Who is affected by the Disney layoffs?
Disney has laid off hundreds of staff, with Pixar reportedly among the hardest hit. That is according to TheWrap, which secured official confirmation from a Disney spokesperson that the job losses also reach the company’s Disney Studios and Television divisions and its corporate functions.
“These changes are part of our continual evaluation of how we manage resources and reinvest across the company as our industry continues to evolve,” the spokesperson told TheWrap. The exact number of impacted employees has not been confirmed.
TheWrap describes this as the largest round of layoffs at Pixar since 2024, when the studio reportedly shed around 14 percent of its staff — roughly 175 employees — as content for Disney+ slowed. Those 2024 figures rest on TheWrap’s reporting rather than independent corroboration, so treat the exact numbers with that in mind. The current wave arrives in an industry where cuts have become grimly familiar; our sister site IGN Middle East has also been tracking the reaction, including Xbox players pushing back against studio closures and layoffs.
Was Hoppers really a box-office failure?
Independent box-office reporting does not support the idea that Hoppers was a flop. TheWrap says the Pixar cuts are “partially” being blamed on the film’s relative underperformance, noting it made $389.5 million globally against a $150 million production budget and calling that just shy of breaking even.
The wider record reads differently. Variety reported an $88 million worldwide opening for the original film, described by multiple outlets as Pixar’s strongest debut for an original title since 2017’s Coco. Fortune framed the film as a box-office success that broke Pixar’s cold streak on non-franchise stories, and it held the domestic top spot into its second weekend.
So the framing matters. The claim that layoffs are tied to Hoppers “underperforming” rests on TheWrap’s sources and internal accounting no one outside Disney can see. On the public numbers, Hoppers looks like the one recent original that worked.
What it means for Pixar’s future films
The reported takeaway is that Pixar now needs to make films — especially original ones — more cheaply. TheWrap frames the strategy shift around the gap between Pixar’s franchise performers and its original stories, and no direct executive quote confirming a formal budget policy appears in the reporting, so treat that as insider interpretation.
The studio’s slate reportedly runs from Gatto in 2027 to Incredibles 3 in 2028 and Coco 2 in 2029, with a third Monsters, Inc. film said to be in early development. Those titles and dates are not independently corroborated in the material available. The direction of travel is clear enough, though: more sequels, tighter budgets on anything new. It follows a run of hard calls at the studio, including the cancellation of Pixar’s Be Fri after three years in development.
For anyone who cares about Pixar doing new things rather than returning to familiar worlds, that is the part worth watching — regardless of how the current cuts are being explained.
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