Monsters, Inc

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 computer-animated film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and was written by Jill Culton, Pete Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts and Andrew Stanton.

The film was released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on November 2, 2001. It was a commercial and critical success, grossing $562,816,256 worldwide. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes also reported extremely positive reviews with a fresh 96% approval rating. The film was re-released in theaters in 3D on December 19, 2012. A prequel to the film, Monsters University which highlights Mike and Sulley's first meeting during their college days was released on June 21, 2013 and is also Pixar's first prequel.

Plot
The movie starts out as we see a young kid laying in bed, frightened while looking at his closet door. Next thing you know, a monster is standing beside him. The boy sits up and the scared monster screams, trips and falls. Suddenly, alarms go off, lights come on, and we discover that it is a scaring practice going on in the training room of Monster, Inc, the power company of Monstropolis. The head of the power company is Mr .Waternoose (James Coburn). He is training new monsters to scare kids. It seems that Monstropolis gets all it's power from screams, and he has a whole squad of monsters whose job it is to scare kids at night and collect their screams.

It's a very complicated system they have for collecting the screams. They have a warehouse full of closet doors, and they call up a particular door for whichever room they want. The door is sent by a hanging conveyor belt and placed in front of the Monster on the "scare floor." When the door is opened, the monster is in another room in another part of the world. If for any reason there is a problem with that particular room, the door is shredded.

One other thing... Monsters are actually more scared of the human kids than the kids are of them. If any part of the human world enters the monster world, the CDA (Child Detection Agency) comes in and decontaminates the place and monster bringing it in.

The top scarer is James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (John Goodman). He is the best in the business. With the help of his assistant Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), they are about to break the record for most screams collected. In 2nd place on the list is Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi). He will stop at nothing to be in first place. One night, Mike is in a hurry to get out since he has a date with his girlfriend Celia Mae (Jennifer Tilly). He forgets to finish his paperwork, so Sulley says he'll go back in to get it. Sulley goes back to the scare floor and it is deserted, except for one door, which is still on the floor.

Sulley is curious, so he peeks inside the door. Inside is a cute little girl who isn't scared at all of Sulley and in fact, thinks he's cute. Sulley is terrified of her and runs out the door, back to the scare floor. He hears a thumping sound and realizes that the girl, playing with his tail. He shakes her off and runs into the bathroom. When he looks into the mirror, he discovers that the girl is on his back.

Sulley wants to take the girl back to her door, but when he goes back to the scare floor, Randall and his assistant are looking in the door and are upset that the girl isn't there. They send the door back to the door warehouse. Sulley places the girl in a suitcase and heads out to the restaurant to find Mike. He interrupts Mike and Celia's dinner and shows Mike what he has in the suitcase. The girl gets out of the suitcase, and the whole restaurant is in panic. The CDA arrive, and the patrons are screaming and running, terribly afraid of the girl.

Sulley scoops her up and he, the girl (whom he names Boo) and Mike run to their apartment. They try to hide her as the helicopters are searching outside, but whenever she cries, the lights come on. Funny thing though, when she laughs, the lights come on super bright. In fact, she laughs so hard once that she blows the fuse to the building. The next day they put a monster costume on Boo and bring her to the factory. Their goal is to find her door and bring her back without anyone noticing. Unfortunately, Randall and his assistant are there also, and they too are looking for Boo. It made the news about Boo and the restaurant, and they are sure it is their fault.

Eventually, Randall convinces Mike that if they bring the girl back to the scream floor, the door will be there waiting for them. Mike tells Sulley this and right before they enter, Sulley figures out that Randall would never help them so it must be a trap of some kind. Mike thinks he's crazy and runs in and starts jumping on Boo's bed. Suddenly, a box comes down and traps Mike inside. Sulley hides as Randall and his assistant take the box to another room in the warehouse.

