10 Greatest Pixar Endings, Ranked

After one of the most exciting Pixar climaxes ever, the film’s third act concludes with a tranquil day in the Parrs’ family, everyone watching Dash run a race. Seeing as it’s largely a tribute to old Hollywood rom-coms, which of course includes many silent movies, it’s quite fitting that a big portion of WALL•E’s runtime is mostly devoid of dialogue. In one of the studio’s most emotional reveals, Mike shows Sulley that he’s been rebuilding Boo’s door, and with Sulley opening the door and being greeted by Boo’s “Kitty!” offscreen, we fade to black. Mike becomes the company’s top comedian, and Sulley becomes the new CEO. Some time after Boo is sent home and her door is destroyed, Monsters, Inc. begins to collect energy by making children laugh instead of scream.

In contrast to the earlier Pixar deal, Ratatouille was meant to remain a Pixar property and Disney would have received a distribution fee. An added benefit of delaying Cars from November 4, 2005, to June 9, 2006, was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract, to see how things would play out between the two companies. This would also allow Pixar to release DVDs for its major releases during the Christmas shopping season. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution.

The Pizza Planet Truck, which was featured prominently in Toy Story, appears in all of the Pixar films, except The Incredibles (although it did appear in the video game). Similar to George Lucas’ 1138, the letter-number sequence A113 is an animation in-joke that appears in all Pixar films to date, except Monsters, Inc. Like John Ratzenberger, Pixar animator Joe Ranft had made the voice of characters in all the Pixar films until Cars, which was completed after his untimely passing and noted in the credits of the film. In 2008, Pixar announced Newt, a story about the last two blue-footed newts in existence destined to mate to save their species from extinction, scheduled for release in June 2012. Toy Story 3 was the second big-screen sequel and was released on June 18, 2010.

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Despite the total income of these products, the company was still losing money, and Jobs often considered selling it. At that point, the software programmers, who were doing RenderMan and CAPS, and Lasseter’s animation department, who made television commercials and a few shorts for Sesame Street, was all that was left of Pixar. During this period, Pixar continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation, a studio whose corporate parent would ultimately become its most important partner. One of the buyers of Pixar Image Computers was Disney Studios, which was using the device as part of their secretive CAPS project, using the machine and custom software to migrate the laborious ink and paint part of the 2-D animation process to a more automated and thus efficient method. Initially, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company whose core product was the Pixar Image Computer, a system primarily sold to government agencies and the medical community. The newly independent company was headed by Jobs, who served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pixar.

• At that point, Smith and Catmull had been declined by 35 venture capitalists and ten large corporations, including a deal with General Motors which fell through three days before signing the contracts.
• For those who had traditional animation skills, the Pixar animation software (Marionette) is designed so that traditional animators would require a minimum amount of training before becoming productive.
• The first batch was known as Mater’s Tall Tales (3 to 5 minutes), where Mater (voiced by comedian Larry the Cable Guy) tells Lightning McQueen (voiced by Keith Ferguson) a story about something he did in the past that is eventually revealed to be real.
• By the MPAA, most of the films are rated PG, while 13 of them are rated G (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Toy Story 3, Cars 2, Monsters University, Cars 3, and Toy Story 4).
• An added benefit of delaying Cars was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract to see how things would play out between the two companies.
• In 1985 while still at Lucasfilm, they had made a deal with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan to make a computer-animated movie called Monkey, based on the Monkey King.

‘The Incredibles’ (

Some of these films include Ratatouille (2007), Toy Story 3 (2010), Toy Story 4 (2019), Incredibles 2 (2018), Inside Out (2015), Inside Out 2 (2024), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Onward and Soul, Turning Red, Lightyear (both 2022), and Elemental (2023). Additionally, Pixar is known for their films having expensive budgets, ranging from $150–200 million. Pixar paid tribute to Ratzenberger in the end credits of Cars (2006) by parodying scenes from three of its earlier films (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and A Bug’s Life), replacing all of the characters with motor vehicle versions of them and giving each film an automotive-based title. Actor John Ratzenberger, who had previously starred in the television series Cheers (1982–1993), has voiced a character in every Pixar feature film from Toy Story through Onward (2020). A large number of animators that make up its animation department had been hired around the releases of A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and Finding Nemo (2003). The first of several buildings, the high-tech structure designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson has special foundations and electricity generators to ensure continued film production, even through major earthquakes.

