Lightyear filmmakers among layoffs at Disney Pixar

The Walt Disney Company has cut 75 jobs at Pixar, including the director of Lightyear and the woman who saved Toy Story 2.

As reported by Reuters, last month the company let go of almost 100 employees, with Lightyear director Angus MacLane among them. He had been at Pixar for 26 years and has previously co-directed Finding Dory and won an Annie Award for Character Animation on The Incredibles.

Galyn Susman, meanwhile, is credited with saving Toy Story 2. When the film was being created as a lower-budget direct-to-video sequel, someone accidentally deleted 90% of the film off Pixar’s servers. The filmmakers discovered that their backups also hadn’t been saving properly.

Related: Pixar boss explains why Lightyear was a flop

Thankfully, Susman had a recent backup on her home computer as she was working remotely after having a baby, and managed to get it back to Pixar intact. The work was scrapped anyway when Toy Story 2 was retooled into a full-on cinematic release in an intense nine-month period, but who knows if the film would have been outright cancelled if Susman hadn’t saved the day.

The layoffs were stated to follow Lightyear‘s poor performance, barely earning more than its $200 million reported budget.

Reports state that the low box office was due to not releasing in 14 territories due to a refusal to censor the same-sex relationship, but the film also received mixed reviews over its tonal difference from the Toy Story films, and casting of Chris Evans over original voice actor Tim Allen.

Related: How to watch Toy Story spin-off Lightyear online at home

The layoffs are part of returning CEO Bob Iger’s plan to cut 7,000 jobs and cut $5.5 billion in costs. Another controversial way Disney has been cutting costs is by removing its original programming from Disney+.

Lightyear is streaming on Disney+, along with the entire Toy Story series and shorts.

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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer and resident Welsh person at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. 

In his time he’s covered a host of live events, interviewed celebrities big and small and crowbarred a countless amount of great/awful (delete as appropriate) puns into articles. 

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