In the basement, Randall reveals to Mike that he has built a torture machine ("Scream Extractor") to extract children's screams from their lungs (which would make the company's current tactics redundant). Randall straps Mike to the chair for experimentation and starts it up to try not to let him talk, but Sulley stops Randall for using the Scream Extractor on Mike and unplugs the machine. He then takes Mike and, along with Boo, runs to find Mr. Waternoose. Waternoose is proud of the two of them for discovering Randall's evil plan. The most important thing is however, getting the girl back home. They head to the scare floor and Waternoose calls up Boo's closet door.

Sulley and Mike say that it's the wrong door. Waternoose says he knows... it's not the door for her, it's the door for them and with that he pushes the two through a door that leads them to the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. They have been banished from Monstropolis. Sulley gets the idea that if they go to the closest town, all they have to do is to find any kid's closet and return to Monstropolis.

Sure enough, we cut back to the scare floor and out of a door comes Sulley and Mike. They rush to the secret room and there, trapped in a chair is Boo, about to have her screams sucked out. Sulley destroys the machine, takes Boo and rushes her to the scream floor to find her door. Randall is right on their heels as one of the best chase sequences in a long time takes place. They race from door to door, trying to find a shortcut to Boo's door in the warehouse. Each time they go through a door, they are in another part of the world.

They finally trap Randall in a door that leads to a trailer in the Bayou. The kid in the trailer calls out to his mother that another alligator has come inside and the boy then clubs the "gator". Waternoose chases Sulley and Boo through a door that they think is Boo's. Waternoose reveals to Sulley that it is actually his plan to kidnap the children. It is the only way the factory can be saved. Suddenly, an alarm sounds and all the lights come on. They aren't in Boo's room after all. They are actually in the training room from the beginning of the film and Waternoose has just confessed in front of everybody.

They are all shocked, and the CDA come and arrest Waternoose after hearing his confession. The actual head of the company was Monsters Inc's dispatcher Roz, who has been undercover for over two years trying to expose Waternoose's plot. She congratulates Sulley and gets the key to bring Boo's door down.

Sulley, who has grown quite fond of Boo, tucks her in her own bed, plays with a few of her toys with her and then goes back to his own world, shutting the door behind him to never see Boo anymore. The door is shredded. The next day, the workers are now leaving the factory for the last time. It is being shut down because kids just can't be scared anymore. Sulley suddenly has an idea and races back inside with a plan to end the company's energy crisis.

The next scene is Mike entering a kid's closet door. He sits down in front of the kid and starts doing a standup routine as a comedian. The kid starts laughing at Mike after he swallowed his microphone and then burps loudly. Finally, the power generated is enormous. It turns out that a child's laugh has ten times the power of a scream. The factory is saved. Sulley is still sad though, as he still misses Boo. Mike then tells Sulley that he has a surprise.

In the testing room, it is revealed the Mike had successfully re-pieced Boo's door together. All it needs is one more piece. Sulley lifts some papers on his clipboard, and pulls out the last piece of Boo's door, which he kept as a memento. Once Sulley places the last piece into the door, the light above the door illuminates. Sulley slowly opens the door and looks to see if Boo is around. Boo then says "Kitty" and Sulley smiles in delight for seeing Boo once more.

