Welcome to Cheat Sheet, where we give you all the intel you need about iconic franchises! In honour of its fifth instalment heading to cinemas, this month we're looking at landmark animated film series Toy Story.
Toy Story has led the way in computer-generated animation and modern storytelling for children since bursting onto screens more than 30 years ago.
More than six years have passed since we last caught up with Andy's (now Bonnie's) toys.
Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the gang are back for Toy Story 5, and now they're taking on tech.
Here's what you need to know before you head to the cinema.
The history of Toy Story
Back in the early 90s, Pixar wasn't the powerhouse blockbuster maker we know today. The computer and animation company was an Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed money pit. Still years out from its first feature films, even changing hands from Lucasfilm to Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't make the innovative company turn a sizeable profit.
The animation landscape at the time was still in the grasp of predominantly 2D, hand-drawn movies dominated by industry leaders Disney, which had just managed to grasp a Best Picture nomination for 1991's Beauty and the Beast — the first animated movie to achieve the feat.
Beauty and the Beast's Best Picture nomination opened the door for other animated films at the Academy Awards.( Supplied: Disney ) But Pixar had something Disney wanted: director John Lasseter, a former Disney employee who created Pixar's Tin Toy in 1988, which became the first computer-generated artwork to win the Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated).
When Lasseter refused to return to his former workplace, Disney inked a $ US26 million deal with Pixar to produce three computer-generated films — the first of which would eventually become Toy Story.
John Lasseter (second from left) with his Oscar for Tin Toy at the 1989 Academy Awards.( Getty: Bob Riha, Jr. ) With the deal signed in 1991, what followed was four years of too many cooks. Lasseter's original idea for Toy Story, which involved a ventriloquist dummy lead, was formed into a script with Andrew Staton and Pete Docter.
It went through numerous rewrites before it resembled the buddy comedy we know today, with Disney eventually pulling screenwriters Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow and, later, Joss Whedon onto the project.
Early sketches of Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear.( Pixar ) It came to a head in 1993 when Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and other cast members started recording their lines. The first half of the movie was screened for Disney execs and admonished for being too serious, for painting Woody as too much of a jerk, and over the chemistry between leads being "awkward" .
With a ballooning budget and a creative team sent back to the storyboard, the future of Toy Story was in doubt. Lasseter and the team took three months to rewrite the script to tone down Woody's tyrant leanings and include more scenes that would appeal to both adults and children.
On November 22, 1995, Toy Story was released in the US as the first entirely computer-generated feature film in cinema history.
The impact of Toy Story
The original release of Toy Story netted $US362 million at the box office, surpassing the expectations of Disney and Pixar.
Beyond the monetary success, audiences and critics were enthralled with the mature, thoughtful storytelling devoid of princesses and big musical numbers, as well as its groundbreaking use of computer-generated 3D animation. It was nominated for three Academy Awards the following year; two for its Randy Newman-penned soundtrack and one for Best Original Screenplay — the first animated film to achieve such a nomination.
Despite missing out on all three, Lasseter was honoured with a Special Achievement Academy Award for "the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film".
Talks for a sequel began soon after Toy Story's release, but Disney pushed for a direct-to-video release after finding success with other DTVs like Aladdin sequel The Return of Jafar, which had made $US300 million on physical media alone.
It wasn't until 1997 when Disney execs started to see the first reels out of production that the project was pivoted to a theatrical release.
The next year, with production well underway, an anonymous employee accidentally entered a deletion code on Pixar's Toy Story 2 root folder, which wiped almost 90 per cent of the work done up until that date. The film was rescued when technical director Galyn Susman, who was working remotely while caring for her newborn, presented a back-up copy on her home computer, allowing Pixar to retrieve the work. The woman who saved what has become one of Pixar's most beloved animated films was made redundant by Disney in 2023 , along with about 7,000 other employees.
Released nearly four years to the day after the original, Toy Story 2 was praised as glowingly as its predecessor but far surpassed it at the b…
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