Toy Story (franchise)

Films

The Toy Story series consists of three CGI animated films: Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Toy Story 3 (2010). A fourth film, Toy Story 4, is in production and set for release in 2019. Toy Story was the first feature-length film to be made entirely using computer-generated imagery. The films were produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.

All three films were universally acclaimed, with the first and second films getting a perfect 100%, and the third a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The third film in the series is the third highest-grossing animated film and the 18th highest-grossing film of all time. It also became the third animated film in history to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, following Beauty and the Beast and Up.

Toy Story (1995)

Toy Story, the first film in the franchise, was released on November 22, 1995. It was the first feature-length film created entirely by CGI and was directed by John Lasseter. The plot involves Andy, an imaginative young suburban boy, getting a new Buzz Lightyear toy, causing Sheriff Woody, a vintage cowboy figure, to think that he has been replaced as Andy's favorite toy. Jealous, Woody tries to knock Buzz behind a table, but accidentally sends him out the window, causing the other toys to assume that he tried to murder Buzz. Determined to set things right, Woody attempts to save Buzz, and both try to escape from the house of the next-door neighbor Sid Phillips, who likes to torture and destroy toys. The film was critically and financially successful, grossing over $361 million worldwide. The film was later re-released in Disney Digital 3-D as part of a double feature, along with Toy Story 2, for a 2-week run, which was later extended due to its financial success.

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Toy Story 2, the second film in the franchise, was released on November 24, 1999. John Lasseter reprises his role as director. The plot involves Woody getting stolen by a greedy toy collector named Al. Buzz and several of Andy's toys set off to attempt to free Woody, who meanwhile has discovered his origins as a historic television star. Toy Story 2 was not originally intended for release in theaters, but as a direct-to-video sequel to the original Toy Story, with a 60-minute running time. However, Disney's executives were impressed by the high quality of the in-work imagery for the sequel, and were also pressured by the main characters' voice actors Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, so they decided to convert Toy Story 2 into a theatrical film. It turned out to be an even greater success than the original Toy Story, grossing over $497 million worldwide. The film was re-released in Disney Digital 3-D as part of a double feature, along with Toy Story, on October 2, 2009.

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Toy Story 3, the third film in the franchise, was released on June 18, 2010, 11 years after Toy Story 2. It is the first Toy Story film not to be directed by John Lasseter (although he remained involved in the film as executive producer), but by Lee Unkrich, who edited the first two films and co-directed the second. The plot focuses on the toys accidentally being dropped off at a daycare center while their owner, Andy, is getting ready to go away to college. The film contains over 150 new characters, according to Pixar. It is Pixar's highest-grossing film of all time worldwide and domestic, surpassing Finding Nemo. Toy Story 3 grossed more than the first and second films combined, making it the first animated film to have crossed the $1 billion mark. In August 2010, it surpassed Shrek 2, becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time until it was surpassed by Frozen, another Disney production, in March 2014. Toy Story 3 was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 2, 2010.

Toy Story 4 (2019)

In May 2010, Lee Unkrich stated that a fourth Toy Story film was not being planned. "Well, we don't have any plans for Toy Story 4," Unkrich said. "I'm flattered that people ask about it—it reminds me how much people love the characters, but it was really important to me with this film that we not just create another sequel, that it not just be another appendage coming off of the other two." Unkrich went on to say, "there may be opportunities for Woody and Buzz in the future, but we don't have any plans for anything right now." It was also reported that Hanks and Allen were signed on for a fourth Toy Story film if Pixar ever decided to produce one. In a BBC interview in 2011, Hanks said that he believed Pixar was working on a sequel. Disney denied the rumors saying, "nothing is official."

Toy Story 4 was officially announced by Disney during an investor's call on November 6, 2014, and was scheduled for release on June 16, 2017. John Lasseter would've returned to direct, while the screenplay will be written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack from a story by Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Unkrich. Galyn Susman will produce. The idea came from a conversation between Stanton and Lasseter, and the two of them started to work on the story in secret from everyone else since the year 2012, because they didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Lasseter has hinted that Toy Story 4 will be a love story. According to Lasseter, "Toy Story 3 ended Woody and Buzz’s story with Andy so perfectly that for a long time, we never even talked about doing another Toy Story movie. But when Andrew, Pete, Lee and I came up with this new idea, I just could not stop thinking about it. It was so exciting to me, I knew we had to make this movie—and I wanted to direct it myself."

