Disney-owned Pixar braces for further layoffs

Win Or Lose (Source: Disney+)

Disney is making another round of layoffs at Pixar Animation Studios, with reports suggesting that these cuts will largely impact staff hired for now completed Disney+ productions, such as upcoming series Win Or Lose.

The staff cuts follow the elimination of 75 roles in June 2023, including Galyn Susman, who worked on the original Toy Story movie, which were made as part of CEO Bob Iger’s plans to save $5.5bn in costs and cut 7,000 jobs.

These latest dismissals were initially reported to be as high as 20% of the total workforce, with TechCrunch suggesting that the 1,300 employees would drop to below to 1,000 in the coming months. However, a Reuters source told the outlet that while the layoffs will be taking place, the number of redundancies will be a much smaller figure.

The layoffs come at a time of cost-cutting for the major services, with redundancies and reduced spending on original productions now de rigueur as companies chase streaming profitability.

Pixar had largely avoided Iger’s cutbacks until those in June, with the animation studio serving as a steady source of output for the Mouse House since its $7bn acquisition in 2006. However, the release of Toy Story spin-off Lightyear in 2022 was a financial disappointment for the company.

The upcoming Win Or Lose for streaming service Disney+ is Pixar’s first long-form animated series, which follows a middle school softball team in the week leading up to a big championship game.

Pixar’s most recent feature release, meanwhile, was last year’s Elemental, with Inside Out 2 to launch in June this year and Elio coming out in June 2025.