Former Pixar Animators Comment On Studio’s Status And Inside Out 2’s Production

Pixar is making history with the massive success of Inside Out 2. The sequel to the 2015 original has made a record $1.67 Billion at the worldwide box office and is currently the highest grossing animated movie of all time. Pixar’s recent streak of box office duds has, for the time being, been put to an end after fears of a shutdown were prevalent throughout the company.

However, not everyone is happy with the success. Multiple former employees who were recently let go during a string of layoffs at the studio came forward in a report via IGN. Though they wished to remain anonymous, they described many of the troubles both Inside Out 2 and the studio had, along with many sad stories that were caused by their dismissal.



A few described the large amounts of crunch while working on Inside Out 2. They said: “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.“

Another source described how frantic everyone was on the production due to fears of a shut down: “That was the pressure felt by everybody. ‘We need this movie to succeed because we won’t have a studio otherwise.’ And that is the pressure that everybody felt the whole time. The whole time. Even now, I think people are gone, still feeling pressure of like ‘Oh my G*d, we did it. We did it!“



A few former employees also commented on Pete Docter’s leadership at the company. One was more positive while the other had a more negative implication.

The first person said: “I mean, you saw the end result of that. Inside Out 2 made a billion dollars at the box office. That was a direct result of Pete’s involvement. Pete’s a genius. Nobody can dispute this.“

The second person said: “You cannot do anything without Pete. Literally nothing. And that creates a bottleneck.“

Others commented on how executives made the team do whatever they could to try and remove any LGBTQ+ implications in the film.

A number of loud voices online seemed to believe that the main character of Riley was actually gay (despite that being proven otherwise in a 2015 short film of her going on a date with a boy). 

One person said: “It is, as far as I know, still a thing, where leadership, they’ll bring up Lightyear specifically and say, ‘Oh, Lightyear was a financial failure because it had a queer kiss in it.’“

Another person said: ‘Mind you, Riley is not canonically gay. In the film, what you saw, nothing about Riley says that she is gay, but it is kind of inferred based on certain contexts. And so that is something that they tried to play down at multiple points.“



But perhaps one of the most heartbreaking parts of the story was that everyone who was laid off were not eligible for the bonuses. Typically, if a film does very well for the studio everyone is entitled to a bonus. However, those who qualify must be “active employees”, meaning that all of those who would have qualified previously would not receive a penny.

One person said: “It really crushed a lot of us. When we were told the day we were laid off that it (the bonus) is only for active employees, I sobbed.“

Another person commented: “Disney invested $1.5 billion in Fortnite. One percent of that 1.5 billion would’ve saved all our jobs.“

One person also commented on the executive side of things in the situation at the studio: “I think the biggest feeling that I heard around the studio before the layoffs and now even post-layoffs, talking to people who are still there, is everybody feels like the executives are really just acting in a fear-based way. Everything is to preserve their own power in their own jobs. So I think morale is really low because people no longer trust that they’re being led with their best interests at heart.“

Another former employee talked about the current state of the studio: “They learned nothing. And that’s the feedback I’m still getting when I’m just reaching out to current employees. Right now, everyone’s on Elio. Things are exactly the same, how they were before. Everybody’s working crazy hours to get Elio fixed.“



While it is definitely hard for someone to get back on their feet after being let go from a job, the fact that those bonuses were practically being dangled in front of their faces only to be taken away mere months before the film’s record setting box office performance feels outright cruel.

Hopefully many of these former employees will find work elsewhere at places like Skydance Animation, which is currently headed up by former Pixar head John Lasseter.

The future of Pixar Animation is still uncertain. While some original projects like Elio and Hoppers are being worked on the studio is being tasked with sequels to Toy Story and The Incredibles. Only time will tell if they get desperate enough to revive the Cars universe.

Source: IGN