Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.[1] The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot of the studio.
Pixar has produced 15 feature films, its first being Toy Story (1995) and the most recent being Inside Out (2015). Most of the films have received both critical and financial success with an exception being Cars 2 (2011), which, while commercially successful, received substantially less praise than Pixar's other productions.[7] All 15 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating a positive reception with audiences.[8] The studio has also produced several short films. As of October 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide,[9] with an average worldwide gross of $627 million per film.[10] Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and 13 of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films. Toy Story 3 is the third all-time highest, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen, which grossed $1.274 billion in its initial release, and Illumination Entertainment'sMinions, which has grossed $1.151 billion as of 2015, in comparison to Toy Story 3 's $1.063 billion.
The studio has earned 15 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Since the award's inauguration in 2001, most of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Seven have won, including Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3, as well as The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Brave (2012). Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Cars (2006) are the only films that were nominated for the award, but did not win it. Up and Toy Story 3 were also the second and third animated films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (the first being Disney's Beauty and the Beast). On September 6, 2009, executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the biennial Venice Film Festival. The award was presented by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.
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