Pixar to undergo 20% layoffs in 2024

Imagine working somewhere and then reading "The studio stressed the layoffs are not imminent, but will take place later this year as Pixar focuses on making less content". Then having to go to work each day at a place that keeps saying we are all family here knowing that 2/10 of you are going to get axed. I have to think they will lose at least 10% just through attrition. Although for many of those people I would imagine they have landed their dream job; feel bad for them.

This is a classic layoff debate -- is it better to do it with zero warning, or is it better to let employees know that a layoff is coming?

Personally, I believe advance notice is better, because it signals to employees that, if layoffs are going to happen, there will be some time to prepare. By choosing to blindside employees, it creates a culture of paranoia, IMO. ("Will today be layoff day?" "What about next month?" "Oh no, it's the end of the quarter, does that mean tomorrow my laptop will lock up at 4am?")

In my experience, your best talent then leaves. Which is the opposite of what you want.

No where to leave. Industry is dead rn, at least if you're an SWE in Silicon Valley. All open positions are paying 50% less.

Not even remotely true. Levels.fyi says SWE salaries are basically flat over the last year, which matches my experience.

https://www.levels.fyi/2023/

... inflation happened. Flat salaries is a 20-30% paycut.

From 2019 maybe.

2023 inflation was ~3.5%

3.4% according to the latest number released in the past 24 hours.

That's interesting, because:

- soda is up about 50% for name brand, and generic soda is up around 80%

- diesel is up, what 50%? how much is regular gas in california?

- housing "values" where I am at are up 25-40% in the last two years

- Potato chips are up at least 40%

- Apples are much more expensive

- Restaurants are up at least 25%, some 50-75%

Many of these products went up by these amounts yet also engaged in shrinkflation. The biggest example of this is Chipotle which almost doubled the cost of its burritos but also shrunk them in size by about a third.

Governments are motivated to reduce inflation in inflation statistics. Perhaps the cost of goods for the ultra-rich hasn't really changed much, but for the poor (or cheap) they have all gone up quite dramatically in two years.

I don’t know which of you is right, but I think you’re saying different things. They’re saying positions that are actually open right now are paying less, and you’re saying salaries for existing employees are flat. They could be right if the positions which are open are only recruiting those with lower salary expectations.

If you can't collude on salaries, you can collude on layoffs which will drive salaries down if at large enough scale.

If you can collude on layoffs, that means industry demand for labor is down and salaries are reflecting lowered demand.

(which is to say that is just natural market forces, not collusion)

If you can collude on layoffs, that means industry demand for labor is down and salaries are reflecting lowered demand.

No it doesn't. You make a "gentleman's agreement" to do your layoffs and trust your chums to keep to it. Are you arguing that industry collusion is impossible?

Do you have any evidence of industry collusion? Else, this sounds like tinfoil hat stuff.

The "silicon valley anti-poaching agreement" is a known case where it happened a few years ago. So it's not too implausible to think that the current round of layoffs might be being coordinated in a similar way.

All you have to do is look at how these things play out. One large company announces they're considering layoffs, which primes everyone else to compile their own lists.

After a month or two one company announces they're going through with layoffs, and that sets off a chain reaction for the rest to execute their own plans as soon as possible. It always happens like this. Everyone just decides now is the time to clean house, all at the same time, and we all decided to do this independent of each other...

The "collusion" is a dog-whistle protocol happening in plain sight. There is no "evidence," no damning email to be found, only behavioral patterns to observe. It's the same playbook every single time.

What do you mean 50% less? That sounds off.. by a lot. Salaries have either flattened or increased a bit from last year for SWEs

If I may suggest am interpretation: different kind of professionals may see different things. E.gm I'm told the market rate for react devs dropped like a brick, which is not the case for other software engineers.

