Toy Story Collection

Toy Story (1995) was the first fully computer-animated feature film ever released, made by a then-small Pixar for Disney, which distributed it and would go on to acquire the studio outright in 2006.

The film nearly didn't survive its own production. Disney's then-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg pushed Pixar toward a harder-edged, more cynical tone, and the result was a version of Woody who was actively cruel — bullying the other toys and deliberately shoving Buzz out the window. When this cut, later nicknamed the "Black Friday reel," was screened for Disney executives on November 19, 1993, they were horrified by how unlikable the characters had become, and production was halted outright. Pixar was given about two weeks to prove they could fix it before Disney would decide whether to continue or cancel the film; the rewrite that followed turned Woody into the insecure but sympathetic character the series is built on.

Toy Story 2 (1999) had its own near-disaster. Disney originally planned it as a cheaper, direct-to-video sequel, then upgraded it to a full theatrical release once early story reels looked promising, compressing what should have been years of work into nine months. Partway through production, an employee ran a command that deleted roughly 90 percent of the film's files from Pixar's servers — and the backup system had been silently failing for weeks. The film survived because technical director Galyn Susman, working from home on maternity leave, happened to have her own copy on her home computer.

The gaps since have been long: eleven years between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 (2010), nine more to Toy Story 4 (2019), seven more to Toy Story 5 (2026). Each of the last three grossed over a billion dollars worldwide and competed for the Animated Feature Oscar. Toy Story 5 keeps the series' pattern of measuring itself against whatever actually threatens a child's attention at the time — this time, a high-tech tablet the toys have to compete with for Bonnie's attention.