In March 2015, Pixar president Jim Morris stated that the film will not be a continuation of the third film but will instead be a stand-alone sequel. The same month, Variety revealed that Josh Cooley, the head of story on Pixar's Inside Out, had been named the co-director of Toy Story 4. Around the same time, Lasseter revealed that the fourth film had been such a closely held secret at Pixar that even Morris and Edwin Catmull (president of both Pixar and Disney Animation, to whom Morris reports) did not know it was being discussed until Stanton had already finished a polished treatment. In August 2015, at the D23 Expo, Lasseter stated that the film would focus on the romance between Woody and Bo Peep. Its story will be built on the fact that Bo Peep was absent from the main story in Toy Story 3, with Woody and Buzz trying to find and bring her back. He also announced that Randy Newman will return to compose the soundtrack for the film.

Kristen Schaal confirmed that her character Trixie will return. It had also been confirmed that Don Rickles would return as Mr. Potato Head; however, Rickles had died on April 6, 2017 and reports stated that he did not get the chance to record dialogue for this film before his death. Two days later, Rickles' representative confirmed that he was unable to record any lines for the film.

In October 2015, Pixar announced that Toy Story 4 was delayed to June 15, 2018. In November 2015, it was reported Patricia Arquette had been added to the cast. In October 2016, it was announced that the release date was delayed again to June 21, 2019. In July 2017, at the D23 Expo, Lasseter announced he had stepped down as director due to having a busy schedule, but would stay on board as executive producer while Cooley would be upgraded to director and that Jonas Rivera would replace Galyn Susman as producer. It has also been confirmed that Bonnie Hunt will return as Dolly, Jodi Benson as Barbie, and Estelle Harris as Mrs. Potato Head.

Toy Story Treats

In 1996, Pixar created a series of shorts known as "Toy Story Treats" which were used as interstitials on ABC Family and Disney's One Saturday Morning. They did not necessarily follow the continuity from Toy Story, taking place before, during and after the events of the first film. They were aired roughly around the time of Toy Story's release to home video.. These shorts also appeared as bonus features on the "10th Anniversary Edition" DVD of the first film.

Television specials

Pixar has also developed two 22-minute Toy Story television specials. The first, a Halloween-themed special, titled Toy Story of Terror!, aired on October 16, 2013 on ABC, while the second, a Christmas-themed special titled Toy Story That Time Forgot, aired on December 2, 2014.

Toy Story of Terror!

A Halloween-themed 22-minute television special, titled Toy Story of Terror!, aired on ABC on October 16, 2013. It was directed by Angus MacLane, produced by Galyn Susman, with Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, Timothy Dalton, and Kristen Schaal reprising their roles of Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Mr. Potato Head, Rex, Mr. Pricklepants, and Trixie with Carl Weathers as Combat Carl and Stephen Tobolowsky as the motel manager. Michael Giacchino composed the music for the special. The film's soundtrack was released on October 15, 2013, on Amazon.com in digital format.

The special follows the toys on their road trip when a flat tire leads Bonnie and her mother to spend the night in a roadside motel. After one of the toys goes missing, the others begin to search for it, but they too are picked off one by one. The toys discover that they are being targeted by the hotel manager's pet iguana, Mr. Jones, who has been trained to steal the toys of his guests so that they can be sold via the Internet. The manager nearly succeeds in selling Woody and Jessie, but Jessie manages to escape—overcoming her old fear of being packed away in the process—and draw Bonnie's attention to the cabinet where the toys are being kept. As a result, Bonnie recovers her toys, and her mom calls in the police, who then presumably arrests the manager for theft.

Toy Story That Time Forgot

A Christmas-themed 22-minute television special, titled Toy Story That Time Forgot, aired on ABC on December 2, 2014. It was written and directed by Steve Purcell, and produced by Galyn Susman. Michael Giacchino, who composed the music for the first special, returned. Most of the regular cast reprised their roles, including Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz, Kristen Schaal as Trixie, Wallace Shawn as Rex, Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants, Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, and Joan Cusack as Jessie, with Kevin McKidd joining as a new character, Reptillus Maximus. Taking place after a Christmas season, the toys find themselves lost in the world when a set of the coolest action figures turns out to be dangerously delusional. It is up to Trixie to help the toys to return to Bonnie's room.