On the basis of one of the most creative premises in Pixar’s history, Inside Out tells one of the studio’s most emotional stories. Part exciting family film, part spy thriller, and part dissection of the meaning of middle-class suburban family life in post-9/11 America, The Incredibles is, needless to say, one of the studio’s most mature and complex efforts. Before superhero films became all the rage in Hollywood with the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar dipped its toes into the genre, and it just so happens that The Incredibles is far and away one of the genre’s best outings. Since 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has established itself as the ruling animation studio not just in North America, but arguably worldwide. The central theme of Pixar is the true meaning of friendship, where a majority of films have dynamic duos or groups.

Pixar demanded that the film then be counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused. As a result of the success of Toy Story, Pixar built a new studio at the Emeryville campus which was designed by PWP Landscape Architecture and opened in November 2000.citation needed Despite the income from these projects, the company still continued to lose money and Steve Jobs, as chairman of the board and now owner, often considered selling it. By then the software programmers working on RenderMan and IceMan, and Lasseter’s animation department, which made television commercials (and four Luxo Jr. shorts for Sesame Street the same year), were all that remained of Pixar. On March 6, 1991, Steve Jobs bought the company from its employees and became the full owner. Jobs increased investment in exchange for an increased stake, reducing the proportion of management and employee ownership until eventually, his total investment of $50 million gave him control of the entire company.

John Lasseter was hired to the Lucasfilm team for a week in late 1983 with the title “interface designer”; he animated the short film The Adventures of André & Wally B. In the next few years, a designer suggested naming a new digital compositing computer the “Picture Maker”. After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES (for “renders everything you ever saw”), and developed several critical technologies for CG — including particle effects and various animation tools. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, and joined the Graphics Group at Lucasfilm. Eventually, the group realized they needed to work in a real film studio to reach their goal. Since its inauguration in 2001, eleven Pixar films have won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, including Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4, Brave (2012), Inside Out (2015), Coco (2017), and Soul (2020). The studio’s mascot is Luxo Jr., a desk lamp from the studio’s 1986 short film of the same name.

Welcome to the Pixar Wiki

• The film was released on June 18, 2010, as Pixar’s eleventh feature film.citation needed
• On February 8, 2023 during a call, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Toy Story 5 is in development.
• The former, which, although was a financial success, received substantially less praise than Pixar’s previous films, while the latter, although met with favorable reviews, was a considered a box office flop (mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020).
• A large number of animators that make up the animation department at Pixar were hired around the time Pixar released A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.

Pixar states that they believe that sequels should only be made if they can come up with a story as good as the original. On June 27, 2011, Tom Hanks implied that a fourth Toy Story movie was in the works, and in 2015, Toy Story 4 was announced for a June 16, 2017 release date. Feeling the material was not very good, John Lasseter convinced the Pixar team to start from scratch and make that their third full-length feature film. All Pixar films are box office successes except for The Good Dinosaur, which worldwide made $317.5 million on a $200 million budget, and Onward made $109.4 million in worldwide on a $200 million budget.

References to upcoming films

After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES (for “renders everything you ever saw”) and developed a number of critical technologies for CG—including “particle effects” and various animation tools. Since the award’s inauguration in 2001, most of Pixar’s films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, with eleven winning; Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Toy Story 3, Brave, Inside Out, Coco, Toy Story 4, and Soul. The former, which, although was a financial success, received substantially less praise than Pixar’s previous films, while the latter, although met with favorable reviews, was a considered a box office flop (mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020). Eighteen of the films has received both critical and financial success, with the notable exceptions being Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur, Onward, and Lightyear. The first 3D project accepted to the program was Borrowed Time (2016); all previously accepted films were live-action.

Elio is now available to watch on Disney+!

At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques—in particular the invention of the “alpha channel” (by Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith); years later, the CGL produced an experimental film called The Works. Pixar was founded as The Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm which was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Dr. Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL). A Zootopian version of the studio was parodized as “Pigsar” in Zootopia 2. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, Anna referred to Pixar as “the other studio”.

Pixar has produced 29 feature films, with its first film being Toy Story (1995), which is also the first fully computer-animated feature film, and its most recent film was Elio (2025). It’s one of 2007’s most essential films, as well as one of Pixar’s crowning jewels, a love letter to art itself, and it leads all the way up to an emotional payoff almost unparalleled in the realm of animation. Pixar films dealing with parenthood abound, but none put that theme front and center quite like Finding Nemo does. Even today, after the many missteps they’ve experienced throughout the 2020s, many would still call Pixar the world’s best producer of animated films. This a list of Pixar movies that became franchises after getting 1 or more sequel and/or prequel films, short films, or TV specials based on the films.

A factor contributing to Lucas’ sale was an increase in cash flow problems following his 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden drop-off in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi. Jobs paid $5 million to George Lucas and put $5 million as capital into the company. The team began working on film sequences with Industrial Light & Magic on special effects in 1982.