Voice Cast

 * John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, a large, furry blue monster with purple spots and the protagonist of the film. At the start of the film, is Monsters, Inc.'s top scarer. After Waternoose's plan is revealed, Sulley becomes the CEO of the company, overseeing the collection of laughter from children.
 * Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski, a green monster and Sulley's sidekick, who is mostly an eyeball with hands and feet. Mike is Sulley's best friend and runs his station on the scare floor. After Sulley takes over, Mike becomes one of the monsters that helps extract laughs from children, using his stand up comedy.
 * Mary Gibbs as "Boo", a two year old human girl that is inadvertently brought back to the monster world by Sulley. She appears unafraid of any of the strange monsters (except for Randall, who it turns out was the monster that would occupy her closet the most out of all the Monsters, Inc. monsters), and tries to explore the world on her own. In a book based on the film, it is revealed that Boo's real name is Mary Gibbs (the same name of her voice actress).
 * Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs, an anthropomorphic chameleon-like monster and the primary antagonist of the film. Randall has the ability to change the color of his skin to camouflage himself. He is a direct rival to Sulley, attempting to earn the most Scares during shifts, and is in on Waternoose's plan to kidnap children from the human world.
 * James Coburn as Henry J. Waternoose, III, a monster crab and, at the start of the film, CEO of Monsters, Inc. This was Coburn's last role in an animated work. He is the secondary antagonist of the film.
 * Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae, a Medusa-like monster with snakes instead of hair, Mike's girlfriend, and receptionist for the company. She playfully refers to Mike as "Googly Bear".
 * Bob Peterson as Roz, a slug-like monster that works as a clerk for the Scare floor, but secretly is the top agent of the Child Detection Agency (CDA) who were seeking evidence for Waternoose's plan.
 * John Ratzenberger as Yeti, he was banished to the Himalayas
 * Frank Oz as Fungus, a three-eyed monster that works as Randal's assistant on the Scare floor, and while aware of the plan, is hesitant to help with its execution.
 * Bonnie Hunt as Ms. Flint, a snake-like monster that trains new monsters in scaring tactics.
 * Jeff Pidgeon as Mr. Bile, a monster, newly hired to Monsters, Inc., who tries, and fails, to impress Sulley and Mr. Waternoose with his scaring antics, but is able to use his clumsiness to extract laughs from children at the end of the film.
 * Dan Gerson as Needleman and Smitty, two monsters that work as janitors on the Scare floor
 * Sam Black as George Sanderson, a monster that runs afoul of the CDA's "code 23-19", contact with a human child, several times during the film, forcing the CDA to shave and scrub him to remove any trace of human contact.
 * Steve Susskind as Jerry Slugworth, a seven-fingered, red monster who is the Scare Floor Manager and Waternoose's good friend.
 * Phil Proctor as Charlie, George's assistant with sea-green skin, two octopus like arms, four tentacles as feet and snail-like eyes. He is friendly and admires Sulley and Mike's work, but calls out all of George's "23-19" incidents despite insisting they have a brotherly friendship.
 * Joe Ranft as Pete "Claws" Ward, a blue monster with razor-sharp claws and horrifying breath.
 * Bret 'Brook' Parker as Trailer Mom
 * Wallace Shawn as Rex (outtakes)
 * Frank Welker as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (roars)

Additional Voices

 * Jack Angel - Monster
 * Bob Bergen - Chuck, Horrified Slug
 * Rodger Bumpass - CDA, TV Announcer
 * Gino Conforti - Dr. Frasenburger
 * Jennifer Darling - Female Monster #2
 * Patti Deutsch - Female Monster #3
 * Pete Docter - CDA, Father
 * Bobby Edner - Street Kid #1
 * Ashley Edner - Street Kid #2
 * Paul Eiding - Many-eyed Monster
 * Katie Scarlett - Computer Voice #2
 * Bill Farmer - CDA, Photographer
 * Keegan Ferrell
 * Pat Fraley - Jelly Monster
 * Teresa Ganzel - Betty
 * Taylor Gifaldi
 * Marc John Jefferies - Simulation Monster #1
 * Joe Lala - Sneezing Monster
 * Noah Luke
 * Sherry Lynn - Female Monster #1
 * Danny Mann - Red Alert Computer Voice
 * Mona Marshall - Computer Voice #1
 * Mickie McGowan - Marge
 * Laraine Newman - Mother, School Teacher
 * Kay Panabaker
 * Josh Qualtieri - Trailer Boy
 * Guido Quaroni - Tony
 * Jan Rabson - Sushi Chef
 * Lisa Raggio - Simulator Boy
 * Joe Ranft - Nicholas "Lanky" Schmidt
 * Sophia Ranft - Baby Smitty
 * Katherine Ringgold - Ted
 * Bob Scott - Male Monster, Simulation Monster #2
 * David Silverman - CDA
 * Jim Thornton - Monsters, Inc. TV Announcer
 * Lee Unkrich - Josh Rivera