Toy Story Toons

In 2011, Pixar started releasing short animated films to supplement the Toy Story films, called Toy Story Toons. The shorts pick up where Toy Story 3 has left off, with Woody, Buzz, and Andy's other toys finding a new home at Bonnie's. So far, three shorts have been released; Hawaiian Vacation, Small Fry, and Partysaurus Rex. Another short, titled Mythic Rock, was in development in 2013 but was never released.

Hawaiian Vacation

Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation is a 2011 Pixar animated short directed by Gary Rydstrom. The short features characters from the Toy Story series and takes place after the events of Toy Story 3. It was released in theatres before Pixar's feature film Cars 2. In the short film, Ken and Barbie want to go to Hawaii with Bonnie's family, who had prior plans to vacation in Hawaii, but get left behind by mistakenly climbing into Bonnie's school bookbag instead of her luggage. Once in Bonnie's bedroom, Woody, Buzz and the other toys from the previous film attempt to console them by creating their own "Hawaiian vacation" for Barbie and Ken in Bonnie's bedroom.

Small Fry

Toy Story Toons: Small Fry, another Toy Story short, premiered before The Muppets. This marks the second time a Pixar short has screened with a non-Pixar film, after Tokyo Mater screened with Bolt. Directed by Angus MacLane, the short involves Buzz getting trapped at a fast food restaurant at a support group for discarded toys, with a kids' meal toy version of Buzz taking his place.

Partysaurus Rex

Toy Story Toons: Partysaurus Rex, the third of the series of animated shorts, was released with the theatrical 3D re-release of Finding Nemo. Directed by Mark Walsh with music composed by electronic artist BT, the short involves Rex getting left in the bathroom and making friends with bath toys.

Box office performance

Toy Story's first five days of domestic release (on Thanksgiving weekend), earned the film $39,071,176. The film placed first in the weekend's box office with $29,140,617, and maintained its number one position at the domestic box office for the following two weekends. It was the highest-grossing domestic film in 1995, and the third highest-grossing animated film at the time.

Toy Story 2 opened at #1 over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, with a three-day tally of $57,388,839 from 3,236 theaters. It averaged $17,734 per theater over three days during that weekend, and stayed at #1 for the next two weekends. It was the third highest-grossing film of 1999.

Toy Story 3 had a strong debut, opening in 4,028 theaters and grossing $41,148,961 at the box office on its opening day. In addition, Toy Story 3 had the highest opening day gross for an animated film on record. During its opening weekend, the film grossed $110,307,189, making it #1 for the weekend; it was the biggest opening weekend ever for any Pixar film. Toy Story 3 stayed at the #1 spot for the next weekend. The film had the second highest opening ever for an animated film. It was the highest-grossing film of 2010, both domestically and worldwide. Toy Story 3 grossed over $1 billion, making it the seventh film in history, the second Disney film in 2010, the third Disney film overall, and the first animated film to do so.

Critical and public response

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the Toy Story trilogy is the most critically acclaimed trilogy of all time. The first two films received a 100% "Certified Fresh" rating, while the third holds a 99% "Certified Fresh" rating. According to the site, no other trilogy has had all of its films so highly rated - the Before Sunset trilogy comes closest with 98%, and Dollars trilogy and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy come after with average ratings of 95% and 94% respectively, while the Toy Story trilogy has an average of an almost perfect 99.7%.

According to Metacritic, the Toy Story trilogy is tied as the most critically acclaimed trilogy of all time, it and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy each having an average rounded score of 91 out of 100. As of 20 July 2010, every film in both trilogies is placed in the Top 100 of the site's Best Reviewed Movies List.

According to CinemaScore, polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave the series an average grade of "A", "A+", "A" respectively on an A+ to F scale.

Accolades

Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Original Song for Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me". John Lasseter, the director of the film, also received a Special Achievement Award for "the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film". Toy Story was also the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. At the 53rd Golden Globe Awards, Toy Story earned two Golden Globe nominations - Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Original Song. It was also nominated for Best Special Visual Effects at the 50th British Academy Film Awards.

Toy Story 2 won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and earned a single Academy Award nomination for the song "When She Loved Me" performed by Sarah McLachlan. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was introduced in 2001 after the first two Toy Story installments.

Toy Story 3 won two Academy Awards – Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. It earned three other nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Sound Editing. It was the third animated film in history to be nominated for Best Picture, after Beauty and the Beast and Up. Toy Story 3 also won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and the award for Best Animated Film at the British Academy Film Awards.

