Over the last few months, The Walt Disney Company has been cutting 7,000 jobs from its ranks. This is part of a cost-cutting initiative to save the company $5.5 billion. This last week it was learned that Disney had reached its target of eliminating 7,000 positions from its workforce. Reuters reports that 75 of these positions were from Pixar Animation Studios.
The cuts came from across the studio and included two executives who were behind Lightyear. Angus MacLane, a 26-year animator, who also directed Lightyear was the first of the two executives who lost their jobs. He was also a senior creative on movies like Toy Story 4 and Coco. Galyn Susman, a producer of Lightyear, has also left Pixar. Susman had been at Pixar since 1995’s Toy Story.
75 positions may not seem like a large amount at first glance. However, Pixar Animation Studios employs approximately 1,200 people making these cuts impacting 6.25% of the workforce. This is in comparison to the overall cuts from The Walt Disney Company which were about 3%.
Pixar Animation Studios originally came out of Lucasfilm’s Computer Division. In 1986, Steve Jobs purchased the division from George Lucas and named it Pixar. Through the years it has created hit franchises like Toy Story, Cars, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. These have been incredibly successful through the years with Incredibles 2 bringing in $1.2 billion at the global box office. In comparison, last year’s Lightyear brought in $226.7 million globally. It also was unable to be shown in 14 14 Middle Eastern and Asian markets due to its portrayal of a same-sex relationship, which also impacted its box office performance.
The last time that Pixar had layoffs was in 2013 when The Good Dinosaur saw its release postponed. This led to the elimination of approximately 30 jobs, including director Bob Peterson.
