Since Disney announced Big Hero 6, some of us have been wondering how or if the animated feature would link up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and vice versa). Would Iron Man come flying through San Fransokyo?

Probably not, according to Pixar and Walt Disney Animation head John Lasseter. In an interview with Vulture, Lasseter held off on connecting Big Hero 6 and the MCU – for the time being.

“If we went directly into the Marvel Universe, that would mean we’d work more directly with Marvel,” Lasseter told Vulture.

Apparently, the film – directed by Dan Hall – is almost a Marvel film as an afterthought. As Lasseter and Vulture tell it, the director was on his way to a pitch meeting when he came across details from the Big Hero 6 comic in Disney’s Marvel database. The book – and the film – tell the story of teen inventor Hiro Hamada and his robotic pal, Baymax. The duo join up with four other heroes to form a super team to keep their city – and the world – free of supervillainous threats.

So here’s the interesting bit: Lasseter would prefer it if we didn’t call Big Hero 6 a superhero movie. “We call it a super nerd movie,” he told Vulture. The studio feels that it has less in common with the feet of clay heroes of Iron Man and Thor, and more with the imperfect but broader heroes like Wreck-It-Ralph or Buzz and Woody.

My question: how would this bode for other juvenile-skewing Marvel properties like the long-in-development Runaways (shelved as Marvel began realizing and tightening their phase 2 plans) or Power Pack? The circumstances of Big Hero 6 are, of course, a little different – the studio was largely looking for a Marvel property to tell an original story – but what if the success of Big Hero 6 gives Walt Disney Animation the latitude to pick through more of the Marvel catalog? I’d be into it.

Big Hero 6 will be out November 7.

[Source: Vulture via Screenrant]