Employees Believed That If ‘Inside Out 2’ Failed — It Would Spell the End of Pixar
Leading up to the release of Inside Out 2, it was no secret that Pixar needed a win.
After decades of being the gold standard in animation, Pixar found itself at a crossroads. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated that the studio release Luca, Soul, and Turning Red straight to Disney+.
When the studio returned to theaters, the Toy Story spinoff Lightyear was an unmitigated disaster. With Pixar’s infallibility breached, all eyes then turned to last year’s Elemental. While the film would eventually prove to be a success, a poor opening weekend had many wondering if the studio had lost its golden touch.
Source: Pixar.fandom.com
Ahead of the release of Inside Out 2, CCO Pete Docter admitted that Pixar could “radically” change if the film was not a success.
“I can’t imagine having a better chance at a big box office than this because it’s a known movie and characters that meant something to people and a really funny cast—and hopefully something meaty at the heart of it that you can take home as well,” he said.
Photo: Pixar
“So if this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business. So far Pixar has built a business around pretty large budgets. It allows us to make a lot of mistakes and take risks, and if it doesn’t work, we can still go back and fix it.”
The Fate of Pixar May Have Hung in the Balance
Eventually, Inside Out 2 would not only become the hit that Pixar sorely needed but also the highest-grossing animated film of all time. The studio was safe.
A new bombshell report from IGN has pulled the curtain back on the state of Pixar before the release of Inside Out 2 and revealed the turmoil the studio was in.
Image: Pixar
According to former Pixar employees, the studio had an “all-hands-on-deck” mentality. One source noted that the credits for Inside Out 2 were longer than any other Pixar film, as almost every studio employee was roped into working on the film.
The tension was so intense that employees came to believe that if Inside Out 2 failed, it could spell the end of Pixar.
“That was the pressure felt by everybody,” one source says. “‘We need this movie to succeed because we won’t have a studio [otherwise].’ And that is the pressure that everybody felt the whole time. The whole time. Even now, I think people are gone, still feeling that pressure of like, ‘Oh my God, we did it. We did it.’”
Image: Pixar
While it is unlikely that Pixar would have been shut down if Inside Out 2 had not succeeded, the studio’s future would probably have been radically different had the film failed.
The Path Forward
Now, Pixar is seemingly back on solid ground following the release of Inside Out 2. However, it is clear that something at the studio has changed. With a slew of sequel films now in development and Docter insisting that Pixar focus on “universal stories,” many have worried that the studio’s creativity will be stunted.
Photo: Disney
What happens next will likely depend on the success of next year’s Elio. If Pixar can start to stack up hits, all of the consternation will have been for naught. Should Elio fail, however, the same level of panic could soon wash over the studio.
