Pixar

History

Early history

Pixar got its start in 1974, when New York Institute of Technology's founder, Alexander Schure, who was also the owner of a traditional animation studio, established the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL) and recruited computer scientists who shared his ambitions about creating the world's first computer-animated film. Edwin Catmull and Malcolm Blanchard were the first to be hired and were soon joined by Alvy Ray Smith and David DiFrancesco some months later, who were the four original members of the Computer Graphics Lab, located in a converted two-story garage acquired from the former Vanderbilt-Whitney estate. Schure invested significant funds into the computer graphics lab, approximately $15 million, providing the resources the group needed but contributing to NYIT's financial difficulties. Eventually, the group realized they needed to work in a real film studio to reach their goal. Francis Ford Coppola then invited Smith to his house for a three-day media conference, where Coppola and George Lucas shared their visions for the future of digital moviemaking.

When Lucas approached the group and offered them jobs at his studio, six employees moved to Lucasfilm. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, and joined the Graphics Group at Lucasfilm. The Graphics Group, which was one-third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, opened in 1979 with the hiring of Catmull from NYIT, where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab. He was then reunited with Smith, who also made the journey from NYIT to Lucasfilm, and was made the director of the Graphics Group. At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques — in particular, the invention of the alpha channel by Catmull and Smith. Over the next several years, the CGL would produce a few frames of an experimental film called The Works. After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES (for "renders everything you ever saw"), and developed several critical technologies for CG — including particle effects and various animation tools.

John Lasseter was hired to the Lucasfilm team for a week in late 1983 with the title "interface designer"; he animated the short film The Adventures of André & Wally B. In the next few years, a designer suggested naming a new digital compositing computer the "Picture Maker". Smith suggested that the laser-based device have a catchier name, and came up with "Pixer", which after a meeting was changed to "Pixar". According to Michael Rubin, the author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, Smith and three other employees came up with the name during a restaurant visit in 1981, but when interviewing them he got four different versions about the origin of the name.

Independent company (1986–1999)

In 1986, the newly independent Pixar was headed by President Edwin Catmull and Executive Vice President Alvy Ray Smith. Lucas's search for investors led to an offer from Steve Jobs, which Lucas initially found too low. He eventually accepted after determining it impossible to find other investors. At that point, Smith and Catmull had been declined by 35 venture capitalists and ten large corporations, including a deal with General Motors which fell through three days before signing the contracts. Jobs, who had been edged out of Apple in 1985, was now founder and CEO of the new computer company NeXT. On February 3, 1986, he paid $5 million of his own money to George Lucas for technology rights and invested $5 million cash as capital into the company, joining the board of directors as chairman.

In 1985, while still at Lucasfilm, Pixar made a deal with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan to produce a computer-animated film titled Monkey, based on the Monkey King. The project continued sometime after they became a separate company in 1986, but it became clear that the technology was not sufficiently advanced. The computers were not powerful enough and the budget would be too high. As a result, they focused on the computer hardware business for years until a computer-animated feature became feasible according to Moore's law.

At the time, Walt Disney Studios made the decision to develop more efficient ways of producing animation. They reached out to Graphics Group at Lucasfilm and to Digital Productions. Because of the Graphics Group's deeper understanding of animation, and Smith's experience with paint programs at NYIT, it convinced Disney they were the right choice. In May 1986 Pixar signed a contract with Disney, who eventually bought and used the Pixar Image Computer and custom software written by Pixar as part of its Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) project, to migrate the laborious ink and paint part of the 2D animation process to a more automated method. The company's first feature film to be released using this new animation method was The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

In a bid to drive sales of the system and increase the company's capital, Jobs suggested releasing the product to the mainstream market. Pixar employee John Lasseter, who had long been working on not-for-profit short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr. (1986) to show off the device's capabilities, premiered his creations to great fanfare at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics industry's largest convention.

Collaboration with Disney (1999–2006)

Pixar and Disney had disagreements over the production of Toy Story 2. Originally intended as a direct-to-video release (and thus not part of Pixar's three-picture deal), the film was eventually upgraded to a theatrical release during production. Pixar demanded that the film then be counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused. Though profitable for both, Pixar later complained that the arrangement was not equitable. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution. Profits and production costs were split equally, but Disney exclusively owned all story, character, and sequel rights and also collected a 10–15% distribution fee.

