Kimi Takes The Cake

Season 9 Episode 24
Kimi Takes The Cake
Prev	Fountain of Youth
Next	Snow White

The babies search for a birthday cake and they don't know their parents have it.

Plot

Monstropolis, a city inhabited by monsters in the monster world is powered by energy from the screams of human children. At the Monsters, Inc. factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to children's bedroom closets. It is considered dangerous work, as human children are believed to be toxic. Energy production is falling because children are becoming less easily scared, and the company's crab or spider-like chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Henry J. Waternoose III, is determined to find a solution to the problem. the grown ups getting ready to spend an evening out. Angelica then asks her mother to buy her a new Cynthia dress, but Charlotte says no since she had already bought her a dress not too long ago. Tommy's Uncle Ben and Aunt Elaine then arrive, having agreed to watch the babies and Angelica while their parents are out. They want to have practice with taking care of kids, as they have decided that they want to have children of their own. Betty wishes Ben and Elaine luck, but this doesn't discourage the couple (or, at least, Elaine), as they had already planned every minute of their day in a schedule and even bought the babies new clothes. The new clothes annoys Angelica, as she is still angry over not getting her new dress, and she states to herself that babies don't even need clothes anyways, as they are happy without them. When she hears that Tommy's uncle and aunt want to have a baby, she gets an idea; as soon as the adults leave, Angelica tells the babies that by saying that they want their own baby, Ben and Elaine meant that they wanted to take one of them away. Horrified at the idea of being separated from their parents, Tommy tells his friends that they need to be the opposite of what Ben and Elaine expect of them, meaning that they have to behave horribly so that they will lose interest and won't take any of them.

Meanwhile, Elaine comes in and tries to tell a story to the babies, but they start crying and screaming nonstop and don't let Elaine speak. She gives up and Ben suggests changing the schedule and move on to the diaper change in an attempt to calm them down, believing that the babies are fuzzy because they need changing. Once again, the kids run around screaming in Tommy's room, forcing Elaine and Ben to chase after them (except for Chuckie, who is already toilet trained, so he just sits quietly and covers his ears from all the noise going around him) and forcibly change them and also put on the new clothes on all of them; Chuckie is dressed in an old fashioned french suit, Tommy in an uncomfortable, girly onesie, Lil in a pink dress with a large yellow bow and Phil in blue pants, a white shirt and a blue cap, much to their chagrin.

Finally, Elaine decides it's time to feed the kids and tells them that since they have new clothes, they need to stay clean, but this only results in the babies throwing food at the adults, themselves and the entire house, which finally breaks Elaine, and she and Ben leave the babies in the kitchen and sit in the living room in misery. Angelica takes the chance to make a deal with them; if she manages to get the babies to behave, they take her to the Cynthia store and get her the dresses she wants. Not having any other choice, they accept and Angelica leaves for the kitchen, where she tells the babies to stop since they don't need to be bad anymore; Elaine and Ben decided that they don't want any babies after all.

One evening after work, the organization's top employee, James P. Sullivan, also known as "Sulley", a blue-furred giant, discovers that a strange door was activated on the scare floor and a rex, lil, angelica, phil, tommy, ben, spike, elaine and chuckie has entered the factory. After several failed attempts by Sulley to put her back, The door is sent back into the factory's door vault and Sulley conceals her and takes her out of the factory. He inadvertently decides to warn his green, one-eyed best friend and assistant Mike Wazowski and interrupts his date with his girlfriend, the Medusa-like Celia Mae, at Harryhausen's, and chaos erupts when the family is discovered. Sulley and Mike manage to escape with the child before the Child Detection Agency quarantines the restaurant. They soon discover that she is not toxic after all; Sulley grows attached to her and calls her Rex (for her habit of saying, "RAWR!" all the time) while Mike is just anxious to be rid of her.

