It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to say that there is probably a lot of overlap between fans of Joss Whedon’s television work and fans of Pixar’s animated films. People who like memorable characters, clever writing, and genre-themed storylines tend to take them wherever they can get them. So it shouldn’t come as any real surprise that a veteran writer/producer on Whedon’s first big show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has been picked up to become the latest member of the Pixar brain trust.
According to The Playlist, Marti Noxon, who wrote Buffy episodes like “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” “The Prom,” and “Wrecked,’ has joined Pixar to do work on an as-yet-unspecified project. More recently in her career, Noxon has been continuing her writer/producer schtick on television shows like the ridiculously critically acclaimed Mad Men, and the incomprehensibly popular Glee, and she’s also credited as being the writer on the recent remake of Fright Night – so the uses that Pixar could be putting her to are myriad.
For their part, The Playlist theorizes that she’s probably being brought into the company on a temporary basis, to work on a specific project, but with the opportunity to become a more full-time member of the crew if things end up working out. Pixar is pretty notoriously a tight-knit company, so any time they bring in somebody new it has to be seen as both pretty big news and a pretty big honor for the new recruit. And, who knows, maybe if Noxon does good work here she can finally get all of those Internet fans who say she ruined season 6 of Buffy off her back. The Internet has a very long memory, but a very deep love for CG animation.