If you call yourself a react dev, then I’m sorry you’re not a software engineer. That’s like calling urself a Facebook marketer instead of a marketer. Good way to box yourself into a niche that may run out of demand

I think this is one of those situations where the optimal strategy for one interaction is very different to that for multiple, iterative interactions. The company has to presumably hire again in the future, and having a reputation for firing without notice may make it harder to attract the people you want.

"firing without notice": First, not legal in California where most of their highest skilled people work (Emeryville, last that I knew). These people will probably will receive (very) large severance packages worth months of pay. Plenty of time to find a new job. If they are very high skill, it will be easy to find a new role. Also, reputation for an employer is quickly forgotten if salaries are high enough. Please don't forget how many people went to work on dumb projects at the height of Facebook. After the Metaverse was cancelled and many people were laid off, suddenly a bunch of blog posts appeared: "That place was awful to work, but they paid me lots of money." (Example: Eric Lippert) Investment banking is similar. In short, if you pay enough, there are enough (plenty of?) people who don't care about your reputation.

"firing without notice": First, not legal in California where most of their highest skilled people work

Can you expand? Doesn't at-will meant that you can be fired without advanced notice?

WARN Act: Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...

Cal-WARN Act

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/cal-warnact.html

Thanks for sharing! I hadn't heard of either of those, so good to know. For anyone reading, the federal act only applies to employers with 100 or more employees and the Cal act requires 75 or more.

I am so done with "awful but lots of money." I won't even do boring but lots of money any more.

I recently took a shocking pay cut to get "not awful and very fun."

Being bored was killing me. Draining your soul for money is not wise. Your mind takes on a personality you can't relate to and sinks to an imperceptible malaise. It's a form of torture. Leaving that to discover purpose again is an unforgettable relief. I feel young again and I'm flooded daily with feelings of optimism, something I thought was just lost to youth. Like being released from prison.

I am so done with "awful but lots of money." I won't even do boring but lots of money any more.

This is rich thinking. Most people that I met from developing countries who grew up poor would sell their soul for shitty unfulfilling work that pays huge salary / bonus / stock. I cannot blame them; I would do the same in their situation. I don't pass (too much) judgement on where and why people work. Mostly, it is a luxury to decide when / where / how you work, including for less than the maximum that you can be paid.

Personally, my biggest professional problem is that I get bored on a project after two years. It is incredibly rare in my career to stay more than four years on the same project. Yet, time and time again, my managers are surprised when I resign for a new role.

I am so done with "awful but lots of money." I won't even do boring but lots of money any more.

I recently took a shocking pay cut to get "not awful and very fun."

Curious what your financial situation looked like between these two stages. It's easy to be willing to take a major pay cut to work on a fun project when you've already got 6 figures stashed in savings and your house and car are paid off.

You don’t want to give your top talent a reason to look for another job.

Telling your top talent a layoff is coming, even if they feel “secure” in their role, still gives them a reason to look.

Let alone competitors now have a great pitch to your top talent - “do you want to risk getting laid off or join our awesome company”.

on the other hand, top talent is also likely to feel disrespected by having layoffs sprung on their team with no warning. It was a trigger for 3 of my job changes during my career, each time a "regretted attrition."

Why would the "best talent" leave? Are they worried they're going to get laid off? Or were they just looking for an excuse to leave?

Can most easily find new jobs.

With new coworkers who are not demoralized by the impending layoff

often the decisions for the cuts are not made at the manager level, the people who know who the best performers are. The C Suite just says we are cutting these departments often including the managers. Its not done with a scalpel but with an axe and only the very best, known to the c-suite get a stay of execution.

The best talent is often unknown to the csuite.

Things change with layoffs - whatever they liked about company before is not there anymore. The relationships get worst, there is a lot more political infighting due to unclear competencies and changes. The people who stay after layoff tend to be demotivated in general too.

It's like with a sinking ship.

In Titanic the folks that got on lifeboats early survived, the ones that didn't got caught up in whatever traps as the rest of the ship goes down. If the ship is going down, its good to not ride it to the depths.

If it's not going down, then maybe it's not worth jumping. That's thr skill in it I guess, knowing which is which.

