In the middle of Toy Story 5, Disney is cutting into Pixar’s workforce

Despite great success in theaters in recent years, the studio is most affected by the recent layoffs decided at Disney.

The success of Toy Story 5 will not have been enough to protect Pixar.

As the animated film prepares to cross the billion dollars in global box office revenue, Disney has launched a new wave of layoffs which particularly affects its famous animation studio.

A Disney spokesperson confirmed that several hundred positions would be cut across the group in various subsidiaries. The cuts notably concern the sports channel ESPN, the Disney Entertainment Television branch and the film studios, where Pixar pays the heaviest price on the production side, while National Geographic is the most affected service in the television branch. The employees concerned were informed of their dismissal on Tuesday morning.

According to several American sources, the job cuts at Pixar mainly concern the production and operations teams. Disney explains this restructuring by the evolution of the studio’s production pace and by its new strategy, which consists of producing fewer films, but favoring more ambitious projects intended primarily for cinemas rather than for streaming.

This is the second major wave of layoffs this year. Last April, Disney had already cut nearly 1,000 jobs in several divisions of the group. At the time, CEO Josh D’Amaro explained that he wanted to make the company more agile in the face of rapid changes in the sector.

The contrast is striking for Pixar, which is nevertheless having a remarkable year 2026 at the box office: in the spring, Jumpershis new original adventure, had succeeded in attracting nearly 400 million dollars in revenue. A few weeks later, Toy Story 5 is becoming one of the biggest hits of the year, and follows the studio’s successful sequels, including Vice-Versa 2 in 2024, becoming the biggest animated film of all time at the box office with $1.7 billion in worldwide revenue.

But Pixar has also experienced failures and has struggled in particular to impose new licenses since the pandemic. Elio crashed in 2025 (barely 150 million), and during the health crisis, several films like Drunk, Lucas Or Red Alert had been put directly online on Disney+, getting some of the public used to discovering the studio’s productions at home rather than in theaters.

A situation which is now pushing Disney to thoroughly review its strategy, with a stated objective: to produce less, but to focus more on films capable of becoming real events at the cinema.

Pixar’s next feature film, Nerowill be released in March 2027.