1906

1906 is an upcoming disaster film co-written and directed by Brad Bird and based on events just prior to and during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film examines corruption within the then government of San Francisco, as well as the policemen who worked to defeat these criminal activities. It is the first Disney film to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Background
The film is based upon the film treatment and scripts about 1906 written by James Dalessandro in 1998, which preceded by six years Dalessandro's 2004 novel of the same name. The project will be the second film to be distributed together by longtime animation rivals Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Pictures behind The Prestige, will mark the second time director Brad Bird has directed a live action film, and will be the first disaster film from Walt Disney Pictures.

Concept and pitch
Dalessandro began researching 1906 in 1997 as a prequel to his 1993 historical mystery novel Bohemian Heart. When Titanic became a blockbuster in 1997, Peter Miller, Dalessandro's manager, urged him to get a detailed film treatment ready. They pitched to directors' production companies, specifically Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks, Barry Levinson's company Baltimore Spring Creek, and Wolfgang Petersen's company.

According to Dalessandro, the pitch was "Titanic was a boat in the North Atlantic - this is an entire city, the most beautiful we've ever seen, destroyed in 40 hours." There was an instant bidding war, and within 24 hours they had sold the script to Warner Bros. for six figures. The script then went to Barry Levinson and Paula Weinstein and Spring Creek Productions for production. They settled on this company because producer Len Amato wanted Dalessandro to write at least three drafts, giving the writer more influence. After finishing the script drafts, Dalessandro released a best-selling novel by the same name in 2004.

Pre Production
The film has an estimated budget of $200 million, and because of the massive size and scale of the project, it is also financially backed by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures, making it the first time Pixar has been involved in a live-action film. Pixar executive John Lasseter is also involved.

Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird was selected to direct the film. He paused work on the project to direct the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille, then officially signed onto the 1906 project in March 2008, when Warner Bros. promptly reserved all sound-studios available on their Burbank lot for production.

However, later that spring, Warner Bros. quietly released the reservations. Their concerns were in the sheer scope of the screenplay attempting to cover nearly every cultural, societal, and progressive detail of San Francisco during that period. Bird continued his efforts to rewrite the screenplay to decrease the massive scope of the story. Much like Titanic, the studios openly admit the film has enormous box office potential, but blogger Jim Hill suggested the film's start date was postponed due to Disney/Pixar and Warner Bros.' nervousness over the projected $200 million budget.

In 2009, MTV News reported that director Brad Bird had been scoutting locations. Information from Dalessandro indicated that the film could likely be shot in Vancouver, Canada, New Zealand or Australia.

In 2011, it was reported by Brad Bird that the film project was still being developed. The issue he raised was his continued difficulty in narrowing the scope of such a manner as to to be true to the story within the constraints of practical film length. However, in February 2012, it was revealed that the screenplay for the film had been completed by Aaron and Matthew Benay, "'I don’t know. It’s all about getting the story to work, and the canvas is so big on it that it’s easy to bust down its movie-sized walls and go rampaging throughout the countryside. The problem has always been scaling it and containing it in a movie-sized length. It’s really a movie that wants to be a miniseries. But if you did it as a miniseries, then you’d have to do it for the small screen, and the story demands to be told on a big screen. So we’re still working on it.' - Brad Bird, April 2012"

"'If there were any doubts that I could handle a live action film, I think those have eased. But it doesn’t make solving the story challenges [of that film] any easier. I mean, that’s really what’s so far kept it from moving forward, is that it’s just an incredibly challenging story to pull together. I mean, in a movie like ‘Titanic,’ there’s a certain amount of healthy limitation in the fact that it’s one ship in the middle of the ocean. With ’1906,’ it’s a city, and it becomes exponentially harder to sort of reign in the storylines and take advantage of all the amazing things that were happening in this place at that particular moment in time. The script and the story is what’s elusive on ’1906′ more than it is any hesitations with me as a filmmaker.' - Brad Bird, March 2012"

In June 2012, The Atlantic was reporting on the 2012 film Brave and detailed that its lack of resemblance to earlier Pixar successes was due to it being the studio's first film to have not been directed and co-written by one or more members of a core team which usually included Brad Bird. Bird's absence from that project was reported to have been because "with the upcoming 1906", Bird was "branching out into live-action".