It’s hard to speculate on what happened (and it’d be foolish to do so), and Pixar isn’t exactly forthcoming about why certain changes happen in their animated films – has anyone ever gotten a concrete answer why Jan was sacked from “Ratatouille?” (Interestingly, if you want a taste, pun very much intended, on what the original iteration of “Ratatouille” looked like – check out the videogame. I’m told that the dreamy fantasy sequences were a huge part of Jan’s original visualization of what the sensation of taste looks like.)

Let’s hope that Chapman ends her “leave of absence” and is able to develop projects further at the studio. As a guiding creative voice at Pixar since “Cars,” it would be a shame if the relationship couldn’t be repaired.

Oh – and it wasn’t Stanton and Docter that were working on “Toy Story 2.”