The duo smuggle her back into the factory disguised as a baby monster and try to send her home and suspect that their rival, the chameleon-like Randall Boggs, was the one who brought the door in the scare floor. Meanwhile, Randall discovers Boo and tries to kidnap her, but accidentally kidnaps Mike instead of Boo. He straps Mike to a large machine called "The Scream Extractor", which he intends to use to revolutionize the scaring industry and solve the monster world's energy problems by forcefully extracting screams from kidnapped human children. Before Randall can use the machine on Mike, Sulley intervenes and reports Randall to Waternoose. But Waternoose, who is secretly in league with Randall, exiles Sulley and Mike to the Himalayas instead. The two meet the Abominable Snowman, who tells them about a nearby village, which Sulley realizes he can use to return to the factory. Sulley prepares to return, but Mike refuses to go with him. Meanwhile, Randall is preparing to use the Scream Extractor on Boo, but Sulley suddenly arrives and saves her, destroying the machine in the process and throws it at Randall and his henchmen. Sulley and Randall battle, and after Mike returns and helps Sulley overpower Randall, the two reconcile, take Boo, and flee.

Randall pursues them to the door vault, and a wild chase ensues among the millions of doors as they move in and out of the storage vault on rails to the factory floor. Boo's laughter causes all the doors to activate at once, allowing the monsters to freely pass in and out of the human world. Randall attempts to kill Sulley, but Boo overcomes her fear of Randall and attacks him, enabling Sulley to catch him. Sulley and Mike then trap Randall in the human world, where two residents at a trailer park mistake him for an alligator and beat him with a shovel.

Sulley and Mike take Boo and her door to the training room, and trick Waternoose into revealing his and Randall's plot, with help from the CDA and Roz, the scare floor secretary, who is revealed to be the leader of the CDA. Mike secretly records the entire conversation for the CDA to review and Waternoose is arrested. Roz thanks Sulley and Mike for their help, orders them to return Boo home, and has Tommy's door The babies stop but feel sad at the idea of Elaine and Ben not wanting to be parents anymore and feel guilty for their actions, so they crawl out of their high chairs and decide to apologize to the adults by hugging them, which makes Elaine happy again.

The parents arrive as Angelica is pointing out the dresses she wants for Elaine and Ben to buy. Stu is shocked by the mess in his house while a slightly amused Betty asks Elaine if even after this they still want children. Chas suddenly notices that the kids are gone and calls this to everyone's attention. Both sides start to blame each other for losing the babies. Chas has finally had it with the argument and tells and roars all of them off, pointing out that it's both side's faults because they were so focused on insults, grudges, and years worth of minor fights and disagreements that they forgot about the most important thing in their lives: their children.

Finally remorseful over what they've done, they decide to split up and find the kids. Howard tries to open up a restroom but has trouble opening the door; Didi unlocks the door for him, and they search inside, with no sign of the kids. Stu tries to look around the park from up in a tree but has difficulty climbing it. Betty gives him a leg up, and Stu notices the kids near the trash can. Stu calls out that they're over by the trash can, and everybody rushes over (Didi frets about potential broken glass along the way). Everybody reunites with their kids and agree to finally make up. Everybody apologizes, demolished to prevent any monsters from making further contact with her.

With the factory temporarily shut down, Sulley is named the new CEO of Monsters, Inc. Under his leadership, the energy crisis is solved by harvesting children's laughter instead of screams as laughter has been found to be ten times more potent. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has rebuilt Boo's door. It needs one final piece, which Sulley took as a memento, in order to work. Sulley puts the door chip into place, enters and joyfully reunites with Boo.

Production

Development

The idea for Monsters, Inc., along with ideas that would eventually become A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E was conceived in a lunch in 1994 attended by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft during the near completion of Toy Story.^[11] One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. "When we were making Toy Story", Docter said, "everybody came up to me and said 'Hey, I totally believed that my toys came to life when I left the room.' So when Disney asked us to do some more films, I wanted to tap into a childlike notion that was similar to that. I knew monsters were coming out of my closet when I was a kid. So I said, 'Hey, let's do a film about monsters.'"^[12]

Docter began work on the film that was to become Monsters, Inc. in 1996 while others focused on A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). Its code name was Hidden City, named for Docter's favorite restaurant in Point Richmond.^[13] By early-February 1997, Docter had drafted a treatment together with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon that bore some resemblance to the final film. Docter pitched the story to Disney with some initial artwork on February 4 that year. He and his story team left with some suggestions in hand and returned to pitch a refined version of the story on May 30. At this pitch meeting, longtime Disney animator Joe Grant – whose work stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) – suggested the title Monsters, Inc., a play on the title of a gangster film Murder, Inc.,^[14] which stuck.^[15] The film marks the first Pixar feature to not be directed by Lasseter instead being helmed by Docter, as well as Lee Unkrich and David Silverman who served as co-directors.^[16] The early test of Monsters Inc was released on October 11, 1998.

