‘Lightyear’ Director And Producer Among Mass Layoffs At Pixar; Biggest Purge At Studio In Last Decade
Pixar has not been spared by the Walt Disney Company’s plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs as part of a broader cost-cutting effort.
The Emeryville, California studio has let go of 75 employees, Reuters reported last Friday. The layoffs represent roughly 6% of the company’s staff, and are the most significant staff reduction at Pixar since 2013, when the studio laid off dozens of employees following production issues with The Good Dinosaur.
Two of the highest-profile names to depart the company in this new round of layoffs are Angus MacLane (pictured at top, left) and Galyn Susman (right), the director and producer of Lightyear. According to a recent analysis, the film was one of last year’s biggest Hollywood flops, losing $106 million.
MacLane started working as an animator at Pixar 26 years ago, and later branched out into writing and directing. In addition to Lightyear, he also directed the short Burn-E and co-directed the feature Finding Dory.
Susman was one of Pixar’s longest-tenured employees having started at the company in 1990 when the company still produced mostly tv commercials. She worked in various technical roles up until Finding Nemo before switching to supporting roles at the studio, such as dvd and promo production. Besides her producing credit on Lightyear, she also served as associate producer on Ratataouille.
Susman’s claim to fame in Pixar lore is for saving Toy Story 2 after someone at the studio accidentally deleted the film’s files. Susman, who was the technical director of the film, was working from home at the time and had saved a backup copy of the production files on her home computer, which ended up being used to reconstruct the film. She explained what happened in this video:
The initial Reuters report listed the names of only three laid-off employees: MacLane, Susman, and Michael Agulnek, who had been vp of worldwide publicity at Pixar since 2015. It is still unknown what areas of the studio or which other individuals were affected by the layoffs.