Walt Disney's Pixar Animation Studios has eliminated 75 positions including key creatives behind box office disappointment “Lightyear,” sources told Reuters on Saturday.
These are the first significant job cuts at the studio in a decade. I guess that’s what happens when most of the talents are gone and their recent releases couldn’t compare to the studio's best works.
John Lasseter is also sorely missed. Back in 2018, Lasseter was fired for misbehaviour which left some of his staff feeling “disrespected and uncomfortable.” He’s now at Skydance
Fixing Pixar should be a priority at Disney. Firstly, they dumped their movies straight to Disney+ during the pandemic, which devalued the brand and trained audiences to ignore their theatrical releases.
Add to that the issues they’ve had on the creative side: none of their recent releases have really hit the cultural zeitgeist since 2017’s “Coco.” Then there’s the tepid response their upcoming “Elemental” received at Cannes last weekend and you have something very bad brewing.
They somehow need to rekindle the magic that we felt with “Toy Story 3,” “The Incredibles,” “Up!” “Ratatouille,” “Finding Nemo,” “”Inside Out,” and especially their seminal masterpiece, “WALL-E.”
The inventive nature in the above classics has gone away. It’s all surface-level stuff now. They are making overstylized films with none of the risk-taking involved. The last several movies have been nothing more than cynical attempts to hit specific emotional buttons.
Coming up next for Pixar are “Elio,” “Inside Out 2,” and possibly “Toy Story 5.”