Walt Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios cut 75 jobs last month, including longtime producer Galyn Susman. Susman is credited with saving the 1999 film Toy Story 2.
Disney lost almost all of the work done on Toy Story 2 just a year before the movie was slated for release, thanks to a deletion command on the Pixar servers. At the time, Susman had been working from home during her maternity leave and had a backup copy of the movie on her home computer. Pixar was able to recover almost everything that was lost.
But that heroic feat couldn’t save Susman from the current round of job cuts. Susman also worked on last year’s box office flop, Lightyear. Angus MacLane, who directed the film, and the company’s vice president of worldwide publicity, Michael Agulnek, were also let go.
Lightyear, telling the story of the “real” Buzz Lightyear and made for around $200 million, only brought in about $226 million worldwide. Due to the depiction of a same-sex relationship, the film was not shown in 14 countries in the Middle East and Asia, affecting its bottom line.
Walt Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger announced the company would be slashing 7,000 jobs and $5.5 billion in costs across all divisions. This is the first significant cut to Pixar’s staff in a decade. The animation studio employs about 1,200 people.
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