Layoffs usually occur within the wider context of a more cost constrained/austere environment.

Essentially the high performers understand that they'll be expected to do more with less (people, resources, benefits, ...).

Likely the layoffs won't affect the layers of grifters above them, so it becomes a question of whether they really want to work harder for little or no personal gain, just to support the layers above them who are making and being rewarded for the bad decisions, or whether the high performers should look elsewhere for something more aligned with their personal happiness.

No point in staying on a sinking ship.

In my experience, the best talent has the privilege to pick jobs based on what they really want - because they have the most options.

If they didn't want to be at Pixar, they'd already be gone.

If they like it there, they aren't too worried about getting fired, because they know it won't be hard to find a different (probably better) job.

This is tempered by everyone's financial situation. Even in tech a large group of people don't have the resources to sit on the shelf for a few months unpaid. Even if they know a severance package is included the amount is unknown and there are not a ton of animation studios that can probably compete with Pixar on salary, a few but not a lot.

Its a big risk to just wait it out and see if you are not financially secure.

best talent !== most confident and self aware talent, thus good talent gets scared and leaves

Maybe they wanted to be at Pixar because it was a successful company with safe jobs, but don't want to be at the new less successful layoff-threatened Pixar anymore? And the "best talent" also tends to have better salaries, and management decisions are often not really well-informed, so IMHO thinking you are immune from layoffs because you're better than average is hubris...

Isn't that the case in all layoffs, regardless of announcement timing? I'd argue all layoffs are, as a rule, foolish and short-sighted, because they tend end up with so many unintended consequences like that.

Agreed. Once you open up the option for layoffs, it’s never going to be the same. The best way to do a layoff is to never have one

The best way to do a layoff is to never have one

Sure, in fantasyland. This is unrealistic. What if you have a severe business downturn? No choice, but to layoff. In services, your number one cost is always people (talent).

Some may be shortsighted, but others are often an act of desperation. Keeping everyone on the books isn't worth anything if you can't make payroll.

What’s the argument here? Why would talent leave?

For a lot of people going through a first layoff, it would be shocking. This company that keeps telling them they are all family here just cut x% of them. Its a slap in the face and makes them understand that there is no loyalty from the business to the employee so why be loyal to the business?

This drives people to take a more mercenary approach to work and look for better pay elsewhere.

It was bad enough that corporations are allowed to identify as "people." It was downright creepy when companies then decided to become your "family."

Cult connotations involving "chosen" families aside, it's family that's statistically most likely to molest you.

Layoffs often indicate lack of growth - might be harder to grow professionally, or get promoted.

Also saving money on hiring often means saving money in general and elsewhere too, worsening quality of life.

In particular projects can get canceled, priorities shifted, grind increased, privileges revoked, remote work banned, etc.

People who have the option to leave might do just that.

Your best talent at a company like this knows they aren't going to get fired.

In fact at a company like this, your best talent probably wishes the bottom 10% would get trimmed because they produce so little relative to higher performers.

You mistakenly assume those making the lists of employees to be fired actually know, or care, about quality of said employees.

Large layoffs are rarely, if ever, performance anchored at the IC level. They're anchored in the performance at product/unit level. So the major decider for layoffs is whether you're working on something that is deemed as business positive or not.

The best talent is often the highest paid and that gets factored into these decisions as well when the company is trying to hit specific budget targets.

And this is the sort of thing that can be especially problematic in creative companies when the layoffs are being run by bean-counting executives who have no presence in the day to day work of ICs.

Will top talent get sacked at Pixar? I have no idea, but as a 50 year old tech worker I've seen a number of layoffs first-hand and have heard anecdotal reports of dozens more that lead me to the conclusion that being among the "top talent" does not make you immune when it comes to large belt-tightening layoffs.

My experience is different. _When_ (not always!) I was considered a top performer, you had a 1:1 or small group meeting with senior leaders who told you point blank: "Layoffs are coming. You are top performers. None of you will be laid-off." People would sigh with relief, then go back to their desk. The layoff announcement would come moments later.