The two companies attempted to reach a new agreement for ten months and failed on January 26, 2001, July 26, 2002, April 22, 2003, January 16, 2004, July 22, 2004, and January 14, 2005. The proposed distribution deal meant Pixar would control production and own the resulting story, character, and sequel rights, while Disney would own the right of first refusal to distribute any sequels. Pixar also wanted to finance its own films and collect 100% profit, paying Disney the 10–15% distribution fee. In addition, as part of any distribution agreement with Disney, Pixar demanded control over films already in production under the new agreement, including The Incredibles (2004) and Cars (2006). Disney considered these conditions unacceptable, but Pixar would not concede.

Disagreements between Steve Jobs and Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner caused the negotiations to cease in 2004, with Disney forming Circle Seven Animation and Jobs declaring that Pixar was actively seeking partners other than Disney. Despite this announcement and several talks with Warner Bros. Pictures, Sony Pictures, and 20th Century Fox, Pixar did not enter negotiations with other distributors, although a Warner Bros. spokesperson told CNN, "We would love to be in business with Pixar. They are a great company." After a lengthy hiatus, negotiations between the two companies resumed following the departure of Eisner from Disney in September 2005. In preparation for potential fallout between Pixar and Disney, Jobs announced in late 2004 that Pixar would no longer release movies at the Disney-dictated November time frame, but during the more lucrative early summer months. This would also allow Pixar to release DVDs for its major releases during the Christmas shopping season. An added benefit of delaying Cars from November 4, 2005, to June 9, 2006, was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract, to see how things would play out between the two companies.

Walt Disney Studios subsidiary (2006–present)

After extended negotiations, Disney ultimately agreed on January 24, 2006, to buy Pixar for approximately $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal. Following Pixar shareholder approval, the acquisition was completed on May 5, 2006. The transaction catapulted Jobs, who owned 49.65% of total share interest in Pixar, to Disney's largest individual shareholder with 7%, valued at $3.9 billion, and a new seat on its board of directors. Jobs' new Disney holdings exceeded holdings belonging to Eisner, the previous top shareholder, who still held 1.7%; and Disney Director Emeritus Roy E. Disney, who held almost 1% of the corporation's shares. Pixar shareholders received 2.3 shares of Disney common stock for each share of Pixar common stock redeemed.

As part of the deal, John Lasseter, by then Executive Vice President, became Chief Creative Officer (reporting directly to president and CEO Bob Iger and consulting with Disney Director Roy E. Disney) of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios (including its division Disneytoon Studios), as well as the Principal Creative Adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, which designs and builds the company's theme parks. Catmull retained his position as President of Pixar, while also becoming President of Walt Disney Animation Studios, reporting to Iger and Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. Jobs's position as Pixar's chairman and chief executive officer was abolished, and instead, he took a place on the Disney board of directors.

After the deal closed in May 2006, Lasseter revealed that Iger had felt that Disney needed to buy Pixar while watching a parade at the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland in September 2005. Iger noticed that of all the Disney characters in the parade, none were characters that Disney had created within the last ten years since all the newer ones had been created by Pixar. Upon returning to Burbank, Iger commissioned a financial analysis that confirmed that Disney had actually lost money on animation for the past decade, then presented that information to the board of directors at his first board meeting after being promoted from COO to CEO, and the board, in turn, authorized him to explore the possibility of a deal with Pixar. Lasseter and Catmull were wary when the topic of Disney buying Pixar first came up, but Jobs asked them to give Iger a chance (based on his own experience negotiating with Iger in summer 2005 for the rights to ABC shows for the fifth-generation iPod Classic), and in turn, Iger convinced them of the sincerity of his feeling that Disney needed to re-focus on animation.

