Iger Was So Angry About ‘Lightyear’ He Fired the Execs Behind It

When you make one of the most disappointing movies of the year, heads are bound to roll. But before this week, Pixar Studios was mostly spared from Disney CEO Bob Iger’s 7,500 job cuts across the Walt Disney Company. Most of those cuts came from the television and movie departments at Disney. But now, the cuts have come to Pixar for the first time in a decade, and they mainly targeted the team behind Lightyear (2022). 

Director Angus MacLane was let go after a 26-year career at Pixar. MacLane worked on the senior creative team for hits such as Toy Story 4 (2019) and Coco (2017). He had a hand in almost every Pixar movie going back to A Bug’s Life (1998), including working as a co-director on Finding Dory (2016).

Also let go in the purge was Galyn Susman, the producer of Lightyear. Susman is famous in Pixar lore as the woman who saved Toy Story 2 (1999). Someone at the studio ran a command that accidentally erased 90 percent of the film, but Susman had a copy at home that saved the erased parts. Susman worked as a producer on Ratatouille (2007) and Toy Story 4. She had been with Pixar since its inception, having worked on the original Toy Story (1995). 

Neither MacLane nor Susman could be reached for comment. Reuters reached out to Pixar for comment. However, Michael Agulnek, Pixar’s vice president of worldwide publicity since 2015, had also been fired.

Lightyear was an epic failure for Pixar and the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The movie was produced for $200 million and only brought in $226.7 million at the box office. The film was widely panned by critics and accused of being too “woke” because it showed a same-sex relationship.

Pixar Studios is relatively tiny compared to some of Disney’s other holdings, with only 1,200 employees. But Pixar is known for generating some of Disney’s most famous characters, including Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Wall-E, and the Parr Family. It remains to be seen what effect these layoffs will have on the creative team at Pixar.

These layoffs are the last in CEO Bob Iger’s purge of the company. Iger announced earlier this year that he would lay off 7,000 employees to save more than $5.5 billion. Despite the massive layoffs over the last few months, Disney’s stock is still down nearly 10 percent since Iger’s last earnings call in early May.