This happens only when layoffs are small and targeted. In reality of big corps your whole department would be cut including the managers promising you that you wouldn't be affected

People will make choices to leave either way. If you do not give advance warnings and just fire people, remaining people will still make decisions to leave.

You cant force the talent to stay.

In my experience the best talent will leave after a 10% layoff anyway.

It's never just 10%, just 10% this week.

Once they see stocks go up, and costs go down because everyone is working an extra hour a week to keep on track why wouldn't you cut another 15%?

Even if they don't leave, I was at a company that warned us 3 months before a 20% layoff, and basically everyone treaded water for 3 months until they knew if were staying. Huge company loss of productivity.

Maybe you identify your best and worst before, and after giving heads up you sit with the best and tell them they are safe?

Even give them reinforced contracts to make them at ease?

Not all actions have to be self-serving.

Or there is the third option: do the layoffs, immediately cut access, then give a generous amount of severance with benefits.

I'd argue that's basically option 2: blindsiding employees. Severance softens the blow, but fundamentally doesn't fix the "I might get axed tomorrow" paranoia.

They just want people to leave voluntarily so they don't have to pay severance.

It depends on the amount of severance and the person. Not sure if everybody would prefer to get a couple months worth of severance but have to go through the stress of quickly finding a new job.

I find that stressful even if I live in a country where I have the same level of healthcare no matter whether I'm employed or not. How do you guys in the US cope with that? Is it as bad as it looks from outside or you have mechanisms to not lose all your healthcare if laid off?

It's kind of a weird move for companies to make because it's an oddly pro-labor signal to tell employees ahead of time to prepare for layoffs.

I agree, I prefer it.. but also, it's weird in 2024 where corps basically try to fuck everyone at every possible turn that they're being so open about these layoffs.

California has the WARN Act.

This is a classic layoff debate -- is it better to do it with zero warning, or is it better to let employees know that a layoff is coming?

No good answers here. They're both bad, but in different ways, and I suspect that whether one is worse than the other is probably a matter of personality type.

There is no good option. Either embrace the suck immediately, or let the suck consume you.

I know it's not practical because of select few bad apples, but giving a year's notice to the affected people, letting them finish up the work and mentally prepare, and all the while coaching them through the process of finding a new job seems like a humane thing to do.

I feel that's less of a benefit if you don't know it is you that is getting laid off or not...

Immediate layoff, long period of transition.

What Pixar has created is an environment where nobody knows is they’re going to stay, so people self select into two buckets: 1) those who say “I’m not going to bust my ass just to get fired”. They coast and prepare to leave. And 2) those who work their ass off to try to “prove” themselves. If any of 2 get fired, it’s a bad morale hit for anyone around after the layoffs. You’ll lose actual talent this way.

Make the decision of who to layoff and do it, but be kind as you do.

I have to think they will lose at least 10% just through attrition

and before anybody says that's maybe intentional, that just a really dumb way to do layoffs. that's how you lose your best people, rather than your worst.

The worst will know they will have trouble getting a job elsewhere. The best might assume they are known to be the best, so they are safe. I would think it would be the middle people who would jump ship.

Nah, layoffs are too random. Being the best on your team doesn’t matter if the division is cut, or if the VP is making the call, or if your manager is disfavored, etc.

Most of the (risk averse) great folks I know have purposely found safe harbor over the past ~2 years.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t intentional. Lots of companies don’t really seem to have a concept of “best people.”

Also cost savings to consider such as severance.

Exactly. Companies really don't care as much about talent and performance as people think they do. Most of the time good enough is good enough. And companies almost always prefer attrition to layoffs or firings. Corporations are very conflict averse by nature.

This assumes that there's a significant difference between top performers and the next tier down, and that it's important to keep 'the best people'. In most businesses there are plenty of other good people who can step up if the best ones leave. Its also rare that someone is 'the best' at everything; people have a range of skills and you'll only be losing the person who's best at one or two of them.

