A film open about mental health, Inside Out 2 has been a huge hit for Pixar – but a new report about crunch culture suggests a price may have been paid by the animators that made it.
Here’s a troubling story that has emerged via IGN that alleges that Pixar is guilty of treating some of its hard-working and talented workforce in a pretty disgraceful fashion.
The beloved studio has endured a rocky few years off the back of the gobal pandemic, but recent releases such as Elemental and this year’s Inside Out 2 have restored the studio’s fortunes to its former glories.
Inside Out 2 in particular has been an incredible success, becoming the highest-grossing animated film in history. It’s currently made over $1.6bn at the global box office.
Sadly though, it seems that not everybody who worked on the film will get to enjoy the spoils of success.
Earlier this summer, we covered the story that Pixar had laid off around 175 employees – roughly 14% of its workforce. That story alone was an unhappy one, but IGN's follow-up report is really concerning.
Not only were the Inside Out 2 team again allegedly required to commit to ‘unprecedented’ levels of crunch to get the film completed on time, but those that were then dismissed weren’t paid their bonus money as the film went on to – we’ll say this again – make $1.6 billion dollars.
Read more: Inside Out 2 review | A charming and poignant sequel
First, the crunch: several ex-employees spoke to the outlet under the condition of anonymity, with one describing the working conditions thus: “I think for a month or two, the animators were working seven days a week. Ridiculous amounts of production workers, just people being tossed into jobs they’d never really done before… It was horrendous.”
That alone is unacceptable if true, even though crunch is an all-too common feature of the animation process, something we’ve already heard alleged with the now-delayed Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse. However, throwing people into jobs they’ve never done before doesn’t seem like an adept use of resources and would surely negatively affect the team’s workflow and efficiency.
And then there’s the real kicker.
Despite the film going on to earn – yes, one more time: $1.6 billion dollars – the employees who were let go in the wake of Inside Out 2′s completion allegedly weren’t paid the bonus money they were reportedly promised when the film met its targets.
According to the report, Pixar’s regular pay isn’t the most competitive, and as such, workers depend on that bonus. But the company is (allegedly – Ed) said to have used the dismissals as a loophole to not pay those employees, leaving many, we’d imagine, in quite a precarious financial state.
Pixar has denied the claims regarding the intensity of the crunch but we’d recommend checking out the IGN piece, which is a fascinating look inside how Pixar is currently operating.
Allegedly.
