Pixar Expected To Cut More Staff Later This Year
Since Bob Iger’s return as CEO in November 2022, he has been going on a cost-cutting campaign to save billions of dollars, which has come from drastically cutting back how many films and shows they create, and also from job cuts. Last year, Disney laid off over 7000 employees, including 75 Pixar employees, and TechCrunch is reporting that another wave of layoffs is set to hit Pixar in the second half of 2024.
The initial report has indicated that up to 20% of Pixar staff could be cut, but this could be an overestimate, and it may be less.
Over the past few years, Pixar has struggled to recapture the magic of its massive hits like “Up”, “Toy Story” and “Wall-E”, with three films, “Luca”, “Turning Red” and “Soul”, all getting released exclusively on Disney+ during the pandemic, resulting in audiences becoming accustomed to watching the latest Pixar films at home.
However, Disney is releasing all three of those films in cinemas over the next few months, as part of an effort to make more money and retrain audiences that Pixar movies should be seen in cinemas.
Brandon Katz, an entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics said
“Disney had more or less trained audiences to expect big, hot Pixar content at home. Retraining the audience to re-embrace the theatrical experience and prioritize that…takes time.”
Pixar also had a box office disaster with the “Toy Story” prequel, “Lightyear”, which failed to find an audience and “Onward” was released just a week before the pandemic hit, decimating the box office for the film. Though its last film, “Elemental”, had a dreadful box office for its opening weekend, it was able to pull in over $500 million over the summer.
Last year, it was also announced that Pixar had delayed “Elio” from an early 2024 release until June 2025, and it also delayed the release of Pixar’s first animated Disney+ series, “Win Or Lose”.
The next big new Pixar release is “Inside Out”, which is due to arrive in cinemas in June and will likely be a popular animated film over the summer period.
With so many box office failures over the past few years, Disney is looking to ease the workflow on Pixar, reducing the amount of content the studio creates in order for them to focus more on fewer projects in an effort to increase quality. Disney has been doing this across all of its studios, including Lucasfilm, FX and Marvel, since it believes the push to create more content for Disney+ has reduced the quality of its projects.
During the Disney+ content boom, the Pixar workforce increased to over 1,300 staff, and since there will be fewer projects for Pixar to work on, they won’t need as many workers and are likely to reduce to around 1000.
It’s thought that these layoffs didn’t happen in the last wave of cuts, since they were working on multiple series and films in development, so as projects start wrapping up, there are going to be some cast members who are no longer going to be required
One of the biggest problems Pixar has had with its latest films, is the budget for each film is around $200 million, almost double what an animated film from Illumination or Sony costs to make, which means the films have to be much bigger box office hits to be considered successful. As with many of Disney’s films, films make money through many different income streams, including merchandise, licensing, and home video releases, plus the benefit they give to Disney+.
It’s never nice to see job cuts in any business, and hopefully, those who will be let go will find out soon, so they can start making plans. Pixar has had a few rough years, that will take a few more years to get out of. The push to streaming in the early days of Disney+, along with the habit-changing impact of the pandemic plus a lack of killer movies to pull in audiences, means Pixar needs a shakeup.
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Roger Palmer
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