Timeline

Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He is best known for his film scores, earning accolades of six Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, two BAFTA Film Awards, and 15 Academy Award nominations. In a career that has spanned over four decades, he has scored numerous films including The Player (1992), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Little Women (1994), Meet Joe Black (1998), American Beauty and The Green Mile (both 1999), Pay It Forward (2000), In the Bedroom (2001), Road to Perdition and White Oleander (both 2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), WALL-E (2008), the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), Bridge of Spies (2015), 1917 (2019), and Elemental (2023). In television, Newman has composed music for the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (2001), the 2003 miniseries Angels in America, as well as the Netflix biographical crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024).

John Alan Lasseter ( LASS-ə-tər; born January 12, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator. He was previously the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering, and has served as the head of animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Lasseter began his career as an animator with the Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he collaborated on the then-groundbreaking usage of CGI animation.

Philip Bradley Bird (born September 24, 1957) is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He developed an interest in the art of animation early on, and completed his first short subject by age 14. Bird sent the film to Walt Disney Productions, leading to an apprenticeship from the studio's Nine Old Men. He attended the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s, and worked for Disney shortly thereafter.

Brenda Chapman (born 1962 or 1963) is an American animator, screenwriter, storyboard artist, and director. In 1998, she became the first woman to direct an animated feature from a major studio, DreamWorks Animation's The Prince of Egypt. In 2012, she directed the Disney/Pixar film Brave with Mark Andrews (and co-direction from Steve Purcell), becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Michael Giacchino ( jə-KEE-noh; Italian: [dʒakˈkiːno]; born October 10, 1967) is an American film, television, and video game score composer. He has received numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, as well as three Grammy Awards. Giacchino is known for his collaborations with directors J. J. Abrams, Brad Bird, Matt Reeves, Pete Docter, Colin Trevorrow, Jon Watts, J. A. Bayona, The Wachowskis, Taika Waititi, and Thomas Bezucha. His film scores include several films from the Mission: Impossible, Jurassic World, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Star Trek franchises, eight Pixar Animation Studios films, multiple Disney films, Rogue One, The Batman, and several other films.

Peter Hans Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American filmmaker and animator. He has served as chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar since 2018. He has directed the company's animated films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020).

Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. The studio started in 1974 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division. It was known as the Graphics Group before its spin-off as a corporation in 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.

Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor. A pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Jobs co-founded Apple Inc. with his early business partner Steve Wozniak as Apple Computer Company in 1976. After the company's board of directors fired him in 1985, he founded NeXT the same year and purchased Pixar in 1986, becoming its chairman and majority shareholder until 2007.

Daniel Scanlon (born June 21, 1976) is an American filmmaker, storyboard artist, and animator. He is best known for directing the Pixar animated films Monsters University (2013) and Onward (2020), with the latter nominating him for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

The Walt Disney Company, commonly and globally known as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Founded on October 16, 1923, as an animation studio by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Oliver Disney as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Disney operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before adopting its current name in 1986. In 1928, Disney established itself as a leader in the animation industry with the short film Steamboat Willie. The film used synchronized sound to become the first post-produced sound cartoon, and popularized Mickey Mouse, who became Disney's mascot and corporate icon.

Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American animated short film produced and released by Pixar. Written and directed by John Lasseter, the two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, "younger" Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball to the extent that it accidentally deflates. Luxo Jr. was Pixar's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left the Lucasfilm Computer Division. The film is the source of Luxo Jr., the mascot of Pixar.

Lee Edward Unkrich is an American film director, editor and writer. He is best known for his work with animation studio Pixar, which he joined in 1994 as an editor before being credited as a co-director on Toy Story 2 (1999).

Toy Story is a 1995 American animated adventure comedy film directed by John Lasseter, and written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow. The first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, it stars the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, and Jim Varney. In a world where toys come to life, Toy Story follows an old-fashioned cowboy doll named Woody (Hanks), who becomes jealous that a space cadet action figure, Buzz Lightyear (Allen) is replacing him as the favorite toy of their owner Andy. Following the success of the 1988 short film Tin Toy, Pixar was approached by Disney to produce a computer-animated feature film that was told from a small toy's perspective.

Andrew Ayers Stanton is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He is best known as the director and co-writer of the Pixar animated films Finding Nemo (2003), WALL-E (2008), Finding Dory (2016), and Toy Story 5 (2026). He also directed and co-wrote the live-action film John Carter (2012) for Walt Disney Pictures and directed the live-action film In the Blink of an Eye (2026) for Searchlight Pictures. For Pixar, Stanton was additionally the co-director and co-writer of A Bug's Life (1998), the co-writer of the first four Toy Story films (1995–2019) and Monsters, Inc. (2001), and occasional voice actor for various films, most notably Crush the Turtle from Finding Nemo.

Piper is a 2016 American animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Written and directed by Alan Barillaro, it was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Finding Dory on June 17, 2016. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 89th Academy Awards, becoming the first Pixar animated short to win the award since For the Birds in 2001. The short film involves a hungry baby sandpiper learning to overcome her fear of water.

For the Birds is a 2000 American animated short film produced by Pixar and written and directed by Ralph Eggleston. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2001. It debuted on June 5, 2000, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, and was shown alongside the theatrical release of the 2001 Disney/Pixar feature film Monsters, Inc. It is also available on home video versions of the film.

