Pixar Celebrates 30th Anniversary Today

Pixar turned thirty years old today, marking the animation studio’s milestone ahead of their seventeenth film, premiering later this year. Now a part of Disney, Pixar was born out of Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who initially intended the company to be a hardware maker of the Pixar Image Computer.

Starting with 1995’s Toy Story, Pixar began to revolutionize animation, introducing their unique brand of computer generated features that also explored deep emotional content. Their résumé is full of critical and financial successes, from the Toy Story franchise that started it all, to Cars, Wall-E, The Incredibles, Brave, Finding Nemo (which gets a sequel this year), Up, and many more. In 2006, Disney purchased Pixar after several films under co-production or distribution deals.

2015 saw two releases from the studio for in one calendar year for the first time. Inside Out had familiar critical and box office success for the company, becoming their second-highest grossing film and garnering two Oscar nominations. Unfortunately, their second release of the year, The Good Dinosaur, was a rare box office failure for the production power house. 2016 will see the release of Finding Dory, while 2017 will once again see two films premiere. New films in the Cars, Toy Story, and Incredibles franchises are all on the way, planned for the next three years.