Walt Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios has cut 75 jobs, including those of two executives behind box office flop Lightyear in what are the first major job cuts at the studio in a decade.
The cuts included Lightyear director Angus MacLane, a 26-year-old animator who was on the senior creative team on acclaimed movies like Toy Story 4 and Coco.
Michael Agulnek, Pixar’s vice president of global advertising since 2015, was also fired. Lightyear producer Galyn Susman is also leaving the studio.
Susman had been with Pixar since the original Toy Story movie was released in 1995 and was hailed as a hero in the company after she discovered she had a backup of the Toy Story 2 movie on her home computer when the company mistakenly erased his. release off its servers while the film was in the early stages of production.
The story was revealed last year in a tweet: “Someone at Pixar deleted all of Toy Story 2 and the save hadn’t worked for a month, and the only reason we saw this movie was because someone on maternity leave had a copy. of it on his personal computer. Her name is Galyn Susman and she is now the producer of the new Lightyear movie!’
Lightyear director Angus MacLane, a 26-year-old animator who was on the senior creative team on acclaimed movies like Toy Story 4 and Coco. The same goes for producer Galyn Susman, left, who has been with Pixar since the release of the original Toy Story movie in 1995.
Michael Agulnek, Pixar’s vice president of global advertising since 2015, was also fired
A mistake was made with a commonly used system to clear junk files, but by mistake the server started deleting files that were actively in use.
Oren Jacob, the former technical director of Pixar, explained how someone probably ran the command “at the root level of the project and the system was recursively following the file structure and suppressing its output like a worm beating itself from the core of an apple.’
‘He [producer Larry Cutler] looked at the directory and it had about 40 files, and it looked again and it had four files. Then we saw footage start to fade,’ he said The next web.
Susman was on maternity leave but was given a home computer to continue working on the film. The computer contained an incomplete backup of the movie but it was still better than an empty file directory.
Among those targeted by a series of layoffs was Angus MacLane, a 26-year-old veteran animator who was part of the senior creative team
Susman had been with Pixar since the release of the original Toy Story movie in 1995 and was hailed as a hero in the company after she discovered she had a backup of the Toy Story 2 movie on her home computer when the company mistakenly erased his. version off its servers
The current cuts, which took place on May 23, are part of Walt Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger’s previously announced plan to cut 7,000 jobs and cut costs by $5.5 billion.
The restructuring combines the film and television groups into a single Disney Entertainment unit and eliminates a division responsible for distribution.
While small compared to Pixar’s base of around 1,200 employees, the layoffs are significant because the studio is a creative force driving franchises and revenue-generating characters across Disney.
Pixar is famous for its movie franchises such as Toy Story, The Incredibles, and Cars.
But Lightyear, released a year ago on a reported budget of $200 million, grossed a modest $226.7 million in worldwide ticket sales and received a decidedly mixed reception.
Toy Story 4 was a return to form for Disney/Pixar with $1.07 billion worldwide, becoming the eighth highest-grossing film of 2019
But Lightyear, released a year ago on a reported budget of $200 million, grossed a modest $226.7 million in worldwide ticket sales and received decidedly mixed critical reception.
In contrast, Pixar’s Incredibles 2 in 2018, which reportedly had a similar production budget, had worldwide box office sales of $1.2 billion.
Lightyear could not be shown in 14 countries in the Middle East and Asia due to its depiction of a same-sex relationship. This had an impact on its performance at the global box office.
Disney has implemented layoffs across all divisions, including film and television, streaming services and theme parks.
The last time Pixar cut jobs was in 2013, after the studio postponed the release of 2015 film The Good Dinosaur and fired its director, Bob Peterson. Thirty jobs have been cut.
Disney acquired Pixar in 2006 to revitalize its struggling Disney Animation.
