Joe Morgenstern on Finding Pixar:
Pixar succeeds where other studios stumble because, within its corporate culture, the collegiality is accompanied by a system of relentless, sometimes even pitiless self-scrutiny. Story artists and animators submit themselves and their work willingly, though not always happily, to daily or weekly sessions of peer — and boss — review in which, as one director put it, ‘we ask them to drop their pants, and they do.’ When problems emerge, they’re met head-on, rather than with the oft-heard remark that ‘we’ll fix it in the editing.’The most dramatic example of this commitment came in 1996, after the phenomenal success of the studio’s first feature, ‘Toy Story.’ Disney, Pixar’s distribution partner, suggested a direct-to-video sequel. For Pixar, whose staff had already plunged into producing ‘A Bug’s Life,’ the new project required hiring a new crew. For the next two years, the ‘Toy Story 2′ recruits labored on their film, which looked promising enough to be promoted to the status of a theatrical release. In the fall of 1998, with ‘A Bug’s Life’ recently finished, Pixar’s top brass looked closely at what the ‘Toy Story 2′ people had wrought, judged it a fiasco and decided that the wisest course was to shut down production and eat the ensuing losses, rather than release an inferior product.
Disney disagreed, insisting that Pixar continue work on the film in order to meet its release date. Pixar executives, after emergency meetings with the ‘Toy Story 2′ staff, told Disney that the film would be completely redone. To Disney’s dismay, production came to a screeching halt. Much of the new team was fired. Veterans of the first ‘Toy Story,’ still recovering from the intensity of their work on ‘A Bug’s Life,’ were brought back to work on the sequel. The script was rewritten in three months, and animated in seven months. Many staffers worked 100-hour weeks, sleeping under their desks, but the result was an unqualified triumph. By every measure, artistic or financial, ‘Toy Story 2,’ released for Thanksgiving in 1999, was at least as good as the original, if not better.