Pixar was once unassailable. Hit after hit flowed, and there was not a dud among them. Their track record was unbeatable. Then things started to go wrong.
It was well known that the studio was guided by the genius of John Lasseter. Then he turned out to like cuddles a little bit too much, and the Chief Creative Officer was ousted. Following this, Pixar seemed to lose its way and they even suffered some flops.
They seemed to have turned the tide, as Inside Out 2 remains the highest-grossing movie this year and the top-grossing animated film of all time. So things are good again at Pixar? Well… not really.
A report over at IGN has highlighted some leaks from employees, current and former, that talk of a not-great working environment around the place. Inside Out 2 had to be a hit, or they were in real trouble, and the result was a pressure cooker atmosphere.
The string of flops also meant cutbacks, and after delivering the success of Inside Out 2, many of the staff who were cut in May – after the movie was completed – are therefore ineligible for their success bonuses despite their contributions. They note that none of the senior executives were impacted negatively by this. The article quotes one employee:
“We work all year for that bonus. That is what partially makes working at Pixar worth it… we depend on that.”
The article then claims that Pixar does not recognize a Union, and the base pay lags behind competitors. So basically Pixar has such a name, they expect people to be glad to work there.
The article also claims that the studio is somewhat paralyzed without new CCO Pete Docter being involved in everything, mentioning that Pixar is “over-reliant” and that “you cannot do anything without Pete. Literally nothing.”
Sources are also quoted as saying that there was a definite push to make Inside Out 2 “less gay” after the backlash that Lightyear received, contributing to that major flop. Riley’s relationship with supporting character Val was under the microscope, and a source says:
“[It was] just doing a lot of extra work to make sure that no one would potentially see them as not straight.”
This led to indecision, last-minute changes, and a huge pile-up of work later in the process making things unsustainable. The kicker, according to a source, is that Pixar thinks it was successful, so will learn the wrong lessons from Inside Out 2.
Morale is reportedly very low, and the same issues are now happening on Pixar’s next project Elio.