Writing

The storyline took on many forms during production.^[17] Docter's original idea featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters that he drew in a book as a child coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears caused the monsters to eventually disappear.^[18]

After Docter scrapped the initial concept of a 30-year-old terrified of monsters, he decided on a buddy story between a monster and a child titled simply Monsters, in which the monster character of Sulley (known at this stage as Johnson) was an up-and-comer at his workplace, where the company's purpose was to scare children. Sulley's eventual sidekick, Mike Wazowski, had not yet been added.^[17][19]

Between 1996 and 2000, the lead monster and child went through radical changes as the story evolved. As the story continued to develop, the child varied in age and gender. Ultimately, the story team decided that a girl would be the best counterpart for a furry, Script error: No such module "convert". co-star.^[17] After a girl was settled upon, the character continued to undergo changes, at one point being from Ireland and at another time being an African-American character.^[15] Originally, the character of the little girl, known as Mary, became a fearless seven-year-old who has been toughened by years of teasing and pranks from four older brothers.^[15] In stark contrast, Johnson is nervous about the possibility of losing his job after the boss at Monsters, Inc. announces a downsizing is on the way. He feels envious because another scarer, Ned (who later became Randall), is the company's top performer.^[15] Through various drafts, Johnson's occupation went back-and-forth from being a scarer and from working in another area of the company such as a janitor or a refinery worker, until his final incarnation as the best scarer at Monsters, Inc.^[15] Throughout development, Pixar worried that having a main character whose main goal was to scare children would alienate audiences and make them not empathize with him. Docter would later describe that the team "bent over backwards trying to create a story that still had monsters" while still attempting to solve the problem.^[16] A key moment came when the team decided "Okay, he's the BEST scarer there. He's the star quarterback" with Docter noting that before that moment "design after design, we really didn't know what he was about."^[16] Disney noted to Pixar early on that they did not want the character to "look like a guy in a suit".^[16] To this end, Johnson was originally planned to have tentacles for feet; however, this caused many problems in early animation tests. The idea was later largely rejected, as it was thought that audiences would be distracted by the tentacles.^[20] Mary's age also differed from draft to draft until the writers settled on the age of 3. "We found that the younger she was, the more dependent she was on Sulley", Docter said.^[12]

Eventually, Johnson was renamed Sullivan. Sullivan was also planned to wear glasses throughout the film. However, the creators found it a dangerous idea because the eyes were a perfectly readable and clear way of expressing a character's personality; thus, this idea was also rejected.^[20]

The idea of a monster buddy for the lead monster emerged at an April 6, 1998 "story summit" in Burbank with employees from Disney and Pixar. A term coined by Lasseter, a "story summit" was a crash exercise that would yield a finished story in only two days.^[21] Such a character, the group agreed, would give the lead monster someone to talk to about his predicament. Development artist Ricky Nierva drew a concept sketch of a rounded, one-eyed monster as a concept for the character, and everyone was generally receptive to it.^[12] Docter named the character Mike for the father of his friend Frank Oz, a director and Muppet performer.^[15] Jeff Pidgeon and Jason Katz story-boarded a test in which Mike helps Sulley choose a tie for work, and Mike Wazowski soon became a vital character in the film.^[12] Originally, Mike had no arms and had to use his legs as appendages; however, due to some technical difficulties, arms were soon added to him.^[12]

