Pixar Animation Studios (also known as simply Pixar) (/ˈpɪksɑːr/) is an American computer animation studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by The Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder.^[2] Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock,^[4][5] a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, the company's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.

Pixar has produced 21 feature films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film; its most recent film was Toy Story 4 (2019). All of the studio's films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least an "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences.^[6] The studio has also produced dozens of short films. As of July 2019, its feature films have earned approximately $14 billion at the worldwide box office,^[7] with an average worldwide gross of $680 million per film.^[7] Toy Story 3 (2010), Finding Dory (2016), Incredibles 2 (2018), and Toy Story 4 (2019) are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with Incredibles 2 being the third highest-grossing animated film of all time, with a gross of $1.2 billion; the other three also grossed over $1 billion. Moreover, 15 of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time.

The studio has earned 19 Academy Awards, 8 Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Many of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature since its inauguration in 2001, with the nine winners being: Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Brave (2012), Inside Out (2015), and Coco (2017); Monsters, Inc. (2001), Cars (2006), and Incredibles 2 (2018) are the three films that were nominated for the award without winning it; the films not nominated were Cars 2 (2011), Monsters University (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Finding Dory (2016), and Cars 3 (2017). Up and Toy Story 3 were also the second and third animated films, respectively, to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (the first being Walt Disney Animation Studios' Beauty and the Beast in 1991). Luxo Jr., a character from the studio's 1986 short film of the same name, is the studio's mascot.

On September 6, 2009, Pixar executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Film Festival. The physical award was handed to Lucasfilm's founder, George Lucas.

Pixar got its start in 1974 when New York Institute of Technology's (NYIT) founder Alexander Schure, who was also the owner of a traditional animation studio, established the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL), recruited computer scientists who shared his ambitions about creating the world's first computer-animated film. Edwin Catmull and Malcolm Blanchard were the first to be hired and were soon joined by Alvy Ray Smith and David DiFrancesco some months later, which were the four original members of the Computer Graphics Lab.^[9] Schure kept pouring money into the computer graphics lab, an estimated $15 million, giving the group everything they desired and driving NYIT into serious financial troubles.^[10] Eventually, the group realized they needed to work in a real film studio in order to reach their goal. Francis Ford Coppola then invited Smith to his house for a three-day media conference, where Coppola and George Lucas shared their visions for the future of digital moviemaking.^[11]

When Lucas approached them and offered them a job at his studio, six employees decided to move over to Lucasfilm. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, before they joined The Graphics Group at Lucasfilm.^[12][13]

The Graphics Group, which was one-third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Catmull from NYIT,^[14] where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab.

He was then reunited with Smith, who also made the journey from NYIT to Lucasfilm, and was made the director of The Graphics Group.

At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques—in particular the invention of the alpha channel (by Catmull and Smith).^[15] Years later, the CGL produced a few frames of an experimental film called The Works. After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES (for "renders everything you ever saw") and developed a number of critical technologies for CG—including "particle effects" and various animation tools.

In 1982, the team began working on special effects film sequences with Industrial Light & Magic. After years of research, and key milestones such as the Genesis Effect in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Stained Glass Knight in Young Sherlock Holmes,^[14] the group, which then numbered 40 individuals, was spun out as a corporation in February 1986 by Catmull and Smith. Among the 38 remaining employees, there were also Malcolm Blanchard, David DiFrancesco, Ralph Guggenheim, and Bill Reeves, who had been part of the team since the days of NYIT. Tom Duff, also an NYIT member, would later join Pixar after its formation.^[2] With Lucas' 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi, they knew he would most likely sell the whole Graphics Group. Worried that the employees would be lost to them if that happened, which would prevent the creation of the first computer animated movie, they concluded that the best way to keep the team together was to turn the group into an independent company. But Moore's Law also said that the first film was still some years away, and they needed to focus on a proper product while waiting for computers to become powerful enough. Eventually, they decided they should be a hardware company in the meantime, with their Pixar Image Computer as the core product, a system primarily sold to government agencies and the scientific and medical community.^[2][10][16]

