Inside Out 2 is the biggest movie of 2024, but many of the people who worked to bring the film to life have bittersweet emotions, as they were laid off one month before it opened. To add insult to injury, despite Inside Out 2 becoming the highest-grossing animated movie of all time with $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office, many Pixar employees did not receive any additional bonus due to Disney laying them off in between the film wrapping production and its theatrical release. Despite months of employees working overtime, Disney showed their appreciation by showing them the door instead of their well-earned money.
IGN spoke to 10 former Pixar employees about the working conditions around Inside Out 2. According to the report, one insider said, “I think for a month or two, the animators were working seven days a week. Ridiculous amounts of production workers, just people being tossed into jobs they’d never really done before… It was horrendous.” Another person says they were working on weekends for four months. Many did give Pixar credit for compensating employees at the time, as anyone who crunched was paid overtime, and workers were offered time off in return. However, it could be hard to find time in the production schedule to take time off, as they needed to meet Inside Out 2‘s summer 2024 release date. One source said:
“They do take care of us when we do have aches and pains. They throw everything at us to try to help. There’s really great health benefits, mental health. So it’s not like they’re not trying and they’re not offering things. But at the end of the day, I feel like the expectations and that ‘let’s just crunch and get it done,’ but then it goes on for months and months, it’s not sustainable.”
Then, in May 2024, conveniently, as Inside Out 2 had finished production, but before the movie came out, Pixar laid off 175 of its employees, or about 14% of the staff. They were locked out of the network on the day of the layoffs, which included removed access to work materials for use in demo reels, personal files, and more. Many noted that this was not like Pixar at all, and there was no guidance from HR. Not only was key card access prohibited outside of normal work hours, but Disney did not want the affected employees to pick up their things to not make things “awkward” in the workplace. One source said, “The day that the layoffs happened was like a funeral. There was weeping and crying in the atrium. There are images from that day that are going to stay with me for quite a long time.”
Being laid off one month before the movie opened in theaters meant that the employees who worked overtime and crunched to get Inside Out 2 ready for release were ineligible for the bonus. For many Pixar employees, the bonus is vital because their base pay is considered low for the expensive area many are required to live in, Emeryville, California. “We work all year for that bonus. That is what partially makes working at Pixar worth it… we depend on that,” a source stated. In addition to other factors, bonuses were tied to box office success. Many employees were counting on the bonus from Inside Out 2, especially after receiving very little for Elemental and nothing for Lightyear.
“It really crushed a lot of us…When we were told the day we were laid off that it (the bonus) is only for active employees, I sobbed.” Another laid-off employee said: “To be told by our HR reps that we were not going to qualify for that bonus felt like an ultimate ‘f*ck you’ from Disney.”
Disney & Pixar Screwed Over A Lot of Employees
Pixar had been facing layoffs for well over a year. Disney used a similar tactic in 2023, laying off a portion of their staff in May 2023, just one month before Elemental opened in theaters. Two of the employees who were laid off in 2023 included Lightyear director Angus McClane and Pixar producer Galyn Susman. The latter of which famously saved Toy Story 2 because she had a copy on her computer at home when it was accidentally deleted back in 1999. Her story is the stuff of Pixar legend and was included in the bonus features on the Toy Story 3 Blu-ray.
Dinsey seemed to time the layoffs in 2023 and 2024 so they would not need to pay the Pixar employees bonuses if the project was a major box office hit, like Inside Out 2. Although most of California’s animation industry is unionized under The Animation Guild (TAG), Pixar employees are not. In 1986, Pixar opened as an independent studio outside of TAG’s jurisdiction of Los Angeles County, which made it non-union. Disney’s acquisition of Pixar in 2006 did not place it under TAG, which represents Walt Disney Animation workers. Convenient for the mouse, indeed.
Inside Out 2 has been a massive box office winner, yet its success now feels wrong because many hard-working people who helped bring it to life won’t see any of its profits. The employees were deemed expendable, but no layoffs were done on the executive level because there was always money to pay them. Disney certainly is not short on money. Not only did Inside Out 2 generate $1.6 billion in ticket sales, but Deadpool & Wolverine also generated $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office. One former employee noted that Disney invested $1.5 billion in Fortnite, and just one percent of that could have saved everyone at Pixar’s jobs.
At a time of economic uncertainty, Disney’s decision to lay off Pixar employees who worked so hard to make Inside Out 2 a smash hit is already maddening. But not paying the employees their bonus after the film’s success, not even through severance pay or a bonus check, is downright despicable. One former Pixar employee’s words should ring through everyone’s mind now: “I would venture that at least 95% of the people that got laid off are financially f*cked right now.”
