Pixar headquarters location Emeryville
Pixar Animation Studios () is an American computer animation studio  known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, California. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Pixar started in 1979 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division. It was known as the Graphics Group before its spin-off as a corporation in 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who became its majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in January 2006 at a valuation of $7.4+ billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock. Pixar is best known for its feature films, technologically powered by RenderMan, the company's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan Interface Specification image-rendering API. The studio's mascot is Luxo Jr., a desk lamp from the studio's 1986 short film of the same name.
Pixar has produced 26 feature films, starting with Toy Story (1995), which is the first fully computer-animated feature film; its most recent film was Lightyear (2022). The studio has also produced many short films. As of July 2019, its feature films have earned approximately $14 billion at the worldwide box office, with an average worldwide gross of $680 million per film. Toy Story 3 (2010), Finding Dory (2016), Incredibles 2 (2018), and Toy Story 4 (2019) are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time. Incredibles 2 is the studio's highest grossing film as well as the fourth-highest-grossing animated film of all time, with a gross of $1.2 billion; the other three also grossed over $1 billion. Moreover, 15 of Pixar's films are in the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time.
Pixar has earned 23 Academy Awards, 10 Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, along with numerous other awards and acknowledgments. Its films are frequently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since its inauguration in 2001, with eleven winners being Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Brave (2012), Inside Out (2015), Coco (2017), Toy Story 4 (2019), and Soul (2020). The six nominated films that did not win are Monsters, Inc. (2001), Cars (2006), Incredibles 2 (2018), Onward (2020), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022). Cars 2 (2011), Monsters University (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Finding Dory (2016), Cars 3 (2017) and the aforementioned Lightyear were not nominated. In addition, Toy Story 3 and Up were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
On February 10, 2009, Pixar executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Film Festival. The physical award was ceremoniously handed to Lucasfilm's founder, George Lucas.Lasseter and Catmull's oversight of both the Disney Feature Animation and Pixar studios did not mean that the two studios were merging, however. 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. Some of those conditions were that Pixar HR policies would remain intact, including the lack of employment contracts. Also, the Pixar name was guaranteed to continue, and the studio would remain in its current Emeryville, California, location with the "Pixar" sign. Finally, branding of films made post-merger would be "Disney•Pixar" (beginning with Cars).Jim Morris, producer of WALL-E (2008), became general manager of Pixar. In this new position, Morris took charge of the day-to-day running of the studio facilities and products.After a few years, Lasseter and Catmull were able to successfully transfer the basic principles of the Pixar Braintrust to Disney Animation, although meetings of the Disney Story Trust are reportedly "more polite" than those of the Pixar Braintrust. Catmull later explained that after the merger, to maintain the studios' separate identities and cultures (notwithstanding the fact of common ownership and common senior management), he and Lasseter "drew a hard line" that each studio was solely responsible for its own projects and would not be allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other. The rule ensures that each studio maintains "local ownership" of projects and can be proud of its own work. Thus for example, when Pixar had issues with Ratatouille and Disney Animation had issues with Bolt (2008), "nobody bailed them out" and each studio was required "to solve the problem on its own" even when they knew there were personnel at the other studio who theoretically could have helped.
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