Much to everyone's surprise, Pixar has conducted a rare layoff of its employees. But, what's more shocking is that among those affected by the job cuts are two of the company's executives that worked on the box office disaster, one of which has arguably the most epic story in animation history.
According to Reuters' sources, Lightyear director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman were among the 75 employees let go by the famed animation studio. MacLane, a 26-year veteran, was part of the senior creative team for Toy Story 4 and Coco. He co-directed Finding Dory before making his solo directorial debut with Lightyear.
Susman has been with the company since it released the first Toy Story movie in 1995. She has one of the most legendary stories in the history of Pixar. During the development of Toy Story 2, an animator accidentally wiped the server for the movie, deleting almost all of the work. Luckily for the team, Susman was working from home as she was taking care of her newborn child. It was her backup copy that saved the movie.
Michael Agulnek, Pixar's vice president of worldwide publicity since 2015 has also been let go as a part of the layoffs. The executives could not be reached for a comment on the job cuts.
The layoffs happened last May 23 and are part of Disney CEO Bob Iger's plan tolet go of 7,000 jobs and reduce company expenditure by $5.5 billion. Disney has restructured the organization and combined the film and television units into a single entity called Disney Entertainment. The company has removed its distribution division as part of the restructuring process.
