Disney let several hundred employees go Tuesday morning across corporate functions, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television and Disney Studios, with Pixar Animation Studios absorbing the heaviest blow among the company’s studio businesses.
“These changes are part of our continual evaluation of how we manage resources and reinvest across the company as our industry continues to evolve,” a Disney spokesperson told TheWrap.
The Emeryville, California-based animation studio lost roughly 150 employees, making this the largest round of Pixar cuts since the summer of 2024, when the company trimmed staff following the streaming pullback that followed INSIDE OUT 2’s $1.69 billion box office run. On the Disney Entertainment Television side, Deadline reported just under 100 jobs were cut, with National Geographic bearing the brunt across its cable network, editorial and operations teams.
The timing is a little strange on its face. TOY STORY 5 has just cleared $957 million worldwide and is closing in on the billion-dollar mark, easily the studio’s biggest hit in years. But insiders point to a different culprit: HOPPERS, the Daniel Chong-directed original that opened earlier this year to strong reviews yet only managed $389.5 million on a $150 million budget, which leaves it just shy of profitable once marketing and distribution costs are factored in.
HOPPERS followed ELIO, a troubled production that carried a final budget near $200 million and pulled in just $154 million worldwide in 2025, making it Pixar’s weakest earner since the pandemic-era ONWARD. Put together, the message from Disney brass seems clear: sequels sell, but original ideas need to be made for a lot less money if Pixar wants to keep making them.
This isn’t Disney’s first trim of the year. CEO Josh D’Amaro’s “One Disney” push already cost roughly 1,000 jobs earlier in 2026, hitting Marvel Studios’ art department along with the company’s AV, home video publicity and digital marketing divisions.
“Over the past several months, we have looked at ways in which we can streamline our operations in various parts of the company to ensure we deliver the world-class creativity and innovation our fans value and expect from Disney,” D’Amaro wrote in an April memo to staff, per TheWrap. “Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs.”
Pixar’s release slate reflects the belt-tightening. The studio will put out just one feature next year, GATTO, a painterly original from Enrico Casarosa, the director behind LUCA. The following year brings a second original alongside INCREDIBLES 3, directed by Peter Sohn and written by Brad Bird.
Movieguide® has tracked Pixar’s rocky few years closely, from the 175 layoffs in 2024 tied to the studio’s pivot away from Disney+ originals to the 2023 departure of LIGHTYEAR director Angus MacLane after that film’s box office stumble. The pattern holding steady across all of it: family audiences reward original stories that are well-told and well-priced, and they punish the ones that aren’t, no matter how big the studio behind them.
For Christian families who’ve grown up loving Pixar’s best work, from TOY STORY to THE INCREDIBLES, the hope is that leaner budgets push the studio back toward the kind of universally resonant, values-affirming storytelling that built its reputation in the first place, rather than chasing trends that don’t connect with the audience actually buying tickets.
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