In 1983, Nolan Bushnell founded a new computer-guided animation studio called Kadabrascope as a subsidiary of his Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres company (PTT), which was founded in 1977. Only one major project was made out of the new studio, an animated Christmas movie for NBC starring Chuck E. Cheese and other PTT mascots. The animation movement would be made using tweening instead of traditional cel animation. After the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, Bushnell started selling some subsidiaries of PTT to keep the business afloat. Sente Technologies (another division, was founded to have games distributed in PTT stores) was sold to Bally Games and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucasfilm. The Kadabrascope assets were combined with the Computer Division of Lucasfilm.^[17] Coincidentally, one of Steve Jobs' first jobs was under Bushnell in 1973 as a technician at his other company Atari, which Bushnell sold to Warner Communications in 1976 to focus on PTT.^[18] PTT would later go bankrupt in 1985 and be acquired by ShowBiz Pizza Place.

The newly independent Pixar (1986) was headed by Edwin Catmull as President and Alvy Ray Smith as Executive Vice President. While looking for investors, Steve Jobs showed interest, but initially, Lucas found his offer too low. Yet he eventually accepted after it turned out to be impossible to find other investors. At that point Smith and Catmull had been turned down 45 times; thirty-five venture capitalists and 10 large corporations had declined.^[19] Jobs, who had recently been fired from Apple,^[2] and was now founder and CEO of the new computer company NeXT, paid $5 million of his own money to George Lucas for technology rights and invested $5 million cash as capital into the company, joining the board of directors as chairman.^[2]

In 1985, while still at Lucasfilm, they had made a deal with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan to make a computer-animated movie called Monkey, based on the Monkey King. The project continued sometime after they became a separate company in 1986, but in the end, it became clear that the technology was simply not there yet. The computers were not powerful enough and the budget would be too high. So it was decided to focus on the computer hardware business some more years while waiting till Moore's law made a computer-animated feature possible.^[20][21]

At the time Walt Disney Studios was interested and eventually bought and used the Pixar Image Computer and custom software written by Pixar as part of their Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) project, to migrate the laborious ink and paint part of the 2D animation process to a more automated method.

In a bid to drive sales of the system and increase the company's capital, Jobs suggested to make the system available to mainstream users and released the product to the market.

Pixar employee John Lasseter, who had long been working on not-for-profit short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr. (1986) to show off the device's capabilities, premiered his creations at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics industry's largest convention, to great fanfare.^[22]

However, the Image Computer never sold well.^[22] Inadequate sales threatened to put the company out of business as financial losses grew.

Jobs invested more and more money in exchange for an increased stake in the company, reducing the proportion of management and employee ownership until eventually, his total investment of $50 million gave him control of the entire company.

In 1989, Lasseter's growing animation department, originally composed of just four people (Lasseter, Bill Reeves, Eben Ostby, and Sam Leffler), was turned into a division that produced computer-animated commercials for outside companies.^[1][23][24] In April 1990, Pixar sold its hardware division, including all proprietary hardware technology and imaging software, to Vicom Systems, and transferred 18 of Pixar's approximately 100 employees. That same year, Pixar moved from San Rafael to Richmond, California.^[25] Pixar released some of its software tools on the open market for Macintosh and Windows systems. RenderMan was one of the leading 3D packages of the early 1990s, and Typestry was a special-purpose 3D text renderer that competed with RayDream addDepth.

During this period Pixar continued its successful relationship with Walt Disney Animation Studios, a studio whose corporate parent would ultimately become its most important partner. As 1991 began, however, the layoff of 30 employees in the company's computer hardware department—including the company's president, Chuck Kolstad,^[26] reduced the total number of employees to just 42, essentially its original number.^[27] Yet Pixar made a historic $26 million deal with Disney to produce three computer-animated feature films, the first of which was Toy Story, a concept which was the product of the technological limitations CGI struggled with at the time.^[28] By then the software programmers, who were doing RenderMan and IceMan, and Lasseter's animation department, which made television commercials (and four Luxo Jr. shorts for Sesame Street the same year), were all that remained of Pixar.^[29]

Despite the total income from these projects the company continued to lose money and Jobs, as chairman of the board and now the full owner, often considered selling it.