Screenwriter Daniel Gerson joined Pixar in 1999 and worked on the film with the filmmakers on a daily basis for almost two years. He considered it his first experience in writing a feature film. He explained, "I would sit with Pete [Docter] and David Silverman and we would talk about a scene and they would tell me what they were looking for. I would make some suggestions and then go off and write the sequence. We'd get together again and review it and then hand it off to a story artist. Here's where the collaborative process really kicked in. The board artist was not beholden to my work and could take liberties here and there. Sometimes, I would suggest an idea about making the joke work better visually. Once the scene moved on to animation, the animators would plus the material even further."^[17]

Docter has cited the 1973 film Paper Moon as inspiration for the concept of someone experiencing getting stuck with a kid who turns out to be the real expert, and he credits Lasseter for coming up with the “laughter is ten times more powerful than fear” concept.^[22]

Castin

Bill Murray was considered for the voice role of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan. He screen tested for the role and was interested, but when Pete Docter was unable to make contact with him, he took it as a "no".^[23][24] The voice role of Sulley went to John Goodman, the longtime co-star of the comedy series Roseanne and a regular in the films of the Coen brothers. Goodman interpreted the character to himself as the monster equivalent of a National Football League player. "He's like a seasoned lineman in the tenth year of his career," he said at the time. "He is totally dedicated and a total pro."^[25] Billy Crystal, having regretted turning down the part of Buzz Lightyear years prior, accepted that of Mike Wazowski, Sulley's one-eyed best friend and scare assistant.^[26][27]

Animation

In November 2000, early in the production of Monsters, Inc., Pixar packed up and moved for the second time since its Lucasfilm Ltd. years.^[25] The company's approximately 500 employees had become spread among three buildings, separated by a busy highway. The company moved from Point Richmond to a much bigger campus in Emeryville, co-designed by Lasseter and Steve Jobs.^[25]

In production, the film differed from earlier Pixar features, as every main character in this movie had its own lead animator – John Kahrs on Sulley, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave DeVan on Boo.^[28] Kahrs found that the "bearlike quality" of Goodman's voice provided an exceptionally good fit with the character. He faced a difficult challenge, however, in dealing with Sulley's sheer mass; traditionally, animators conveyed a figure's heaviness by giving it a slower, more belabored movement, but Kahrs was concerned that such an approach to a central character would give the film a "sluggish" feel.^[28] Like Goodman, Kahrs came to think of Sulley as a football player, one whose athleticism enabled him to move quickly in spite of his size. To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a University of California, Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.^[28]

Adding to Sulley's lifelike appearance was an intense effort by the technical team to refine the rendering of fur. Other production houses had tackled realistic fur, most notably Rhythm & Hues in its 1993 polar bear commercials for Coca-Cola and in its talking animals' faces in the 1995 film Babe.^[28] This film, however, required fur on a much larger scale. From the standpoint of Pixar's engineers, the quest for fur posed several significant challenges; one was to figure out how to animate a large number of hairs – 2,320,413 of them on Sulley – in a reasonably efficient way,^[28] and another was to make sure that the hairs cast shadows on other ones. Without self-shadowing, either fur or hair takes on an unrealistic flat-colored look (e.g., in Toy Story, the hair on Andy's toddler sister, as seen in that movie's opening sequence, is hair without self-shadowing).^[28]

The first fur test allowed Sulley to run an obstacle course. Results were not satisfactory, as such objects caught and stretched out the fur due to the extreme amount of motion. Another similar test was also unsuccessful, because, this time, the fur went through the objects.^[20]

Pixar then set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (short for "physics tool").^[29] After a shot with Sulley in it had been animated, this department took the data for that shot and added Sulley's fur. Fizt allowed the fur to react in a more natural way. Every time when Sulley had to move, his fur (automatically) reacted to his movements, thus taking the effects of wind and gravity into account as well. The Fizt program also controlled the movement of Boo's clothes, which provided another "breakthrough".^[29] The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth was also a challenge to animate thanks to those hundreds of creases and wrinkles that automatically occurred in the clothing when the wearer moved.^[30] Also, this meant they had to solve the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled – in other words, to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect.^[31] Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. First of all, Boo was animated shirtless; the Simulation department then used Fizt to apply the shirt over Boo's body, and every time she moved, her clothes also reacted to her movements in a more natural manner.

