Pixar has been hit by a sizeable round of layoffs, as 116 members of staff are cut – just one month after Toy Story 5 made $1bn. It’s a little over a month since the release of Toy Story 5, which has gone on to make almost $1bn worldwide to date. Yet Pixar, one of ... Disney cuts over 100 jobs at Pixar, a studio whose films have made $17bn worldwide
Pixar has been hit by a sizeable round of layoffs, as 116 members of staff are cut – just one month after Toy Story 5 made $1bn.
It’s a little over a month since the release of Toy Story 5, which has gone on to make almost $1bn worldwide to date.
Yet Pixar, one of the world’s most beloved animation studios, is bearing the brunt of some sizeable layoffs at its parent company, Disney; according to TheWrap’s sources, a total of 116 jobs will go at the studio that brought us the likes of The Incredibles, Up and Inside Out.
This isn’t the first time Pixar has been affected by cuts; 175 staff went in March, representing a 14 percent decrease on the studio’s head count. The move was blamed at the time on the shift away from developing straight-to-streaming shows; it was part of a move that saw roughly 1,000 Disney staff lose their jobs.
A Disney spokesperson told TheWrap that “These changes are part of our continual evaluation of how we manage resources and reinvest across the company as our industry continues to evolve.”
That’s vague at best, though the word from within Pixar is that the disappointing returns on last year’s Elio, which had a troubled production, and this year’s Hoppers, which is thought to have just about broken even in cinemas.
Set those slower performers aside, though, and the Pixar box office story looks rather different. Its movies have made about $17bn worldwide to date, with 2024’s Inside Out 2 being its biggest success so far with a gross of $1.69bn.
It’s fair to say that Pixar’s hits more than outscale its misses, and that slow-moving oddities like Hoppers are just a normal part of running a healthy, creative business – not everything has to be a $1bn+ grossing sequel. Hoppers will continue to be enjoyed and re-watched for decades to come.
Instead, Disney has rewarded a studio that should be toasting the reception to Toy Story 5 – one of 2026’s biggest hits so far – with a shock that will greatly affect its staff culture and morale.
Pixar has the stylised, painterly film Gatto coming out in 2027. Here’s hoping it does the numbers Disney expects of it.
