Wow… this is a sad day. Joe Ranft, Head of Story Development at Pixar has died in a car accident in California. Ranft was nominated for writing Toy Story and was also co-wrote A Bug’s Life. Before joining Pixar he was at Disney where he was a writer on Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
What has always made Pixar by far the best animation company in the world was not it’s animation… but rather the brilliance of it’s story telling. The world of not just animation… but of film as a whole has lost a great family member. The folks at Yahoo give us this:
“Joe was an important and beloved member of the Pixar family, and his loss is of great sorrow to all of us and to the animation industry as a whole,” the company said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. Hundreds of Pixar employees gathered Wednesday in the animation company’s atrium to share their grief, according to blogs written by several Pixar animators.
Ranft, the head of story for more than a decade at Pixar, also co-wrote “A Bug’s Life” and was the voice for such characters as Heimlich in “A Bug’s Life” and Wheezy the Penguin in “Toy Story 2.”
We all mourn for the family and friends of Joe Ranft… and on a far less important note… I also mourn that we will never again be blessed with the sharing of his wonderful gift. If you’ll excuse me… I’m going to run out and rent A Bug’s Life.
