Pixar calls its review group the Braintrust. It meets every few months to assess each film in production. Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, called it the studio’s “primary delivery system for straight talk.”
The Braintrust had no authority, Catmull said. “They could not tell the director what to do,” he said in a 2014 talk published by Stanford’s eCorner. He said Pixar needs “a lot of candor about what works and what doesn’t work.”