Human Kid & Scream Reference

 * Rachel Adams
 * Elizabeth Docter
 * Nicholas Docter
 * Isabel Faulkner
 * Jeffrey Hughes
 * Anna Keating
 * Henry Kinder
 * Jackson Kinder
 * Ben Lasseter
 * Jackson Lasseter
 * PJ Lasseter
 * Sam Lasseter
 * Jacob McArthur LeValley
 * Liam Pauley
 * Sonja Petroff
 * Jordy Ranft
 * Sophia Ranft
 * Cassandra E. Taylor
 * Jack E. Taylor, Jr.
 * Jennifer M. Taylor
 * Tiffany Anna Taylor
 * Maddie Toy
 * Alice Unkrich
 * Hannah Unkrich

Allusions

 * In her room, Boo hands Sulley a Jessie doll from Toy Story 2, the Luxo Ball, and a plush of Nemo from Finding Nemo. Since Finding Nemo was the Pixar film that followed Monsters, Inc., it was a sneak peek to the upcoming film.
 * Mike goes into a child's bedroom to make him laugh. Inside the bedroom, there are two vintage Disneyland attraction posters: Rocket Jets and Sailing Ship Columbia.
 * When Randall arrives in the trailer, it is the trailer from A Bug's Life, and the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story is seen sitting next to it.
 * In the bloopers of the film, Rex from the Toy Story films makes a cameo appearance.

Trivia

 * This is the last Pixar film to have a blooper reel.  This time it includes the company play Sulley & Mike worked on.
 * The simulation control panel has the numbers 510-752-3000 on it, which is also the phone number for Pixar's Animation Studio.
 * Mike says that Sulley has been wanting his good looks since 4th grade, but they first met in college.

Cameos

 * The Pizza Planet truck is parked next to the trailer from A Bug's Life where Randall ends up at the end.
 * Roly Poly Clown appears at the end.
 * Boo has in her room a Pixar Ball, a Nemo toy and a Jessie doll.
 * Rex appears in the outtakes.
 * Randall turns the same color as Andy's bedroom paint job from Toy Story at one point.
 * The wall behind the Octopus in Harryhausen's has Marlin from Finding Nemo on it.
 * Nemo also appears on the door of the Trailer Son and Mom when Sulley throws Randall into it.
 * The toy plane from Toy Story appeared on the top left of the shelf in the little boy's bedroom at the beginning.

Development
The idea for Monsters, Inc. was conceived in a lunch in 1994 attended by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft during the production of Toy Story. One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. "When we were making Toy Story", Docter said, "everybody came up to me and said 'Hey I totally believed that my toys came to life when I left the room.' So when Disney asked us to do some more films, I wanted to tap into a childlike notion that was similar to that. I knew monsters were coming out of my closet when I was a kid. So I said 'Hey, lets do a film about monsters.

Docter began work on the film that would become Monsters, Inc. in 1996 while others focused on A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). Its code name was Hidden City, named for Docter's favorite restaurant in Point Richmond. By early-February 1997, Docter had drafted a treatment together with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon that bore some resemblance to the final film. Docter pitched the story to Disney with some initial artwork on February 4 that year. He and his story team left with some suggestions in hand and returned to pitch a refined version of the story on May 30. At this pitch meeting, longtime Disney animator Joe Grant – whose work stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) – suggested the title Monsters, Inc., a play on the title of a gangster film Murder, Inc., which stuck.

Writing
Docter's initial concept for the film went through many changes, but he found the notion of monsters living in their own world to be an appealing and workable one. His original idea featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters that he drew in a book as a child coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears caused the monsters eventually to disappear.

After Docter scrapped the initial concept of a 30-year-old terrified of monsters, he decided on a buddy story between a monster and a child titled simply Monsters, in which the monster character of Sulley (known at this stage as Johnson) was an up-and-comer at his workplace, where the company's purpose was to scare children. Sulley's eventual sidekick, Mike Wazowski, had not yet been added.

