ABSTRACT
On March 6, 2018, the twelfth anniversary of the purchase of Pixar by Disney, the movie powerhouse’s executives reminisced on what had made Pixar so successful. Back on May 5, 2006, when Disney bought Pixar, the combined value of the two companies was about $52 billion. In 1991, John Lasseter reviewed Pixar’s work in short films and commercials, and was confident enough in the company’s progress to propose the idea of producing an hour-long animated TV special. He pitched the idea to his previous studio, Disney, with the hope that the two companies could collaborate on the project. Pixar had competitors, among them, Disney Animation, Pacific Digital Images (PDI)/DreamWorks, Fox Studio, and Lucasfilm. In fact, two of the top five spots on the all-time grossing animation movies were occupied by PDI/DreamWorks, not Pixar. PDI/DreamWorks was founded in 1980 as PDI by Carl Rosendahl.