Cast and characters

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is a spin-off TV series. The series takes place in the far future. It features Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Patrick Warburton), a famous, experienced Space Ranger who takes a crew of rookies under his wing as he investigates criminal activity across the galaxy and attempts to bring down Evil Emperor Zurg once and for all. It aired on ABC from August 8, 2000 to January 13, 2001.

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins (2000)

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins is a spin-off animated direct-to-video film, partially based on Toy Story. The film was released on August 8, 2000. It acts as a pilot to the television series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and features Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear, who is voiced by Patrick Warburton in the main series. In this film, Buzz Lightyear is a space ranger who fights against the evil Emperor Zurg, showing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear toyline that exists in the Toy Story series. Although the film was criticized for not using the same animation as in Toy Story and Toy Story 2, it sold three million VHS and DVDs in its first week of release.

Comic books

Video games

Pixar created original animations for the games, including fully animated sequences for PC titles.

Woody and Buzz Lightyear were originally going to appear as summons in the Final Mix version of the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts II. They were omitted from the final product, but their models appear in the game's coding, without textures. The director of the Kingdom Hearts series, Tetsuya Nomura, stated that he would like to include Pixar property in future Kingdom Hearts games, given Disney's purchase of Pixar. A world based on Toy Story will make its debut appearance in the series in Kingdom Hearts III, marking the first time that a Pixar-based world appears in the series. The world's story will take place between the events of Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, owing to Pixar's condition that the game not follow any of the films' plots.

Merchandising and software

Toy Story had a large promotion before its release, leading to numerous tie-ins with the film including images on food packaging. A variety of merchandise was released during the film's theatrical run and its initial VHS release including toys, clothing, and shoes, among other things. When action figures for Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody were created, they were initially ignored by retailers. However, after over 250,000 figures were sold for each character before the film's release, demand continued to expand, eventually reaching over 25 million units sold by 2007. Also, Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story and Disney's Activity Center: Toy Story were released for Windows and Mac. Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story was the best selling software title of 1996, selling over 500,000 copies.

Theme park

Totally Toy Story

Totally Toy Story was an instant theme park and a promotional event for the Toy Story movie premiere held at El Capitan Theatre and Masonic Convention Hall.

For the November 18, 1995 Toy Story premiere at El Capitan Theatre, Disney rented the Masonic Convention Hall, the next door building, for Totally Toy Story, an instant theme park and a promotional event for the movie. Movie goers paid an additional fee for the pop up park. The promotional event had pre-sales over $1 million and remained opened until January 1, 1996. The Toy Story Funhouse part was moved to Disneyland's Tomorrowland and opened there on January 27, 1996 and closed on May 27, 1996.

Totally Toy Story, while in Hollywood, consisted of "Toy Story Art of Animation" exhibit in El Capitan's basement and the Toy Story Funhouse at the convention hall. The fun house consisted of 30,000-square-foot of various attractions. These attractions continue the story of the movie with the toys life-size.

Attractions

Toy Story Funhouse attactions

Impact

Toy Story's innovative computer animation had a large impact on the film industry. After the film's debut, various industries were interested in the technology used for the film. Graphics chip makers desired to compute imagery similar to the film's animation for personal computers; game developers wanted to learn how to replicate the animation for video games; and robotics researchers were interested in building artificial intelligence into their machines that compared to the lifelike characters in the film. Various authors have also compared the film to an interpretation of Don Quixote as well as humanism.

Gromit Unleashed

In 2013, Pixar designed a "Gromit Lightyear" sculpture based on the Aardman Animations character Gromit for Gromit Unleashed which sold for £65,000.

To infinity and beyond!

Buzz Lightyear's classic line "To infinity and beyond!" has seen usage not only on T-shirts, but among philosophers and mathematical theorists as well. Lucia Hall of The Humanist linked the film's plot to an interpretation of humanism. She compared the phrase to "All this and heaven, too!", indicating one who is happy with a life on Earth as well as having an afterlife. In 2008, during STS-124, astronauts took an action figure of Buzz Lightyear into space on the Discovery Space Shuttle as part of an educational experience for students that also stressed the catchphrase. The action figure was used for experiments in zero-g. Also, in 2008, the phrase made international news when it was reported that a father and son had continually repeated the phrase to help them keep track of each other while treading water for 15 hours in the Atlantic Ocean.

Live-action Toy Story

In January 2013, a fan-made live-action version of the first film was posted on YouTube that received more than 17 million views before being taken down by Disney for copyright of the audio. In February 2016, the video returned to YouTube.