Careers at Pixar

The company continued to make the television commercials during the production of Toy Story, which came to an end on July 9, 1996, when Pixar announced they would shut down its television commercial unit, which counted 18 employees, to focus on longer projects and interactive entertainment. In 1985 while still at Lucasfilm, they had made a deal with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan to make a computer-animated movie called Monkey, based on the Monkey King. In 1983, Nolan Bushnell founded a new computer-guided animation studio called Kadabrascope as a subsidiary of his Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatres company (PTT), which was founded in 1977. When Lucas approached the group and offered them jobs at his studio, six employees moved to Lucasfilm.

In August 2024, during the D23 Expo, Docter announced that Incredibles 3 is in development, with Brad Bird developing. Toy Story 3 was put into pre-production at the new CGI division of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Circle 7 Animation. On February 8, 2023 during a call, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Toy Story 5 is in development. Toy Story 2 was commissioned by Disney as a direct-to-video, 60-minute film.

Jobs, who had been edged out of Apple in 1985, was now founder and CEO of the new computer company NeXT. At that point, Smith and Catmull had been declined by 35 venture capitalists and ten large corporations, including a deal with General Motors which fell through three days before signing the contracts. Sente Technologies (another division, was founded to have games distributed in PTT stores) was sold to Bally Games and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucasfilm. The animation movement would be made using tweening instead of traditional cel animation.

In June 2023, Disney laid off 75 employees including the director of Lightyear Angus MacLane, and the film’s producer Galyn Susman. The film would make over $1 billion and win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Pete Docter was announced as Lasseter’s replacement as chief creative officer of Pixar on June 19, 2018. On June 8, 2018, it was announced that Lasseter would leave Disney Animation and Pixar vegas casino download at the end of the year, but would take on a consulting role until then.

The roughly 2,000 square meters studio produced seven short films based on Toy Story and Cars characters. In preparation for potential fallout between Pixar and Disney, Jobs announced in late 2004 that Pixar would no longer release movies at the Disney-dictated November time frame, but during the more lucrative early summer months. In addition, as part of any distribution agreement with Disney, Pixar demanded control over films already in production under the old agreement, including The Incredibles (2004) and Cars (2006). Profits and production costs were split equally, but Disney exclusively owned all story, character, and sequel rights and also collected a 10%-15% distribution fee.

Some of Pixar’s first animators were former cel animators including John Lasseter, and others came from computer animation or were fresh college graduates. The digital revolution in filmmaking was driven by applied mathematics, including computational physics and geometry. It became the fastest animated movie to reach $1 billion at the global box office, reaching the milestone in 17 days. However, the layoffs were then delayed and did not occur, reportedly because of production schedules. In January 2024, it was reported that Pixar’s staff would face imminent layoffs by 20 percent, reducing the studio’s workforce to less than 1,000 employees.

Adaptation to television

In fact, additional conditions were laid out as part of the deal to ensure that Pixar remained a separate entity, a concern that analysts had expressed about the Disney deal. (In contrast to the earlier Disney/Pixar deal, Ratatouille was to remain a Pixar property and Disney would have received only a distribution fee.) The completion of Disney’s Pixar acquisition, however, nullified this distribution arrangement. An added benefit of delaying Cars was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract to see how things would play out between the two companies.

But Moore’s Law also suggested that sufficient computing power for the first film was still some years away, and they needed to focus on a proper product until then. With Lucas’s 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi, they knew he would most likely sell the whole Graphics Group. In 1982, the Pixar team began working on special-effects film sequences with Industrial Light & Magic. Over the next several years, the CGL would produce a few frames of an experimental film called The Works. He was then reunited with Smith, who also made the journey from NYIT to Lucasfilm, and was made the director of the Graphics Group. The Graphics Group, which was one-third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, opened in 1979 with the hiring of Catmull from NYIT, where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab.

He writes a glowing review nonetheless, and some time later, he becomes a frequent guest of a new bistro opened by Remy, Linguini, and Colette. Memories and love make it so that death is never truly the end, and no Pixar film shows that better than Coco. At once a beautiful tribute to Mexican culture and a hugely entertaining story in itself, Coco is visually delightful and full of excellent music. Pixar’s first movie to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar remains both exciting and touching throughout, aided by some of the studio’s most compelling characters and one of their most memorable scores (composed by Michael Giacchino). This cliffhanger famously took a whopping 14 years to materialize into a (rather underwhelming) sequel, but even in a vacuum, it’s one of Pixar’s most exciting and satisfying conclusions.