Between 1996 and 2000, the lead monster and child went through radical changes as the story evolved. As the story continued to develop, the child varied in age and gender. Ultimately, the story team decided that a girl would be the best counterpart for a furry, 8 ft tall co-star. After a girl was settled upon, the character continued to undergo changes, at one point being from Ireland and at another time being an African-American character. Originally the character of the little girl, known as Mary, became a fearless seven-year-old who has been toughened by years of teasing and pranks from four older brothers. In stark contrast, Johnson is nervous about the possibility of losing his job after the boss at Monsters, Inc. announces a downsizing is on the way. He feels envious because another scarer, Ned (who later became Randall), is the company's top performer. Through various drafts, Johnson's occupation went back-and-forth from being a scarer and from working in another area of the company such as a janitor or a refinery worker, until his final incarnation as the best scarer at Monsters, Inc. Johnson was originally planned to have tentacles for feet; however, this caused many problems in early animation tests. The idea was later largely rejected, as it was thought that audience would be distracted by the tentacles. Mary's age also differed from draft to draft until the writers settled on the age of 3. "We found that the younger she was, the more dependent she was on Sulley", Docter said.

Eventually Johnson was renamed Sullivan. The name was suggested by an animator who had attended Texas A&M University, inspired by one of Texas A&M's historic icons, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, nicknamed "Sully" by students. Sullivan was also planned to wear glasses throughout the film. However, the creators found it a dangerous idea because the eyes were a perfectly readable and clear way of expressing a character's personality; thus, the idea was rejected.

The idea of a monster buddy for the lead monster emerged at an April 6, 1998 "story summit" in Burbank with employees from Disney and Pixar. A term coined by Lasseter, a "story summit" was a crash exercise that would yield a finished story in only two days. Such a character, the group agreed, would give the lead monster someone to talk to about his predicament. Development artist Ricky Nierva drew a concept sketch of a rounded, one-eyed monster as a concept for the character, and everyone was generally receptive to it. Docter named the character Mike for the father of his friend Frank Oz, a director and Muppet performer. Jeff Pidgeon and Jason Katz story-boarded a test in which Mike helps Sulley choose a tie for work, and Mike Wazowski soon became a vital character in the film. Originally, Mike had no arms and had to use his legs as appendages; however, due to some technical difficulties, arms were soon added to him.

Screenwriter Dan Gerson joined Pixar in 1999 and worked on the film with the filmmakers on a daily basis for almost two years. He considered it his first experience in writing a feature film. He explained, "I would sit with Pete [Docter] and David Silverman and we would talk about a scene and they would tell me what they were looking for. I would make some suggestions and then go off and write the sequence. We'd get together again and review it and then hand it off to a story artist. Here's where the collaborative process really kicked in. The board artist was not beholden to my work and could take liberties here and there. Sometimes, I would suggest an idea about making the joke work better visually. Once the scene moved on to animation, the animators would plus the material even further."

Casting
Bill Murray was considered for the voice role of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan. He screen tested for the role and was interested, but when Pete Docter was unable to make contact with him, he took it as a "no". The voice role of Sulley went to John Goodman, the longtime co-star of the comedy series Roseanne and a regular in the films of the Coen brothers. Goodman interpreted the character to himself as the monster equivalent of a National Football League player. "He's like a seasoned lineman in the tenth year of his career," he said at the time. "He is totally dedicated and a total pro." Billy Crystal, having regretted turning down the part of Buzz Lightyear years prior, accepted that of Mike Wazowski, Sulley's one-eyed best friend and scare assistant. The casting of Steve Buscemi as Randall, Sulley's rival, saw a reunion between himself and John Goodman; they had previously worked together on The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink.

Animation
In November 2000, early in the production of Monsters, Inc., Pixar packed up and moved for the second time since its Lucasfilm years. The company's approximately 500 employees had become spread among three buildings, separated by a busy highway. The company moved from Point Richmond to a much bigger campus, co-designed by Lasseter and Steve Jobs, in Emeryville.

