energy.

[00:00:45]Jones was a huge Toy Story fan as a kid.

[00:00:48]They wrote draft after draft. Woody and Bo Peep were the center. The story was basically Woody has been lost without her. Now, he finds her, but she doesn't need saving.

[00:00:59]So, he has to grow up. That's actually beautiful, right? But, here's where it gets dark. In 2017, the John Lasseter scandal broke.

[00:01:07]Lasseter was the head of Pixar, the father of Toy Story.

[00:01:11]But, here's what the public didn't know.

[00:01:12]For years, multiple employees had quietly complained about behaving inappropriately. Unwanted hugs and touching. As the Me Too movement emerged, complaints surfaced that his workplace hugging and other physical gestures, such as kissing and grabbing, violated employee boundaries and made staff, particularly younger women, deeply uncomfortable. In a 2011 The Wall Street Journal profile highlighting his gregarious nature, journalists famously documented Lasseter administering 48 hugs in a single work day.

[00:01:42]While initially framed as an eccentric quirk, years later, these embraces came to be viewed by some as severe invasions of personal space.

[00:01:51]So, in November 2017, Lasseter took a leave of absence. He wrote a memo admitting to missteps. Then in June 2018, he left Pixar for good. And for surprise, Jones and McCormack also walked out in November 2017. When the news first broke, the Hollywood Reporter said Jones left Toy Story 4 because Lasseter made an unwanted advance toward her.

[00:02:14]That story spread everywhere.

[00:02:16]But Jones and McCormack quickly released their own statement. Then they gave the real reason. They said they left because of creative and more importantly philosophical differences. And Jones went further.

[00:02:28]In interviews later she hinted, "We wanted Bo to be strong, but some people at the top kept pushing for a simpler romance. Less edge, less real pain."

[00:02:38]The lost script proves this.

[00:02:41]In Jones and McCormack's version, Bo Peep was bitter.

[00:02:45]She was angry at Woody for convincing her to leave.

[00:02:48]She had been thrown away and passed from person to person.

[00:02:51]She wasn't a cool action hero. She was hurt.

[00:02:55]But Pixar wanted something safer, less complicated. According to people who worked on the film, Pixar threw away three quarters of the finished script.

[00:03:04]Years of work, hundreds of pages, jokes, scenes, character moments, gone. Why?

[00:03:11]Because without Lasseter, the new directors, Josh Cooley and Andrew Stanton, wanted a different tone.

[00:03:17]They read the romantic comedy draft and said, "This feels safe.

[00:03:21]Toy Story 3 was a perfect ending.

[00:03:23]We can't just make a date movie."

[00:03:26]So they started over from zero. And this is where Forky is born, a toy made from trash.

[00:03:33]That wasn't in the Jones version, not even close.

[00:03:36]They wanted a movie about what happens when you realize you don't belong anymore, about letting go, about becoming trash, pain, being okay with that.

[00:03:45]That's heavy. That's existential.

[00:03:48]But it's also not a comedy anymore.

[00:03:51]By the time the credits rolled in 2019, almost nothing from 2014 to 2017 survived.

[00:03:58]Maybe one or two jokes, a scene in an antique store. That's it.

[00:04:02]So, let's go deeper into what actually got thrown away.

[00:04:05]Thanks to the lost media and interviews with the people who worked on the original script, we now know the full plot of the lost Toy Story 4, and it is wild. Here's what the original movie looked like. First, Bo Peep was never lost.

[00:04:19]In the original script, here's what happened.

[00:04:22]Bo Peep wasn't given away by accident.

[00:04:25]She didn't just disappear between movies.

[00:04:27]Instead, she chose to leave.

[00:04:31]Andy's mom gave her to an expecting couple.

[00:04:34]But Bo saw this as an opportunity, not a tragedy.

[00:04:37]Years later, when Woody finds her again, she's not some damsel waiting to be rescued.

[00:04:42]She's been living her own life.

[00:04:44]She's bitter, not sad.

[00:04:47]Why?

[00:04:48]Because Woody convinced her to leave.

[00:04:50]He told her it was the right thing to do.

[00:04:53]And then, she got thrown away by that couple.

[00:04:56]Not just once, she got passed from person to person. Never kept, never loved.

[00:05:02]She became a lost toy because she listened to Woody.

[00:05:06]When Woody finally finds her in a pawn shop, she's furious at him. That's so different from the final movie.

[00:05:12]In the real Toy Story 4, Bo is confident, cool, almost superwoman-like.

[00:05:18]In the lost script, she's hurt. She's angry. She's real. And Woody has to earn her forgiveness. Second, no Gabby Gabby as a villain.

[00:05:27]You remember Gabby Gabby, right? The creepy talking doll from the antique store with her ventriloquist dummy henchmen?

[00:05:34]In the final movie, she's the main antagonist. In the lost script, she doesn't exist. Instead, the conflict comes from inside Woody himself.

[00:05:43]Here's what the original script did.

[00:05:45]Woody's voice box is breaking down.

[00:05:47]His body is wearing out.

[00:05:49]Bonnie's mom puts him on a shelf with other old forgotten toys.

[00:05:53]An old doll named Baba, a stuffed owl named Hal, a nutcracker.

[00:05:58]Woody is facing something he never faced before, being forgotten, not abandoned, not lost, forgotten. Like an old photo in a drawer.

[00:06:08]The whole movie Woody is fighting his own fear that he doesn't matter anymore, that he's becoming trash, even before Forky existed. And here's the heartbreaking part. Woody starts having hallucinations because Bonnie's cousin pulls Woody's head off and puts it on Buzz's body.

[00:06:26]So Woody is walking around in Buzz's space ranger body having weird Buzz Lightyear fever dreams, blurting out space ranger nonsense at the worst possible moments.

[00:06:37]It's funny, but it's also sad because Woody is literally falling apart. In the final movie, Woody leaves everyone. He stays behind with Bo Peep to become a lost toy who helps other lost toys.

[00:06:51]Buzz and the gang drive away without him.

[00:06:54]It's sad. It's final.

[00:06:56]In the lost script, Woody and Bo get back together, but not as a couple.

[00:07:01]Here's how it ends.

[00:07:03]Woody convinces Bo to come live at Bonnie's house, not as his girlfriend, as a friend, as someone who accepts that they want different lives, but still want to be near each other. Bo becomes Bonnie's new lamp, literally sitting on her nightstand.

[00:07:19]And the final scene?

[00:07:20]Bonnie falls asleep with Woody in her arms and Bo Peep watching over her from the nightstand. Was the new movie bad?

[00:07:27]No, it was fine. A lot of people loved it. But the old movie, the one where Bo Peep was angry, not cool, where Woody was falling apart literally and emotionally, where the ending wasn't a goodbye but a quiet messy reunion.

[00:07:43]That movie is gone forever.