Most people who think companies have a 'best person' aspire to be seen as that person, and haven't really thought about what it would actually mean.

I don't understand the logic with employers dropping warnings like that. I knew ~2mo before my employer announced layoffs and it caused much unnecessary anxiety in my life.

Depending on jurisdiction an employer might be obligated to announce a mass lay-off in advance. It gives more time for people to look for another job.

Really? Does it even help if you don't know who it is? Do they expect each person to look for another job and have it lined up on hold just in case he is one of the 20% that actually get fired?

But it shapes how you'll feel about the event & the future for a long long time after. The company was honest with you. When the day came it wasn't a complete shock.

I don't have a conclusive answer, but I'd want to know I think & respect companies that have the bravery to be up front.

Gives you a peace of mind once it is over. Also, allows you to prepare contingencies. Our company only now was recovering from the last year layoffs and now it is suddenly hit again. It would've been much more humane to know in advance not to relax.

There is a reason why layoffs always happen as a surprise and kept a secret. Now everyone thinks they might get laid off. The folks who are easily employable will switch. This might be the end of Pixar.

This might be the end of Pixar.

Classic overreaction on HN. Did you say the same when Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft slashed huge number of employees in last year? How about Spotify?

I have to think they will lose at least 10% just through attrition.

Which is one of the benefits of making such an announcement.

You don't have to pay severance or unemployment benefits to those who quit on their own.

And if you are already treating headcount as a fungible commodity, it's a pure win for the HR department.

Perhaps it's a pivotal moment for those folks to rethink the whole "dream job" shindig, while being in the great position of having a job at Pixar when interviewing in the coming months.

A solution would be to make histories again that humans want to see, and stop all that panderverse nonsense

I have to think they will lose at least 10% just through attrition.

And they won't have to pay any severance packages for that 10%. Heck, if 20% choose to leave they can cancel the layoff. Imagine the PR!

The outcome of corporate comms strategy is never unplanned or coincidental. People quitting over it is exactly why they made this announcement.

we are all family here

Surely nobody actually believes that?

I feel like there's a high chance of a layoff in my org as they had layoffs in other orgs yesterday and mine is one of major holdouts. I would very much wished for something definite, either for them to say that nothing currently planned or to say that it will happen later this month or something.

Same happened at Meta for the 2023 "layoff moments".

The labor market is tough, the attrition you speak of did not happen at Meta. And that's for SWEs who have a lot of potential employers.

Then having to go to work each day at a place that keeps saying we are all family here knowing that 2/10 of you are going to get axed.

Sounds like the mafia

Most companies approach this in two ways:

1. Say nothing until day of. 2. Say someone somewhere at some point or by some date.

For the employees, neither solves the problem of uncertainty that causes the most psychological turmoil.

The best for the employee is being told several months in advance exactly who is going to get axed and when.

This is considered risky for the business though. At that point you have an effective outsider with access to your systems for several months.

Disney's problem is they're making trash content. Including Pixar. They need to fire some exes, not just the rank and file.

Like how the fuck is Kathleen Kennedy still employed? She's the reverse Midas, turning money-printing machines into dust overnight.

Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified. She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite canvas. It's this very narrow thing, that's not exceedingly popular outside North America. And do you honestly believe the CEO of Disney does not review every single major move she makes already?

She's not great, but mark my words, firing her will not improve the quality of Star Wars content. Star Wars itself is stretched out.

that's not exceedingly popular outside North America

You definitely don't mean Europe so I guess that is just code for China? It is true these days that movies have to do well in the world's second biggest market, but there is a lot of box office skim combined with fraud and low ticket prices that don't make the market that lucrative.

Are China, North America, and Europe the only places in the world?

I live in Vietnam. Population 100 million. More than any country in Europe. It is not popular here. Or anywhere in Southeast Asia -- population 660 million -- from what I can tell.

