The quote above comes from Ed Catmull.

I love a story about people who were absolutely clueless in the face of the “opportunity of their lifetime,” but they worked together relentlessly until they figured it out, realizing later they’d created history.

Today, when we think of animation, Pixar is the first name that comes to mind for most of us. Before 1995, it was Disney.

Did you know what changed that overnight? Toy Story. Buzz and Woody not only revolutionized animation forever, but they also stand as a quiet testimony to the biggest bet made by artists on machines and technology.

Let’s explore how the bet not only worked out for Pixar, but by the time Toy Story 3 was released in 2010, they had become synonymous with animation.

Flashback to the 1990s

Pixar’s Academy Award-winning short film Tin Toy (1988), starring Tinny, a tin one-man-band toy, impressed Disney executives.

Seeing the potential, Disney reached out to Pixar. In 1991, Pixar signed a deal with Disney for $26 million to jointly develop, produce, and distribute three feature-length animated films (per Time Magazine).

Signing the deal was undoubtedly brave on Pixar’s part and definitely a massive gamble. The company was founded in the 1970s and had only worked on short films and commercials so far.

Nobody had any production expertise on feature-length animations. Success meant creating the software and the hardware to accommodate it. The work was as ambitious as “inventing a new kind of movie altogether,” according to Time.

In his interview with Time, Ed Catmull said, “The entire company was bet upon us figuring this out.”

Reminiscing on that time, Catmull also admitted that if Toy Story had tanked at the box office in 1995, it would have taken the studio down with it.

About the Movies

The first Toy Story movie premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on November 19, 1995, and was widely released in the United States on November 22, 1995. Just in the opening weekend, Toy Story minted a whopping $29,140,617 (via The Numbers).

‘Toy Story’ Credit: Pixar

Before long, the movie had grossed 12.2 times its $30 million production budget.

The craze didn’t stop there as the markets overflowed with Toy Story merchandise, clearly proving that Woody and Buzz had left the audience wanting more of them.

Then came the news announcing Disney’s renewed 10-year deal with Pixar. The older three-film deal was replaced with a fresh and more promising contract with Pixar.

“The profit-sharing arrangement between Disney and Pixar covers not only the box-office revenue from the five movies but also the sale of related products like home videos, toys, and computer games,” The New York Times wrote.

The first film to be released under this new association was A Bug’s Life (1998), the story of a misfit ant searching for warriors who can save his colony from greedy grasshoppers.

A year later, in 1999, Toy Story 2 hit the theaters, and the audience went bonkers again. The sequel had superseded its prequel in terms of storytelling and visual effects. (And to think, Toy Story 2 was almost lost forever!)

After presenting the audience with a beautiful world of toys in the first film, the director of the second film, John Lasseter, focused more on the complexities of human emotion.

The story follows Woody’s kidnapping by a greedy toy collector, his rescue by his friends, and his momentary temptation to become immortal by being displayed in a museum. With lucid visuals and highly detailed computer-generated animation, Pixar once again won over the audience.

Then suddenly, a weird silence on the next Toy Story film. Within the course of those 11 years, numerous Disney-Pixar movies were released, including Monsters, Inc. in 2001, Finding Nemo in 2003, The Incredibles in 2004, Cars in 2006, Ratatouille in 2007, and WALL-E in 2008. However, there was no news on the next Toy Story film.

‘Toy Story 2’ Credit: Pixar

Toy Story 3 and Its Legacy

According to NBC 7 San Diego News, Toy Story 2’s co-director Lee Unkrich cited corporate friction between Pixar and Disney as the primary reason for the delay.

After Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in 2006, ending the corporate strife, Pixar was poised to prepare for the third film in its Toy Story franchise.

Unkrich said, “We had the idea of Andy growing up. This allowed us to think long and hard about what it would be like when it comes to that day as a toy when your owner is leaving you. It seemed like the right emotional place to set the story.”

Later, while accepting the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, Unkrich expressed how, looking back, he is thankful for the delay of Toy Story 3. He said, “You know, if we had made a Toy Story 3 right after Toy Story 2, 11 years ago, I don’t think we ever would have told the story that we chose to tell [today].”

Toy Story 3 was a significant emotional vindication for its makers, too, especially Unkrich. John Lasseter directed the first two films, but for the third, he passed on the torch to Unkrich, who worked as the co-director on films like Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., and Toy Story 2.

There was a tentative creative risk involved in this decision, which could only be navigated through Unkrich’s expertise in keeping the essence of the third film consistent with their predecessors.

At the Golden Globes, Unkrich said half-jokingly, “I didn’t want to go down in history as being the guy who made the cruddy sequel to the Toy Story movies.”

He also mentioned how he dived into “fear-based” filmmaking—how every single day he and his crew were mortally afraid of messing it up!

Toy Story 3 was a worthy second sequel of the Toy Story franchise. Following the life of Andy’s toys after he goes to college and they are donated to a daycare center, Toy Story 3 explores grown-up emotions.

Toy Story 3’s release in 2010 capped Pixar’s hot streak of Toy Story films. Each of the three Toy Story films had outperformed its predecessor at the box office. Toy Story 3 alone raked in a worldwide lifetime gross of $1,067,316,101, to become the first animated movie ever to surpass the $1 billion mark globally (via The Numbers).

With every single one of its other 11 films so far mining gold at the box office, Toy Story 3’s commercial and critical success presented Pixar with a legacy of its own.

Toy Story 3 is special to us because it marks the end of the toys’ journey with Andy as they embark on a new one with Bonnie. Although the Toy Story franchise doesn’t end with Toy Story 3, it serves as a bookend to a holy trilogy.