Politics
Disney Forced To Take Drastic Step As Box Office Flops Stack Up
The Walt Disney Company has announced a crushing new series of layoffs that will impact its Pixar Animation Studios over the next few months as the company struggles for profitability.
TechCrunch reported Thursday that the entertainment giant, fresh off of catastrophic losses in 2022 totaling almost $1.5 billion and an equally dismal 2023 that saw it lose $387 million in the fourth quarter alone, had already slashed some 8,000 jobs overall. It should have come as little surprise that even the venerable Pixar would not remain relatively unscathed.
After an initial cut of 75 roles earlier in 2023, Pixar will now likely see up to a 20% reduction in force dropping the studio from a staff of some 1,300 down to under 1,000.
Brandon Katz, an entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics told TechCrunch, “Disney had more or less trained audiences to expect big, hot Pixar content at home,” via the Disney+ streaming service which has led to losses at Disney. “Retraining the audience to re-embrace the theatrical experience and prioritize that…takes time.”
“That pendulum swing has been hard for all studios, Pixar included, to keep up with,” Katz noted. “If you look at their box office history, [2017’s] ‘Coco’ was their last megabucks box office original — meaning, surpassing $500 million-plus worldwide.”
Following on the heels of repeated box office bombs throughout the Disney slate of 2023 offerings such as the floundering Marvel franchise, Pixar productions such as “Lightyear,” and “Onward” showed anemic performance with audiences recoiling from the pro-LGBTQ+ storylines being targeted at children.
As reported by Reuters, “Lightyear” was banned in 14 nations throughout the Middle East and Asia for its depiction of a same-sex relationship in a film marketed toward children. Notably, the initial 2023 layoffs reportedly included the director and producer of “Lightyear.” Angus MacLane, an animator known for his work on “Toy Story 4” and “Coco,” and Galyn Susman, producer of “Lightyear.”
As a father of two grade school kids, I will NOT be taking them to see #LightyearMovie by @Disney and @Pixar. The #LGBTQ #propaganda should be for adults, not #children. #banbuzz @disneyplus @RealTimAllen @ChrisEvans pic.twitter.com/ISKfR545mO
— Robert Barrueco (@webnition) June 15, 2022
Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter told the Wrap that following the devastating box office bomb that only grossed $226 million worldwide on a $200 million budget, the company did “a lot of soul-searching.”
According to Breitbart, Pixar told reporters, “Pixar Animation Studios is set to cut jobs as the studio has completed production on some shows and now has more staff than it needs.”
In 2025 the studio plans to release “Elio”, a film about a boy who is abducted into space and works as an ambassador to Earth for aliens, according to SFGate, and plans to release a sequel to “Inside Out,” one of its top-grossing films from 2015.
