Galyn Susman — the longtime Disney producer who’s credited with saving “Toy Story 2” — just got the boot alongside several other Pixar employees … and fans are pissed.
The news came down Saturday from Reuters, which reported Susman was one of 75 Pixar workers who recently gotten the axe in mass layoffs. She was one of 3 key Pixar people to be let go … the others included Michael Agulnek — Pixar’s VP of worldwide publicity — and ‘Lightyear’ director Angus MacLane, who was involved in other Pixar flicks too.
The firings are reportedly tied to the bomb that was last year’s ‘Lightyear’ … a movie based on the “real” Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans. It had a budget of about $200 mil, and only made $226 mil at the worldwide box office … not to mention middling reviews.
While the film didn’t do well, many are saying that scapegoating — and ultimately canning — the execs/producers tied to its development is cold-blooded … especially as it pertains to Galyn, who played a very important in preserving what was left of ‘TS2’ at the time.
It’s the stuff of legends — and this story’s been repeated several times by Disney execs over the years. There was some kind of glitch in Disney’s computers that literally deleted upwards of 90% of the movie back then as it was about a year out from its imminent release date.
The studio was scrambling to preserve whatever was left, but from the looks of it … they were going to have to start from scratch — that is, until Galyn came to the rescue with a backup copy … which she fortunately had in her possession due to her WFH/maternity leave.
In the end, Disney remade the movie anyway — creating a different version from what Galyn had saved — but her extra files undoubtedly saved them a lot of time/work/money.
Now, she’s without a job … and Twitter users think that stinks on the part of the Mouse House. As they say — that’s showbiz, baby. Loyalty and IOUs have expiration dates.