Even as late as 1994 Jobs contemplated selling Pixar to other companies such as Hallmark Cards, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Oracle CEO and co-founder Larry Ellison.^[30] Only after learning from New York critics that Toy Story would probably be a hit—and confirming that Disney would distribute it for the 1995 Christmas season—did he decide to give Pixar another chance.^[31][32] For the first time, he also took an active leadership role in the company and made himself CEO. Toy Story went on to gross more than $373 million worldwide^[33] and, when Pixar held its initial public offering on November 29, 1995, it exceeded Netscape's as the biggest IPO of the year. In only its first half-hour of trading Pixar stock shot from $22 to $45, delaying trading because of un-matched buy orders. Shares climbed to $49 before closing the day at $39.^[1]

During the 1990s and 2000s, Pixar gradually developed the "Pixar Braintrust," the studio's primary creative development process, in which all directors, writers, and lead storyboard artists at the studio look at each other's projects on a regular basis and give each other very candid "notes" (the industry term for constructive criticism).^[35] The Braintrust operates under a philosophy of a "filmmaker-driven studio," in which creatives help each other move their films forward through a process somewhat like peer review, as opposed to the traditional Hollywood approach of an "executive-driven studio" in which directors are micromanaged through "mandatory notes" from development executives ranking above the producers.^[36][37] According to Catmull, it evolved out of the working relationship between Lasseter, Stanton, Docter, Unkrich, and Joe Ranft on Toy Story.^[35]

As a result of the success of Toy Story, Pixar built a new studio at the Emeryville campus which was designed by PWP Landscape Architecture and opened in November 2000.

Pixar and Disney had disagreements over the production of Toy Story 2. Originally intended as a straight-to-video release (and thus not part of Pixar's three-picture deal), the film was eventually upgraded to a theatrical release during production. Pixar demanded that the film then be counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused.^[38] Though profitable for both, Pixar later complained that the arrangement was not equitable. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution. Profits and production costs were split 50-50, but Disney exclusively owned all story, character and sequel rights and also collected a 10- to 15-percent distribution fee. The lack of story, character and sequel rights was perhaps the most onerous aspect to Pixar and set the stage for a contentious relationship.^[39]

The two companies attempted to reach a new agreement for ten months before it fell through in January 2004.

The new deal would be only for distribution, as Pixar intended to control production and own the resulting story, character and sequel rights themselves while Disney would own the right of first refusal to distribute any sequels.

Pixar also wanted to finance their films on their own and collect 100 percent of the profits, paying Disney only the 10- to 15-percent distribution fee.^[40] More importantly, as part of any distribution agreement with Disney, Pixar demanded control over films already in production under their old agreement, including The Incredibles (2004) and Cars (2006). Disney considered these conditions unacceptable, but Pixar would not concede.^[40]

Disagreements between Steve Jobs and then-Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner made the negotiations more difficult than they otherwise might have been. They broke down completely in mid-2004, with Disney forming Circle 7 Animation and Jobs declaring that Pixar was actively seeking partners other than Disney.^[41] Despite this announcement, Pixar did not enter negotiations with other distributors,^[42] although a Warner Bros. spokesperson told CNN, "We would love to be in business with Pixar. They are a great company."^[40] After a lengthy hiatus, negotiations between the two companies resumed following the departure of Eisner from Disney in September 2005. In preparation for potential fallout between Pixar and Disney, Jobs announced in late 2004 that Pixar would no longer release movies at the Disney-dictated November time frame, but during the more lucrative early summer months. This would also allow Pixar to release DVDs for their major releases during the Christmas shopping season. An added benefit of delaying Cars from November 4, 2005, to June 9, 2006, was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract, to see how things would play out between the two companies.^[42]

