Pixar Animation Studios

Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.[2] The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot for the studio.

Pixar has produced 16 feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), and its most recent being The Good Dinosaur (2015). Toy Story was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. All 16 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences.[3] The studio has also produced several short films. As of December 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide,[4] with an average worldwide gross of $593 million per film.[5] Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with the second being the third all-time highest animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen (2013) and Illumination Entertainment's Minions (2015), which grossed $1.276 billion and $1.157 billion in their initial releases as of 2015. Thirteen of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films.

The studio has earned 15 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Most of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since its inauguration in 2001, with seven winning; this includes Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3, along with The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Brave (2012). Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Cars (2006) are the only two films that were nominated for that award without winning it. Up and Toy Story 3 were also the second and third animated films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, the first being Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). On September 6, 2009, executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the biennial Venice Film Festival. This award was presented by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.

Production cycle
In July 2013, Pixar Studios President Edwin Catmull, said that the studio planned to release one original film each year, and a sequel every other year, as part of a strategy to release "one and a half movies a year."

Cancelled projects
A film titled Newt was announced in 2008, with Pixar planning to release it in the year of 2012, but was canceled in 2010. John Lasseter noted that the film's proposed plot line was similar to another film, Blue Sky Studios' Rio, which was released in 2011. In March of 2014, in an interview, Pixar president Edwin Catmull stated that Newt was an idea that was not working in pre-production. When the project was passed to the director of Up, Pete Docter, he pitched an idea that Pixar thought was better and that concept became Inside Out.

Possible future productions
Projects in development include a film by Teddy Newton, written by Derek Connolly, and a Mark Andrews film.

Co-production
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins is a traditionally animated direct-to-video film made in 2000 by Disney Television Animation with an opening sequence by Pixar. The film led to a television series with Pixar creating the CGI portion of the opening theme.

Related productions
John Carter is a live-action Disney film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel, A Princess of Mars, that was co-written and directed by Andrew Stanton. The film was released on March 9, 2012, and it received mixed reviews from critics and underperformed at the box office. Disney reported that they would lose $200 million on it.

Planes is a spin-off of the Cars franchise, made by DisneyToon Studios and co-written and executive-produced by John Lasseter. The film was conceived from the short film Air Mater, which introduces aspects of Planes and ends with a hint of the film. It was released on August 9, 2013. A sequel, Planes: Fire & Rescue, was released on July 18, 2014.