Campus

When Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc. and Pixar, and John Lasseter, executive vice president of Pixar, decided to move their studios from a leased space in Point Richmond, California, to larger quarters of their own, they chose a 20-acre site in Emeryville, California, formerly occupied by Del Monte Foods, Inc. The first of several buildings, the high-tech structure designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson has special foundations and electricity generators to ensure continued film production, even through major earthquakes. The character of the building is intended to abstractly recall Emeryville's industrial past. The two-story steel-and-masonry building is a collaborative space with many pathways.

The digital revolution in filmmaking was driven by applied mathematics, including computational physics and geometry. In 2008, this led Pixar senior scientist Tony DeRose to offer to host the second Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival at the Emeryville campus.

Filmography

Traditions

Some of Pixar's first animators were former cel animators including John Lasseter, and others came from computer animation or were fresh college graduates. A large number of animators that make up its animation department had been hired around the releases of A Bug's Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and Finding Nemo (2003). The success of Toy Story (1995) made Pixar the first major computer-animation studio to successfully produce theatrical feature films. The majority of the animation industry was (and still is) located in Los Angeles, and Pixar is located 350 miles (560 km) north in the San Francisco Bay Area. Traditional hand-drawn animation was still the dominant medium for feature animated films.

With the scarcity of Los Angeles-based animators willing to move their families so far north to give up traditional animation and try computer animation, Pixar's new hires at this time either came directly from college or had worked outside feature animation. For traditional animators, the Pixar animation software Marionette was designed to require minimal training before becoming productive.

In a 2007 interview with PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley, Lasseter said that Pixar's films follow the same theme of self-improvement as the company itself has: with the help of friends or family, a character ventures out into the real world and learns to appreciate his friends and family. At the core, Lasseter said, "it's gotta be about the growth of the main character and how he changes."

Actor John Ratzenberger has voiced a character in every Pixar feature film from Toy Story through Onward (2020). In addition, a non-speaking background character in Soul (2020) bears his likeness.

Due to the traditions that have occurred within the films and shorts such as anthropomorphic creatures and objects, and easter egg crossovers between films and shorts that have been spotted by Pixar fans, a blog post titled The Pixar Theory was published in 2013 by Jon Negroni, and popularized by the YouTube channel Super Carlin Brothers, proposing that all of the characters within the Pixar universe were related, surrounding Boo from Monsters Inc. and the Witch from Brave (2012).

Additionally, Pixar is known for their films having expensive budgets, ranging from $150–250 million. Some of these films include Ratatouille (2007), Toy Story 3 (2010), Toy Story 4 (2019), Toy Story 5 (2026), Incredibles 2 (2018), Inside Out (2015), Inside Out 2 (2024), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Onward, Soul (both 2020), Turning Red, Lightyear (both 2022), Elemental (2023), and Elio (2025). In a 2023 interview, Pixar's president Jim Morris stated that one of the reasons why their films have expensive budgets is because they are produced entirely in the U.S. with all of the artists under one roof, while almost all of their competitors keep costs down by doing work offshore.

Sequels and prequels

As of March 2025, seven Pixar films have received or will receive sequels or prequels. These films are Toy Story, Cars, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Inside Out, and Coco.

Toy Story 2 was originally commissioned by Disney as a 60-minute direct-to-video film. Expressing doubts about the strength of the material, John Lasseter convinced the Pixar team to start from scratch and make the sequel their third full-length feature film.

Following the release of Toy Story 2 in 1999, Pixar and Disney had a gentlemen's agreement that Disney would not make any sequels without Pixar's involvement though retaining a right to do so. After the two companies were unable to agree on a new deal, Disney announced in 2004 they would plan to move forward on sequels with or without Pixar and put Toy Story 3 into pre-production at Disney's then-new CGI division Circle Seven Animation. However, when Lasseter was placed in charge of all Disney and Pixar animation following Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, he put all sequels on hold and Toy Story 3 was canceled. In May 2006, it was announced that Toy Story 3 was back in pre-production with a new plot and under Pixar's control. The film was released on June 18, 2010, as Pixar's eleventh feature film.

Shortly after announcing the resurrection of Toy Story 3, Lasseter stated, "If we have a great story, we'll do a sequel." Cars 2, Pixar's first non-Toy Story sequel, was officially announced in April 2008 and released on June 24, 2011, as their twelfth. Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001), was announced in April 2010 and initially set for release in November 2012; the release date was pushed to June 21, 2013, due to Pixar's past success with summer releases, according to a Disney executive.

