Report: ‘Inside Out 2’ Artists Had To Crunch Seven Days A Week For Months To Finish Film

Working conditions at Pixar have deteriorated to an all-time low, according to a damning new exposé published on IGN.

The outlet spoke to 10 former Pixar employees, who were recently laid off as part of the largest employee cull in the studio’s history. The employees, who all chose to remain anonymous, spoke of a studio that is in disarray, driven by fear, and no longer operating with the best interests of its employees in mind.

The report reveals a lot of issues at the studio surrounding the production of Inside Out 2, which recently became the highest-grossing animated feature in history, as well as the studio’s upcoming film Elio. The Walt Disney Company declined to comment on the accusations made by former employees.

The entire story HERE, written by Alex Stedman, is packed with first-hand information on working conditions at the studio and worth reading in full. Here are some of the key findings from the investigation:

• The studio had a difficult crunch period to finish Inside Out 2, during which animators had to work seven days a week for an extended period of time. One former employee called it “the largest crunch in the studio’s history.” Said another source: “I think for a month or two, the animators were working seven days a week. Ridiculous amounts of production workers, just people being tossed into jobs they’d never really done before… It was horrendous.” Another said that the crunch lasted for months, from the end of the WGA strike in September 2023 through the end of production, and some employees worked weekends for the last four months of production.
• Morale at the studio is low and there is a big creative bottleneck as ideas have to run through chief creative officer Pete Docter to an “unhealthy degree.” Said one employee: “You cannot do anything without Pete. Literally nothing.” Another added: “The internal culture of Pixar right now is really rough. There is just an incredible amount of people who are like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”
• The top leadership at Pixar is no longer interested in the well-being of its employees and is acting only in their own self-interest. Said one person, “I think the biggest feeling that I heard around the studio before the layoffs and now even post-layoffs, talking to people who are still there, is everybody feels like the executives are really just acting in a fear-based way. Everything is to preserve their own power in their own jobs… So I think morale is really low because people no longer trust that they’re being led with their best interests at heart.”
• The studio has become more conservative in promoting younger talent and taking creative risks since Lightyear bombed at the box office. Pixar’s parent company, Disney, internally blamed the film’s failure on a same-sex kiss in the film, which has led to Docter’s decision to focus on “universal stories,” which one employee interpreted as “something that’s very homogeneous that anyone can relate to.” This led to major editing work on Inside Out 2 beginning in September 2023 to remove any “romantic chemistry” between Riley and Val and “just doing a lot of extra work to make sure that no one would potentially see them as not straight.”
• Workers at Pixar participate in a profit-sharing model when the films reach a certain unspecified threshold. Inside Out 2 was the first production in a while that achieved the bonus threshold, but most of the hundreds of workers who were let go immediately after the production of Inside Out 2 won’t receive a bonus. The lack of a bonus is especially hurtful to Pixar workers, since the studio touts bonuses as a key reason it won’t unionize with The Animation Guild. “We work all year for that bonus. That is what partially makes working at Pixar worth it… we depend on that,” one person said. Another added, “To be told by our HR reps that we were not going to qualify for that bonus felt like an ultimate ‘f*ck you’ from Disney.”
• While Kelsey Mann is the credited director of Inside Out 2, Pete Docter stepped in as an uncredited co-director on Inside Out 2. Said one employee: “I mean, you saw the end result of that. [Inside Out 2] made a billion dollars at the box office. That was a direct result of Pete’s involvement. Pete’s a genius. Nobody can dispute this.” One of the most interesting takeaways from the piece is that Docter himself is not the problem at the studio. According to IGN, “Many of the sources IGN spoke to generally don’t have particularly negative feelings toward Docter – it’s well known that, after all these years and a proven track record, he knows what he’s doing.” It would seem that Docter is trying his best to keep the ship afloat creatively while balancing corporate demands from Disney and preconceived audience expectations for an iconic brand like Pixar.
• The studio has implemented a new production workflow called ‘Long and Lean,” which is intended to create films at a slower place and with less staff, but the effort has backfired, as it slows down the development and writing process and creates a tighter schedule for production on the backend.
• The production of the studio’s upcoming film Elio, which has seen the original director Adrian Molina replaced with Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi, has been challenging. Said one worker, “It was rushed work, paranoid work, paranoid leadership, mixed messaging … You’re just working 24/7. And so after awhile, your body just starts breaking down.”
• Some former employees claim that the studio is repeating the same production mistakes with Elio. One said, “They learned nothing. And that’s the feedback I’m still getting when I’m just reaching out to [current employees]. …Right now, everyone’s on Elio. Things are exactly the same, how they were before. Everybody’s working crazy hours to get Elio fixed.”