To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Michael Kass, Pixar's senior scientist, was joined on Monsters, Inc. by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin and developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem. The complexity of the shots in the film, including elaborate sets such as the door vault, required more computing power to render than any of Pixar's earlier efforts combined. The render farm in place for Monsters, Inc. was made up of 3500 Sun Microsystems processors, compared with 1400 for Toy Story 2 and only 200 for Toy Story, both built on Sun's own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture.^[31]

The scene in which the Harryhausen's restaurant was decontaminated was originally going to feature the restaurant being blown up. Due to the September 11 attacks, the explosion was replaced by a plasma dome.^[32]Template:Better source

Release

Theatrical

The film premiered on October 28, 2001, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California.^[33] It was theatrically released on November 2, 2001 in the United States, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002.^[34] The theatrical release was accompanied by the Pixar short animated film For the Birds.^[35]

As with A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, a montage of "outtakes" and a performance of a play based on a line from the film were made and included in the end credits of the film starting on December 7, 2001.^[36]

After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King,^[37] Disney and Pixar re-released Monsters, Inc. in 3D on December 19, 2012.^[38]

Home media

Monsters, Inc. was released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002.^[39][40] Both releases are THX certified and feature the animated shorts Mike's New Car and For the Birds. The DVD release gives the viewer the option of viewing the film either in widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) or fullscreen (family-friendly 1.33:1 aspect ratio without pan and scan). On the second disc, there are a variety of bonus features, including the animated shorts, outtakes with the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me! music video, Peek-A-Boo: Boo's Door Game, deleted scenes and more.^[41] This release set records for the highest single-day DVD sales with 5 million copies being sold on its first day.^[42] The film was then released on Blu-ray on November 10, 2009,^[43] and on Blu-ray 3D on February 19, 2013.^[44] Monsters, Inc. was released on 4K Blu-ray on March 3, 2020.^[45]

Reception

Box office

Monsters, Inc. ranked number one at the box office on its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America alone. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%, making $24,055,001 that weekend for a combined $528 million. As of May 2013, it is the eighth-biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.^[46][47]

The film made $289,916,256 in North America, and $287,509,478 in other territories, for a worldwide $577,425,734.^[1] The film is Pixar's ninth highest-grossing film worldwide and sixth in North America.^[48] For a time, the film surpassed Aladdin as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, only behind 1994's The Lion King.^[31]

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579), marking the sixth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country and the thirty-second highest-grossing film of all time.^[49] In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the weekend, it moved to first place on subsequent weekends due to exceptionally small decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office. It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as 2001's third highest-grossing film and the third largest U.S. animated feature of all time in the country behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.^[50]

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 96% based on 197 reviews, with an average score of 8.00/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Clever, funny, and delightful to look at, Monsters, Inc. delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all-ages animation."^[51] Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[52] Audiences polled by CinemaScore, gave the film a rare "A+" grade, becoming the second Pixar film to gain an "A+" grade, after Toy Story 2.^[53][54]

Charles Taylor of Salon magazine stated, "[i]t's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time."^[55] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times gave it a positive review, praising the film's usage of "creative energy", saying "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc."^[56] Although Mike Clark of USA Today thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree", he also viewed the film as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors".^[57]

ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli gave the film 31⁄2 stars out of 4 and wrote that the film was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids".^[58] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups".^[59] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" grade and praised the its animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios – the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit – looks really, really terrific and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."^[60]

Accolades

Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Randy Newman, after fifteen previous nominations, for "If I Didn't Have You").^[61] It was one of the first animated films to be nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek).^[61] It was also nominated for Best Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor).^[61] At the Kid's Choice Awards in 2002, it was nominated for "Favorite Voice in an Animated Movie" for Billy Crystal (who lost to Eddie Murphy in Shrek).^[61]

Music

Template:Album ratings

Monsters Inc. was Randy Newman's fourth feature film collaboration with Pixar. The end credits song "If I Didn't Have You" was sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal.^[17]

The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.^[61] The score lost both these awards to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but after sixteen nominations, the song "If I Didn't Have You" finally won Newman his first Academy Award for Best Original Song.^[61] It also won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.^[61]

Track listing

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Chart positions

Chart (2001)	Peak position
US Top Soundtracks (Billboard)[62]	25

Lawsuits

Shortly before the film's release, Pixar was sued by children's songwriter Lori Madrid of Wyoming, stating that the company had stolen her ideas from her 1997 poem "There's a Boy in My Closet".