In production, Monsters Inc. differed from earlier Pixar features in that each main character had its own lead animator — John Kahrs on Sulley, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave DeVan on Boo. Kahrs found that the "bearlike quality" of Goodman's voice provided an exceptionally good fit with the character. He faced a difficult challenge, however, in dealing with Sulley's sheer mass; traditionally, animators conveyed a figure's heaviness by giving it a slower, more belabored movement, but Kahrs was concerned that such an approach to a central character would give the film a sluggish feel. Like Goodman, Kahrs came to think of Sulley as a football player, one whose athleticism enabled him to move quickly in spite of his size. To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a University of California, Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.

Adding to Sulley's lifelike appearance was an intense effort by the technical team to refine the rendering of fur. Other production houses had tackled realistic fur, most notably Rhythm & Hues in its 1993 polar bear commercials for Coca-Cola and in its talking animals' faces in Babe (1995). Monsters, Inc., however, required fur on a far larger scale. From the standpoint of Pixar's engineers, the quest for fur posed several significant challenges. One was figuring out how to animate the huge numbers of hairs – 2,320,413 on Sulley – in a reasonably efficient way. Another was making sure the hairs cast shadows on other hairs. Without self-shadowing, fur or hair takes on an unrealistic flat-colored look. (The hair on Andy's toddler sister, as seen in the opening sequence of Toy Story, is an example of hair without self-shadowing.)

The first fur test had Sullivan run an obstacle course. Results were not satisfactory, as objects would catch the fur and stretch it out because of the extreme amount of motion. Another similar test was also unsuccessful, with the fur going through the objects.

Eventually Pixar set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (short for "physics tool"). After a shot with Sulley had been animated, the Simulation department took the data for the shot and added his fur. Fizt allowed the fur to react in a natural way. When Sulley moved, the fur would automatically react to his movements, taking into account the effects of wind and gravity as well. The Fizt program also controlled movement on Boo's clothing, which provided another breakthrough. The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth was also a challenge to animate because of the hundreds of creases and wrinkles that automatically occurred in the clothing when the wearer moved. It also meant solving the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled – that is, how to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect. Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. Boo would first be animated shirtless; the Simulation department then used Fizt to apply the shirt over Boo's body, and when she moved, her clothes would react to her movements in a natural manner.

To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Michael Kass, Pixar's senior scientist, was joined on Monsters, Inc. by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin and developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem. The complexity of the shots in Monsters, Inc. – including elaborate sets such as the door vault – required more computing power to render than any of Pixar's earlier efforts combined. The render farm in place for Monsters, Inc. was made up of 3500 Sun Microsystems processors, compared with 1400 for Toy Story 2 and only 200 for Toy Story.

Release
The film premiered on October 28, 2001 at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California. It was theatrically released on November 2, 2001 in the United States, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002. The theatrical release was accompanied with the Pixar short animated film For the Birds. As in A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, a montage of "outtakes" and a performance of the company play were made and included in the end credits of the film sometime later. After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney and Pixar re-released Monsters, Inc. in 3D on December 19, 2012.

Home media
Monsters, Inc. was released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002. It was then released on Blu-ray on November 10, 2009, and on Blu-ray 3D on February 19, 2013.

Box office
Monsters, Inc. ranked No. 1 at the box office its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America alone. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%, making $24,055,001 that weekend for a combined total of over $525 million. As of May 2013, it is the eighth-biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.

The film made $289,916,256 in North America, and $272,900,000 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $562,816,256. The film is Pixar's ninth highest-grossing film worldwide and sixth in North America. For a time, the film went on to take the place of Toy Story 2 as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, behind only The Lion King.

In the U.K., Ireland and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579) in total, marking the sixth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country and the thirty-second highest-grossing film of all time. In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the weekend, on subsequent weekends it moved to first place due to exceptionally small decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office. It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as 2002's third highest-grossing film and the third largest U.S. animated feature of all time in the country behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.