Pending the Disney acquisition of Pixar, the two companies created a distribution deal for the intended 2007 release of Ratatouille, if the acquisition fell through, to ensure that this one film would still be released through Disney's distribution channels. In contrast to the earlier Pixar deal, Ratatouille was meant to remain a Pixar property and Disney would have received only a distribution fee. The completion of Disney's Pixar acquisition, however, nullified this distribution arrangement.^[43]

In 2006, Disney ultimately agreed to buy Pixar for approximately $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal.^[44] Following Pixar shareholder approval, the acquisition was completed January 25, 2006. The transaction catapulted Jobs, who owned 49.65% of total share interest in Pixar, to Disney's largest individual shareholder with 7%, valued at $3.9 billion, and a new seat on its board of directors.^[5][45] Jobs' new Disney holdings exceeded holdings belonging to ex-CEO Michael Eisner, the previous top shareholder, who still held 1.7%; and Disney Director Emeritus Roy E. Disney, who held almost 1% of the corporation's shares. Pixar shareholders received 2.3 shares of Disney common stock for each share of Pixar common stock redeemed.

As part of the deal, John Lasseter, by then Executive Vice President, became Chief Creative Officer (reporting directly to President and CEO Robert Iger and consulting with Disney Director Roy E. Disney) of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios (including its division DisneyToon Studios), as well as the Principal Creative Adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, which designs and builds the company's theme parks.^[45] Catmull retained his position as President of Pixar, while also becoming President of Walt Disney Animation Studios, reporting to Iger and Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. Jobs' position as Pixar's chairman and chief executive officer was abolished, and instead, he took a place on the Disney board of directors.^[44]

After the deal closed in January 2006, Lasseter revealed that Iger had realized Disney needed to buy Pixar while watching a parade at the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland in September 2005.^[47] Iger noticed that of all the Disney characters in the parade, not one was a character that Disney had created within the last ten years since all the newer ones had been created by Pixar.^[47] Upon returning to Burbank, Iger commissioned a financial analysis that confirmed that Disney had actually lost money on animation for the past decade, then presented that information to the board of directors at his first board meeting after being promoted from COO to CEO, and the board, in turn, authorized him to explore the possibility of a deal with Pixar.^[48] Lasseter and Catmull were wary when the topic of Disney buying Pixar first came up, but Jobs asked them to give Iger a chance (based on his own experience negotiating with Iger in summer 2005 for the rights to ABC shows for the fifth-generation iPod Classic),^[48] and in turn, Iger convinced them of the sincerity of his epiphany that Disney really needed to re-focus on animation.^[47]

Lasseter and Catmull's oversight of both the Disney Animation and Pixar studios did not mean that the two studios were merging, however.

In fact, additional conditions were laid out as part of the deal to ensure that Pixar remained a separate entity, a concern that analysts had expressed about the Disney deal.^[50] Some of those conditions were that Pixar HR policies would remain intact, including the lack of employment contracts. Also, the Pixar name was guaranteed to continue, and the studio would remain in its current Emeryville, California, location with the "Pixar" sign. Finally, branding of films made post-merger would be "Disney•Pixar" (beginning with Cars).^[51]

Jim Morris, producer of WALL-E (2008), became general manager of Pixar. In this new position, Morris took charge of the day-to-day running of the studio facilities and products.^[52]

After a few years, Lasseter and Catmull were able to successfully transfer the basic principles of the Pixar Braintrust to Disney Animation, although meetings of the Disney Story Trust are reportedly "more polite" than those of the Pixar Braintrust.^[53] Catmull later explained that after the merger, to maintain the studios' separate identities and cultures (notwithstanding the fact of common ownership and common senior management), he and Lasseter "drew a hard line" that each studio was solely responsible for its own projects and would not be allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other.^[54][55] That rule ensures that each studio maintains "local ownership" of projects and can be proud of its own work.^[54][55] Thus, for example, when Pixar had issues with Ratatouille and Disney Animation had issues with Bolt (2008), "nobody bailed them out" and each studio was required "to solve the problem on its own" even when they knew there were personnel at the other studio who theoretically could have helped.^[54][55]

