For people who don’t live in Los Angeles, try to picture a city where everywhere you look you see movie billboards. They’re literally everywhere. Personally, I love it but I’m a movie fanatic. So a few months before I made Boats, everywhere I looked, I saw Planes. I couldn’t get away from it. My friends felt the same way. In fact, everyone I know was like, “Come on. Planes. Really? What’s next? Furniture?” Since they had already done Cars and now Planes, I figured the next natural step (besides the obvious sequels. Planes 2 anybody?) is to take to the seas with Boats. That’s how it started. When I sat down to write it, I knew I wanted to see a meeting where no one was interested in the story. They would just be talking about the brand and ways to make more money. I also knew I wanted one guy in the room to be the naive idealist, sort of the voice of reason begging them to shut down the franchise monster and just focus on making one good movie at a time. Once I figured out the rest of the characters and their relationships with one another, it sort of wrote itself.”