Critical reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 192 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The critical consensus was: "Clever, funny, and delightful to look at, Monsters, Inc. delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all-ages animation." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 78 based on 34 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Charles Taylor from Salon.com stated: "It's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time." Elvis Mitchell from The New York Times gave a positive review, praising the film's use of "creative energy": "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc." Although Mike Clark from USA Today thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree," he thought the film to be as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors."

ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli, who gave the film 3$1⁄2$ stars out of 4 wrote, saying that Monsters, Inc. was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids." Roger Ebert, film critic from Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, called the film "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups." Lisa Schwarzbaum, a film critic for Entertainment Weekly, giving the film a B, praised the film's animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios, the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit, looks really, really terrific, and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."

Accolades
Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Randy Newman, after fifteen previous nominations, for If I Didn't Have You). It was one of the first animated films to be nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek). It was also nominated for Best Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor). At the Kid's Choice Awards in 2002, it was nominated for "Favorite Voice in an Animated Movie" for Billy Crystal (who lost to Eddie Murphy in Shrek). The American Film Institute nominated "If I Didn't Have You" in the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs category. The film was also nominated in the AFI's 10 Top 10 animated film category.

Music
Monsters Inc. was Randy Newman's fourth feature film collaboration with Pixar. The end credits song "If I Didn't Have You" was sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal.

The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. The score lost both these awards to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but after sixteen nominations, the song "If I Didn't Have You" finally won Newman his first Academy Award for Best Original Song. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.


 * Chart positions

Lawsuits
Shortly before the film's release, Pixar was sued by children's songwriter Lori Madrid of Wyoming, stating that the company had stolen her ideas from her 1997 poem "There's a Boy in My Closet."

Madrid mailed her poem to six publishers in October 1999, notably Chronicle Books, before turning it into a local stage musical in August 2001. After seeing the trailer for Monsters, Inc., Madrid concluded that Chronicle Books had passed her work to Pixar and that the film was based on her work. In October 2001, she filed the suit against Chronicle Books, Pixar, and Disney in a federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her lawyer asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, that would forbid Pixar and Disney from releasing the film while the suit was pending.

In a hearing on November 1, 2001 – the day before the film's scheduled release on 5,800 screens in 3,200 theaters across the country – the judge refused to issue the injunction. On June 26, 2002, he ruled that the film had nothing in common with the poem.

In November 2002, Stanley Mouse filed a lawsuit, in which he alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings of Excuse My Dust, a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998. The lawsuit also stated that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000, and discussed Mouse's work with him. A Disney spokeswoman responded, by saying that the characters in Monsters, Inc. were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams, and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights". The case was ultimately settled under undisclosed terms.

Prequel
A prequel, titled Monsters University, was released on June 21, 2013. John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles of Sulley, Mike, and Randall, while Dan Scanlon directed the film. The prequel's plot focuses on Sulley and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become best friends.

Other media
An animated short, Mike's New Car, was made by Pixar in 2002 in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of Monsters, Inc., and on Pixar's Dedicated Shorts DVD. In August 2002, a manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it went out of print. A series of video games, including a multi-platform video game were created based on the film. The video games included Monsters, Inc., Monsters, Inc. Scream Team and Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena. A game titled Monsters, Inc. Run was released on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on December 13, 2012.

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Walt Disney's World on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007. Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world. In 2006 Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California. In 2007, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, replacing The Timekeeper. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians and submit jokes of their own via text message. In 2009 Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disney Resort's Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, Japan.

In 2009, Boom! Studios produced a Monsters Inc. comic book mini-series that ran for four issues. The storyline takes place after the movie and focuses on Sulley and Mike's daily struggles to operate Monsters Inc. on its new laughter-focused company policy. At the same time, their work is impeded by the revenge schemes of Randall and Waternoose, as well as a human child (indirectly revealed to be Sid Phillips from the Toy Story franchise) who has hijacked the company's closet door technology to commit a string of toy thefts throughout the human world.