Disney’s announced layoffs extended to Pixar on Saturday, and among the 75 staffers released was Galyn Susman, known to Disney fans as the woman who saved the 1999 hit “Toy Story 2.”
More recently, Susman was the producer of last year’s box-office bomb “Lightyear,” which was made for $200 million and only grossed $226.7 million in worldwide ticket sales and left many critics underwhelmed, Reuters reported. In contrast, “Incredibles 2″ a Pixar film with a similar production budget released in 2018, grossed $1.2 billion in 1998 worldwide box office sales, according to IMDB.
“Lightyear,” the origin story for the much-loved character Buzz Lightyear, got a 74% rating and three stars on Rotten Tomatoes.
Susman, who had been with Pixar before the release of “Toy Story 2” in 1999, was among executives and members of the creative staff that were let go, Pixar’s first serious staff reduction in more than a decade. “Lightyear” director Angus MacLaine was also fired, along with Michael Agulnek, Pixar’s vice president of worldwide publicity, according to Reuters.
Back in 1998, when “Toy Story 2″ was in production, all work up to that point was lost because of an erroneous deletion command executed on Pixar’s servers, The New Web reported. Susman was on maternity leave, working from home, and had a backup copy of the film on her personal computer, according to Gizmondo. Pixar was able to recover almost all of what they lost. The movie went on to make $497 million worldwide, figures from IMDB show.
The cuts were part of Disney chief executive Bob Iger’s previously announced plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs and cut $5.5 billion in costs,” Reuters reported.
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