In November 2014, Morris was promoted to president of Pixar, while his counterpart at Disney Animation, general manager Andrew Millstein, was also promoted to president of that studio.^[56] Both continue to report to Catmull, who retains the title of president of both Disney Animation and Pixar.^[56]

On November 21, 2017, Lasseter announced that he was taking a six-month leave of absence after acknowledging "missteps" in his behavior with employees in a memo to staff.

According to The Hollywood Reporter and The Washington Post, Lasseter had a history of alleged sexual misconduct towards employees.^[57][58][59] On June 8, 2018, it was announced that Lasseter would leave Disney Animation and Pixar at the end of the year, but would take on a consulting role until then.^[60] Pete Docter was announced as Lasseter's replacement as chief creative officer of Pixar on June 19, 2018.^[61]

On October 23, 2018, it was announced that Ed Catmull would be retiring, and will stay in an adviser role until July 2019.^[62] On January 18, 2019, it was announced that Lee Unkrich would be leaving Pixar after 25 years.^[63]

On April 20, 2010, Pixar opened Pixar Canada in the downtown area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.^[64] The roughly 2,000 square meters studio produced seven short films based on Toy Story and Cars characters. In October 2013, the studio was closed down to refocus Pixar's efforts at its main headquarters.^[65]

When Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc. and Pixar, and John Lasseter, then-executive vice president of Pixar, decided to move their studios from a leased space in Point Richmond, California, to larger quarters of their own, they chose a 20-acre site in Emeryville, California,^[66] formerly occupied by Del Monte Foods, Inc. The first of several buildings, a high-tech structure designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson,^[67] has special foundations and generators to ensure continued film production, even through major earthquakes. The character of the building is intended to abstractly recall Emeryville's industrial past. The two-story steel-and-masonry building is a collaborative space with many pathways.

The digital revolution in filmmaking was driven by applied mathematics, including computational physics and geometry.^[68] In 2008, this led Pixar senior scientist Tony DeRose to offer to host the second Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival at the Emeryville headquarters.^[69]

While some of Pixar's first animators were former cel animators including John Lasseter, they also came from computer animation or were fresh college graduates.^[14] A large number of animators that make up the animation department at Pixar were hired around the time the studio released A Bug's Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003). Although Toy Story was a successful film, it was Pixar's first feature film at the time, becoming the first major computer-animation studio to successfully produce theatrical feature films. The majority of the animation industry was (and still is) located in Los Angeles while Pixar is located 350 miles (560 km) north in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, traditional hand-drawn animation was still the dominant medium for feature animated films.

With the scarcity of Los Angeles-based animators willing to move their families so far north to give up traditional animation and try computer animation, Pixar's new hires at this time either came directly from college or had worked outside feature animation.

For those who had traditional animation skills, the Pixar animation software Marionette was designed so that traditional animators would require a minimum amount of training before becoming productive.^[14]

In an interview with PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley,^[70] Lasseter said that Pixar's films follow the same theme of self-improvement as the company itself has: with the help of friends or family, a character ventures out into the real world and learns to appreciate his friends and family. At the core, Lasseter said, "it's gotta be about the growth of the main character and how he changes."^[70]

As of 2018, every Pixar feature film has included a character voiced by John Ratzenberger, who had famously starred in the TV show Cheers. Pixar paid tribute to their "good luck charm" in the end credits of Cars (2006) by parodying scenes from three of their earlier films, replacing all of the characters with motor vehicles. After the third scene, Mack (his character in Cars) realizes that the same actor has been voicing characters in every film.