Madrid mailed her poem to six publishers in October 1999, notably Chronicle Books, before turning it into a local stage musical in August 2001. After seeing the trailer for Monsters, Inc., Madrid concluded that Chronicle Books had passed her work to Pixar and that the film was based on her work.^[64] In October 2001, she filed the suit against Chronicle Books, Pixar, and Disney in a federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her lawyer asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, that would forbid Pixar and Disney from releasing the film while the suit was pending.

In a hearing on November 1, 2001, the day before the film's scheduled release, the judge refused to issue the injunction. On June 26, 2002, he ruled that the film had nothing in common with the poem.^[65]

In November 2002, Stanley Mouse filed a lawsuit in which he alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings of Excuse My Dust, a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998.^[66] The lawsuit also stated that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000 and discussed Mouse's work with him.^[66] A Disney spokeswoman responded, saying that the characters in Monsters, Inc. were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams, and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights".^[63] The case was ultimately settled under undisclosed terms.^[67]Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Prequel

Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". A prequel, titled Monsters University, was released on June 21, 2013. John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles of Sulley, Mike, and Randall, while Dan Scanlon directed the film. The prequel's plot focuses on Sulley and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become best friends.

Other media

An animated short, Mike's New Car, was made by Pixar in 2002 in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of Monsters, Inc., and on Pixar's Dedicated Shorts DVD.^[68] In August 2002, a manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it went out of print.^[69] A series of video games, including a multi-platform video game were created based on the film. The video games included Monsters, Inc., Monsters, Inc. Scream Team and Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena.^[70] A game titled Monsters, Inc. Run was released on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on December 13, 2012.^[71]

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Walt Disney's World on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007.^[72] Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world. In 2006 Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California.^[73] In 2007, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, replacing The Timekeeper. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians and submit jokes of their own via text message.^[74] In 2009 Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disney Resort's Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, Japan.^[75]

In 2009, Boom! Studios produced a Monsters Inc. comic book mini-series that ran for four issues. The storyline takes place after the movie and focuses on Sulley and Mike's daily struggles to operate Monsters Inc. on its new laughter-focused company policy. At the same time, their work is impeded by the revenge schemes of Randall and Waternoose, as well as a human child (indirectly revealed to be Sid Phillips from the Toy Story franchise) who has hijacked the company's closet door technology to commit a string of toy thefts throughout the human world.^[76]

A world based on the film made its debut appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series in Kingdom Hearts III,^[77][78] making it the second Disney-Pixar movie featured in the series after Toy Story.^[79][80] The world takes place after the events of the first film.

Television series

Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". In November 2017, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about plans to develop a television series spin-off of Monsters, Inc. among other properties owned by the company.^[81][82][83] By November of the following year the series was confirmed for Disney+, and would continue the story of the previous films.^[84] On April 9, 2019, it was announced that Goodman, Crystal, and Tilly would return as Mike, Sulley, and Celia, respectively for the series. Peterson returns as Roz and also voices her twin sister Roze. Additional cast members include Ben Feldman as Tylor Tuskmon, Mindy Kaling as Val, Henry Winkler as Fritz, Lucas Neff as Duncan, Alanna Ubach as Cutter, Stephen Stanton as Needleman and Smitty (replacing Gerson), and Aisha Tyler as Tylor's mother Millie. In addition, Ratzenberger returns as Yeti and also voices Tylor's father Bernard.^[85] It was released on Disney+ on July 7, 2021.^[86][87] The series begins the day after Monsters, Incorporated has made the switch to laugh power and follows Tylor who hopes to be promoted to the Laugh Floor.^[88]