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is an Academy Award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the best animated feature film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001. For much of the Academy Awards' history, AMPAS was resistant to the idea of a regular award for animated features, considering there were simply too few produced to justify such consideration.

Turning Red is a 2022 American animated coming-of-age fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Domee Shi and written by Shi and Julia Cho. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, it marks the first Pixar feature film solely directed by a female director. It stars the voices of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Orion Lee. Set in Toronto, Ontario in 2002, the film follows Meilin "Mei" Lee (Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who transforms into a giant red panda when she experiences any strong emotion, due to a hereditary curse.

Finding Nemo is a 2003 American animated comedy-drama adventure film directed by Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote it with Bob Peterson and David Reynolds. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, and Geoffrey Rush. It tells the story of an overprotective clownfish named Marlin (Brooks) who, along with a forgetful regal blue tang named Dory (DeGeneres), searches for his missing son Nemo (Gould). Along the way, Marlin learns to take risks and comes to terms with Nemo taking care of himself.

Up is a 2009 American animated adventure comedy-drama film directed by Pete Docter and written by Bob Peterson and Docter. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film centers on Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), an elderly widower who, by attaching numerous helium balloons to his house, travels to South America with youngster Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) in order to fulfill a promise that he made to his late wife. Along the way, they befriend a talking dog (voiced by Peterson) as well as an exotic bird and encounter Carl's childhood idol Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer), who has sinister plans to capture the bird. Originally titled Heliums, Docter conceived the outline for Up in 2004 based on fantasies of escaping from life when it became too irritating.

The Incredibles is a 2004 American animated superhero film written and directed by Brad Bird. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, it stars the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Elizabeth Peña. Set in a retro-futuristic version of the 1960s, the film follows Bob (Nelson) and Helen Parr (Hunter), a superhero couple respectively known as Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, who hide their powers in accordance with a government mandate that outlawed superheroes, and attempt to live a quiet suburban life with their three children.

Ratatouille is a 2007 American animated comedy-drama film written and directed by Brad Bird, from a story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco and Bird. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo, Peter O'Toole, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn and Brad Garrett. The title refers to the French dish ratatouille, and also references the species of the main character, a rat. Set mostly in Paris, the plot follows a young rat Remy (Oswalt) who dreams of becoming a chef at Auguste Gusteau's (Garrett) restaurant and tries to achieve his goal by forming an unlikely alliance with the restaurant's garbage boy Alfredo Linguini (Romano).

WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 American animated romantic science fiction film directed by Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jim Reardon, based on a story by Stanton and Pete Docter. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, and Sigourney Weaver, with Fred Willard in a live-action role. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.

Domee Shi (; Chinese: 石之予; pinyin: Shí Zhīyǔ; born 8 September 1989) is a Canadian animator, film director and screenwriter. She has directed the short film Bao (2018) and the feature films Turning Red (2022) and Elio (2025), becoming the first woman to direct a short film and then the first woman with sole director's credit on a feature film for Pixar. Shi began working for Pixar in 2011 as a storyboard artist, contributing to multiple films, including Inside Out (2015), The Good Dinosaur (2015), and Toy Story 4 (2019). She was also an additional story artist for Incredibles 2 (2018).

Pixar RenderMan is a photorealistic 3D rendering software produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar uses RenderMan to render their in-house CGI animated movie productions and it is also available as a commercial product licensed to third parties. In 2015, a free non-commercial version of RenderMan became available.

Inside Out is a 2015 American animated coming-of-age film directed by Pete Docter who co-wrote it with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan. Inside Out follows the inner workings of the mind of Riley (Dias), a young girl who adapts to her family's relocation as five personified emotions administer her thoughts and actions. Docter conceived Inside Out in October 2009 after observing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older.

Angus MacLane is an American animator, filmmaker and voice actor, best known for his work at Pixar Animation Studios. He co-directed the film Finding Dory (2016) and made his solo feature directorial debut with the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear (2022). MacLane is also a Lego enthusiast and created the CubeDudes building format and designed a LEGO WALL-E that has become an official set from The Lego Group.

Coco is a 2017 American animated fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Lee Unkrich, and written by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich, the film stars the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor, Ana Ofelia Murguía and Edward James Olmos. It follows a 12-year-old boy in Mexico named Miguel (Gonzalez) who is accidentally transported to the Land of the Dead, where he seeks the help of his deceased musician great-great-grandfather to return him to his family and reverse their ban on music. The concept for Coco is inspired by the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead.

Bao is a 2018 American animated short film written and directed by Domee Shi and produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It is the first Pixar short film to be directed by a female director. It was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival before being released with Incredibles 2 on June 15, 2018. The film is about an aging and lonely Chinese Canadian mother suffering from empty nest syndrome, who receives an unexpected second chance at motherhood when she makes a steamed bun (baozi) that comes to life.

Edwin Earl Catmull is an American computer scientist and animator who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been recognized for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.

Soul is a 2020 American animated fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Pete Docter, who co-wrote it with Mike Jones and Kemp Powers, the film stars the voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, and Angela Bassett. It follows Joe Gardner (Foxx), a middle school teacher and aspiring pianist who falls into a coma following an accident and seeks to reunite his separated soul and body in time for his big break as a jazz musician. Docter conceived Soul in January 2016, examining the origins of human personalities and the concept of determinism.

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. In 2020, Hanks was ranked as the fourth-highest-grossing American film actor of all time. His numerous awards include two Academy Awards, seven Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards; he has also been nominated for five BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award. He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020.