Due to the traditions that have occurred within the film such as anthropomorphic animals and easter egg crossovers between films that have been spotted by Pixar fans, a blog post entitled The Pixar Theory was published in 2013 by Jon Negroni proposing that all of the characters within the Pixar universe were related.^[71][72][73]

Toy Story 2 was originally commissioned by Disney as a 60-minute direct-to-video film. Expressing doubts about the strength of the material, John Lasseter convinced the Pixar team to start from scratch and make the sequel their third full-length feature film.

Following the release of Toy Story 2 in 1999, Pixar and Disney had a gentlemen's agreement that Disney would not make any sequels without Pixar's involvement despite their own right to do so. After the two companies were unable to agree on a new deal, Disney announced in 2004 they would plan to move forward on sequels with/without Pixar and put Toy Story 3 into pre-production at Disney's then-new CGI division Circle 7 Animation. However, when Lasseter was placed in charge of all Disney and Pixar animation following Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, he put all sequels on hold and Toy Story 3 was canceled. In May 2006, it was announced that Toy Story 3 was back in pre-production with a new plot and under Pixar's control. The film was released on June 18, 2010 as Pixar's eleventh feature film.

Shortly after announcing the resurrection of Toy Story 3, Lasseter fueled speculation on further sequels by saying, "If we have a great story, we'll do a sequel."^[74] Cars 2, Pixar's first non-Toy Storysequel, was officially announced in April 2008 and released on June 24, 2011 as their twelfth.* Monsters University*, a prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001), was announced in April 2010 and initially set for release in November 2012;^[75] the release date was pushed to June 21, 2013 due to Pixar's past success with summer releases according to a Disney executive.^[76]

In June 2011, Tom Hanks, who voiced Woody in the Toy Story seriesseries]], implied that Toy Story 4 the works," although it had not yet been confirmed by the studio.^[77][78] In April 2013, Finding Dory, a sequel to Finding Nemo, was announced for a June 17, 2016 release.^[79] In March 2014, Incredibles 2 and Cars 3 were announced as films in development.^[80] In November 2014, Toy Story 4 was confirmed to be in development with Lasseter serving as director.^[81] However, in July 2017, Lasseter announced that he had stepped down, leaving Josh Cooley as sole director.^[82] Released in June 2019, Toy Story 4 ranks among the 40 top-grossing films in American cinema.^[83]

Toy Story was the first Pixar film to be adapted for television as Buzz Lightyear of Star Command film became the second with the help of Cars Toons series of 3-to-5-minute short films running between regular Disney Channel shows and featuring Mater (a tow truck voiced by comedian Larry the Cable Guy).^[84] Between 2013 and 2014, Pixar released its first two television specials, Toy Story of Terror!^[85] and Toy Story That Time Forgot. Monsters at Work, a television series spin-off of Monsters, Inc., is currently in development for Disney+.^[86][87]

All Pixar films and shorts to date have been computer-animated features, but so far, WALL-E has been the only Pixar film not to be completely animated as it featured a small amount of live-action footage while Day & Night is the only short to feature 2D animation. 1906, the live-action film by Brad Bird based on a screenplay and novel by James Dalessandro about the 1906 earthquake, was in development but has since been abandoned by Bird and Pixar. Bird has stated that he was "interested in moving into the live-action realm with some projects" while "staying at Pixar [because] it's a very comfortable environment for me to work in". In June 2018, Bird mentioned the possibility of adapting the novel as a TV series, with the earthquake sequence as a live-action feature film.^[88]

The Toy Story Toons short Hawaiian Vacation

Jim Morris, president of Pixar, produced Disney's John Carter (2012) which Andrew Stanton co-wrote and directed.^[89]

Pixar's creative heads were consulted to fine tune the script for the 2011 live-action film The Muppets.^[90] Similarly, Pixar assisted in the story development of Disney's The Jungle Book (2016) as well as providing suggestions for the film's end credits sequence.^[91] Both Pixar and Mark Andrews were given an "Special Thanks" credit in the film's credits.^[92] Additionally, many Pixar animators, both former and current, were recruited for a traditional hand-drawn animated sequence for the 2018 film Mary Poppins Returns.^[93]

Pixar representatives have also assisted in the English localization of several Studio Ghibli films, mainly those from Hayao Miyazaki.^[94]

Two original Pixar feature films are set for release in 2020.

