Pixar Animation Studios is taking one of the sharpest blows in Walt Disney Co.’s latest round of job cuts, with the entertainment giant eliminating several hundred positions across corporate functions, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television and its studio operations just as “Toy Story 5” closes in on the $1 billion mark at the global box office. Employees affected by the cuts were notified Tuesday morning, July 21, according to reports citing Disney and people familiar with the reductions.
The layoffs are concentrated most heavily at Pixar within Disney’s studios group, while National Geographic is facing the deepest impact on the Disney Entertainment Television side. Disney has not publicly released a detailed division-by-division tally, but reports indicate that Pixar’s cuts are focused largely on production and operations roles, a sign that the company is aligning staffing levels with a leaner film pipeline and fewer projects in active production.
The move comes at an awkward moment for Disney’s most celebrated animation brand. “Toy Story 5,” released in June, has grossed about $959.3 million worldwide, according to box office data from The Numbers, and is approaching the billion-dollar milestone reached by previous franchise installments “Toy Story 3” and “Toy Story 4.” The current “Toy Story” franchise record remains “Toy Story 4,” which earned about $1.071 billion worldwide in 2019.
The layoffs also follow the spring release of Pixar’s original adventure “Hoppers,” which opened strongly but finished far below the studio’s biggest franchise films. “Hoppers” has grossed about $389.5 million worldwide against a reported $150 million production budget, while “Toy Story 5” is performing at a scale more typical of Pixar’s most valuable intellectual property.
Disney’s decision reflects a broader strategic shift inside Walt Disney Studios, which has been reducing overall production volume and emphasizing fewer, higher-priority theatrical releases that can later feed the company’s streaming, consumer products and broader entertainment ecosystem. Variety reported that the Pixar reductions are tied to the studio’s evolving production needs and the projects currently moving through its pipeline.
The latest cuts are part of a wider restructuring under Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro, who succeeded Bob Iger earlier this year. In April, Disney began a separate layoff round expected to total about 1,000 positions across marketing, traditional television, ESPN, studio operations, product and technology, and corporate functions; D’Amaro described the goal at the time as making Disney more streamlined and “technologically-enabled.”
Disney remains one of the world’s largest entertainment employers. In its fiscal 2025 annual report, the company said it employed approximately 231,000 people worldwide, including about 172,000 in the United States, with a significant number of production personnel covered by collective bargaining agreements.
ESPN is also undergoing reductions tied largely to its integration of NFL Network and other league digital assets. ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told employees in a memo that most of the job impacts were related to the NFL acquisition, which was approved by regulators in January and brought NFL Network employees under ESPN as of April 1. Some on-air figures, including longtime analyst Ryan Clark and veteran broadcaster Karl Ravech, were among those affected, though most of the ESPN cuts are reported to involve production and behind-the-scenes personnel.
At Pixar, the cuts land after several years of uneven recovery from the pandemic-era disruption of moviegoing. Disney sent “Soul,” “Luca” and “Turning Red” directly to Disney+ during the COVID-19 period, and the company later gave those films limited theatrical runs in 2024, with Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter saying the movies had been made for the big screen. The studio’s theatrical comeback has been strongest with sequels, particularly “Inside Out 2,” which earned nearly $1.7 billion worldwide in 2024.
That contrast has sharpened a central challenge for Pixar: original films remain vital to the studio’s creative identity, but sequels and established franchises are delivering the largest returns. “Hoppers” showed there is still demand for new Pixar stories, opening with about $45.3 million domestically and eventually reaching nearly $390 million worldwide, but its performance was dwarfed by “Inside Out 2” and “Toy Story 5.”
The next major test of Pixar’s leaner strategy will be “Gatto,” an original film directed by “Luca” filmmaker Enrico Casarosa and produced by Andrea Warren. Pixar lists the movie as an “Only in Theaters” release scheduled for March 5, 2027, underscoring Disney’s renewed emphasis on theatrical openings rather than direct-to-streaming debuts for major Pixar features.
For Disney, the layoffs point to the difficult economics reshaping Hollywood: even a studio with a near-billion-dollar summer hit is being asked to operate with tighter staffing, lower volume and more disciplined production spending. For Pixar employees, the timing is especially painful, arriving as the studio celebrates one of the year’s biggest box office successes while confronting a future built around fewer projects, sharper cost controls and higher expectations for every film it releases.
The immediate impact will be measured in lost jobs across Pixar, ESPN, National Geographic and other Disney units. The longer-term question is whether Disney can preserve the creative depth that made Pixar a defining force in animation while restructuring the studio for a more cautious and theatrical-first era.
