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Pixar will stop making original shows for Disney+ as part of a broader retrenchment, resulting in layoffs that will reduce its work force by 14 percent.<\/p>\n
Jim Morris, the president of Pixar, announced the layoffs in an internal memo on Tuesday that was viewed by The New York Times. He cited \u201cthe return to our focus on feature films.\u201d About 175 employees will be let go.<\/p>\n
Questions about Pixar\u2019s health have swirled in Hollywood<\/a> and among investors since June 2022, when the Disney-owned studio released \u201cLightyear<\/a>\u201d to disastrous results. How could Pixar, the gold standard of animation studios for nearly three decades, have gotten a movie so wrong<\/a> \u2014 especially one about Buzz Lightyear, a bedrock \u201cToy Story\u201d character?<\/p>\n Pixar\u2019s next film, \u201cElemental,\u201d an opposites-attract love story, arrived to alarmingly low ticket sales in June 2023, but ultimately generated a solid $500 million<\/a> at the box office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One problem: Disney had weakened the Pixar brand by using its films to build the Disney+ streaming service. Starting in late 2020, when many multiplexes were still closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Disney debuted three Pixar films in a row (\u201cSoul,\u201d \u201cTurning Red<\/a>\u201d and \u201cLuca\u201d) online, bypassing theaters altogether.<\/p>\n The layoffs on Tuesday, which were reported earlier by The Hollywood Reporter, acknowledged another reality: Pixar, like other Disney-owned studios, including Marvel, lost its focus when it was pushed to create original programming for Disney+. At the time \u2014 around December 2020 \u2014 Disney was pouring money into the streaming service<\/a> in a wild and ultimately unsuccessful effort to attract up to 260 million subscribers worldwide. It had 87 million at the time. It has about 154 million today.<\/p>\n Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, has since reversed course, emphasizing cost containment and quality \u2014 less can be more, if the standards are high. He has said repeatedly over the past year that the creative teams at Disney were stretched too thin by the streaming strategy.<\/p>\n