Onward, directed by Dan Scanlon, is about a "suburban fantasy world" in which two teenaged brothers search for their missing father.^[95][96][97] It is slated for a March 6, 2020 release.^[98] The film will star Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Octavia Spencer.^[99]

Soul, directed by Pete Docter, will be released on June 19, 2020.^[100] A statement from the studio said "The film takes you on a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life's most important questions."^[100]

Three further films, with details yet to be revealed, have been announced.

The first will be released on June 18, 2021,^[102] followed by releases on March 18 and June 17, 2022.^[103]

The Pixar Co-op Program, a part of the Pixar University professional development program, allows their animators to use Pixar resources to produce independent films.^[104][105] The first CGI project accepted to the program was Borrowed Time (2016); all previously accepted films were live-action.^[106]

Since December 2005, Pixar has held exhibitions celebrating the art and artists of themselves over their first twenty years in animation.^[107]

Pixar celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006 with the release of its seventh feature film Cars, and held two exhibitions from April to June 2010 at Science Centre Singapore in Jurong East, Singapore and the London Science Museum in London.^[108] It was their first time holding an exhibition in Singapore.

The exhibition highlights consist of work-in-progress sketches from various Pixar productions, clay sculptures of their characters and an autostereoscopic short showcasing a 3D version of the exhibition pieces which is projected through four projectors. Another highlight is the Zoetrope, where visitors of the exhibition are shown figurines of Toy Story characters "animated" in real-life through the zoetrope.^[108]

Pixar celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2011 with the release of its twelfth feature film Cars 2, and held an exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California from July 2010 until January 2011.^[109] The exhibition tour debuted in Hong Kong and was held at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Sha Tin from March 27 to July 11, 2011.^[110][111] In 2013, the exhibition was held in the EXPO in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For 6 months from July 6, 2012 until January 6, 2013 the city of Bonn (Germany) hosted the public showing,^[112]

On November 16, 2013, the exhibition moved to the Art Ludique museum in Paris, France with a scheduled run until March 2, 2014.^[113] The exhibition moved to three Spanish cities later in 2014 and 2015: Madrid (held in CaixaForum from March 21 until June 22),^[114] Barcelona (held also in Caixaforum from February until May) and Zaragoza.^[115]

Pixar: 25 Years of Animation includes all of the artwork from Pixar: 20 Years of Animation, plus art from Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3

The Science Behind Pixar is a travelling exhibition that first opened on June 28, 2015, at the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts. It was developed by the Museum of Science in collaboration with Pixar. The exhibit features forty interactive elements that explain the production pipeline at Pixar. They are divided into eight sections, each demonstrating a step in the filmmaking process: Modeling, Rigging, Surfaces, Sets & Cameras, Animation, Simulation, Lighting, and Rendering. Before visitors enter the exhibit, they watch a short video at an introductory theater showing Mr. Ray from Finding Nemo and Roz from Monsters, Inc.

The exhibition closed on January 10, 2016 and was moved to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where it ran from March 12 to September 5. Afterwards, it moved to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California and was open from October 15, 2016 to April 9, 2017. It made another stop at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota from May 27 through September 4, 2017.^[116]

The exhibition opened in Canada on July 1, 2017 at the TELUS World of Science - Edmonton (TWOSE).

Pixar: The Design of Story was an exhibition held at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City from October 8, 2015 to September 11, 2016.^[117][118] The museum also hosted a presentation and conversation with John Lasseter on November 12, 2015 entitled "Design By Hand: Pixar's John Lasseter".^[117]

Pixar celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2016 with the release of its seventeenth feature film Finding Dory, and put together another milestone exhibition. The exhibition first opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan from March 5, 2016 to May 29, 2016. It subsequently moved to the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum National Museum of History, Dongdaemun Design Plaza where it ended on March 5, 2018 at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.^[119]