In June 2011, Tom Hanks, who voiced Woody in the Toy Story series, implied that Toy Story 4 was "in the works", although it had not yet been confirmed by the studio. In April 2013, Finding Dory, a sequel to Finding Nemo, was announced for a June 17, 2016, release. In March 2014, Incredibles 2 and Cars 3 were announced as films in development. In November 2014, Toy Story 4 was confirmed to be in development with Lasseter serving as director. However, in July 2017, Lasseter announced that he had stepped down, leaving Josh Cooley as sole director. Released in June 2019, Toy Story 4 ranks among the 40 top-grossing films in American cinema.

Adaptation to television

Toy Story is the first Pixar film to be adapted for television as a Buzz Lightyear of Star Command film and TV series on the UPN television network, now The CW. Cars became the second with the help of Cars Toons, a series of 3-to-5-minute short films running between regular Disney Channel show intervals and featuring Mater from Cars. Between 2013 and 2014, Pixar released its first two television specials, Toy Story of Terror! and Toy Story That Time Forgot. Monsters at Work, a television series spin-off of Monsters, Inc. produced by Disney Television Animation, premiered in July 2021 on Disney+.

On December 10, 2020, it was announced that three series would be released on Disney+. The first Dug Days (featuring Dug from Up (2009)), which premiered on September 1, 2021. The second, a Cars show titled Cars on the Road, which follows Mater and Lightning McQueen as they go on a road trip. It premiered on Disney+ on September 8, 2022. An original show entitled Win or Lose, which follows a middle school softball team the week leading up to the big championship game where each episode is from a different perspective, premiered on Disney+ on February 19, 2025.

A TV series based on Inside Out was announced to be in development for Disney+ in June 2023, with Soul co-writer Mike Jones hired as developer. The series, titled Dream Productions, premiered on Disney+ on December 11, 2024.

On August 8, 2025, it was announced that a series is being developed as the third series in the Cars franchise, titled Cars: Lightning Racers. It is set to be released on Disney Jr. in 2027.

2D animation and live-action

The Pixar filmography to date has been computer-animated features. So far, WALL-E (2008) has been the only Pixar film not to be completely animated as it features a small amount of live-action, including footage from the 1969 film Hello, Dolly! while the short films Your Friend the Rat (2007), Day & Night (2010), Kitbull (2019), Burrow (2020), and Twenty Something (2021) feature 2D animation. 1906, the live-action film by Brad Bird based on a screenplay and novel by James Dalessandro about the 1906 earthquake, was in development but has since been abandoned by Bird and Pixar. Bird has stated that he was "interested in moving into the live-action realm with some projects" while "staying at Pixar [because] it's a very comfortable environment for me to work in". In June 2018, Bird mentioned the possibility of adapting the novel as a TV series, and the earthquake sequence as a live-action feature film.

The Toy Story Toons short Hawaiian Vacation (2011) also includes the fish and shark as live-action.

Jim Morris, president of Pixar, produced Disney's John Carter (2012) which Pixar filmmaker Andrew Stanton co-wrote and directed.

Pixar's creative heads were consulted to fine tune the script for the 2011 live-action film The Muppets. Similarly, Pixar assisted in the story development of Disney's The Jungle Book (2016) as well as providing suggestions for the film's end credits sequence. Both Pixar and Mark Andrews were given a "Special Thanks" credit in the film's credits. Additionally, many Pixar animators, both former and current, were recruited for a traditional hand-drawn animated sequence for the 2018 film Mary Poppins Returns.

Pixar representatives have also assisted in the English localization of several Studio Ghibli films, mainly those by Hayao Miyazaki.

In 2019, Pixar developed a live-action hidden camera reality show, titled Pixar in Real Life, for Disney+.

Highest-grossing films

‡—Includes theatrical reissue(s).

Co-op Program

The Pixar Co-op Program, a part of the Pixar University professional development program, allows Pixar employees to use Pixar resources to produce independent films. The first 3D project accepted to the program was Borrowed Time (2016); all previously accepted films were live-action.