
While Disney and Don Bluth were duking it out with hand-drawn masterpieces like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Land Before Time," a bunch of computer nerds in Northern California had a totally different idea. These former Lucasfilm employees thought they could make an entire movie using just computers, and Steve Jobs poured $10 million into a newly-created Pixar to see if they were right. What was the first film they released in theaters?
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The answer is: "Toy Story"
"Toy Story" crashed into theaters, and suddenly, those "computer nerds" didn't look so crazy after all. The whole thing came together with just 27 animators and a total crew of 110 people, who poured their hearts into making plastic toys feel more alive than most human characters on screen.
The path to infinity and beyond hit a few speed bumps along the way. The original Woody made even villains look like saints, bullying other toys in what he called a "toy-eat-toy world." Disney executives watched the first cut and practically sprinted to the phone to shut everything down. The Pixar team had two weeks to transform their sheriff into a sympathetic hero, and thankfully, they stuck that landing better than Buzz Lightyear's first "flying" attempt.
Their gamble paid off bigger than a claw machine jackpot. The movie went on to rake in over $300 million at the box office and become the second-biggest release of the year. That scrappy team of computer geeks had just changed movies forever, all because they wondered what shenanigans toys get up to when humans leave the room. Three sequels (with another on the way) and billions of dollars later, turns out Andy's toys had quite a few stories to tell.
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