I mean, it is popular in the way any big budget, CGI spectacular is popular. But it's not this big cultural thing it is in the US or Europe. Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. They think of Rogue One in the same way they think of Train to Busan. A fun enough foreign movie they watched that one time a few years ago.

The vast majority of my friends and family have never seen any of the original trilogy or even most of the prequels. They definitely aren't watching any of the Disney+ series, since it says "Sorry, Disney+ is not available in your region".

Agree. As asian in US I once told my colleague in office "What's the big deal about Star wars? Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues." And he was stunned into silence. Apparently big fan of star wars with all paraphernalia in his home office.

Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues.

A lot of Asian pop movies and shows are exactly this. Child of Korean immigrants here, married to a Chinese wife. Lots of stupid fun that plays in one culture is just a non-sequitur in another.

It makes perfect sense. The only exposure China had to Star Wars when it came out, were bootleg comics where they drew the Star Destroyers as Space Battleship Yamato.

Doesn't that make sense though? Most Gen Xers in China grew up with Monkey King from Taiwan, not Star Wars from America. Japan has its own culture that has largely invaded America rather than the other way around, Korea is starting to do the same.

Europeans are completely different. My German co-worker (well, when I was working in China) reminisced about the Original Battle Star Galactica, which was featured as a movie for his East German market. Star Wars of course, was popular, it helped that Lucas cast a lot of stars from the UK.

There was nothing like Star Wars when it appeared. I watched it outside the US and remember being absolutely blown away.

My kid doesn't care about Star Wars nearly as much as I do, obviously - but the big thing about it are the memories from when I first watched it. It would be great to see a new Star Wars movie that can engage kids today in the same way it engaged us so many years ago.

Also, have in mind that a lot of old blockbuster movies can look silly today (Sound of Music is one I watched recently), but you have to appreciate them with the proper time period context.

Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing.

Of course nobody cares about how the IP is doing. That is for the corporation to worry about.

On the other hand people, individualy, will make up their mind about buying a ticket or not. There are many different things which go into that decision, but one of those is how much they enjoyed the earlier movies in the franchise.

Caring about the IP is the forest. And individuals making a decision to go to the cinema to watch the new star wars thing or doing literally anything else with their free time are the trees which make the forest.

Very few IPs are truly universal in a way that strongly resonates across all cultures. That's a really high bar that is seldom cleared.

Disney is likely not focusing on Southeast Asia because, despite of the population, box office receipts and licensing deals must be fairly low in dollar terms. Most companies would rather be extremely successful in China, North America and Europe alone than be mildly successful everywhere, so content is optimized for these regions.

I have no idea who is personally responsible, but the idea that you can only tell stories about boring Jedi with no personality and Tatooine is just a massive failure of imagination.

There's a whole rich universe of EU novels exploring a wide variety of stories. Timothy Zahn wrote an Ocean's Eleven heist story in "Scoundrels". Andor was universally praised, partly because it's doing something completely different. Even the currently ongoing High Republic books are pretty good and nothing like the movies. Star Wars is a whole science fiction galaxy, it's as big or small as a writer wants it to be.

Not sure if Tron Legacy is under Disney but I would love to watch another movie on the Tron universe.

Hope the woke fad ends before they will make part 2, otherwise it can go straight in the trash.

So many great series ruined completely.

What is an "EU novel"? Kagi & urbandictionary are no help. (I'm going out on a limb and guess it's not the European Union.)

Expanded Universe. Now known as "Legends", iirc, and declared non-canon superseded by the execrable sequel trilogy.

But Disney plans to keep dropping crapola at regular intervals with their old tired characters because it worked in past. I think there is partial blame to audience also who kept Disney afloat for so long despite their atrocious content.

There's a whole rich universe of EU novels exploring a wide variety of stories.

So, unpopular opinion, but most franchise-based books are trash.

I've read a lot of Star Wars EU stuff! I've read a lot of universally-acclaimed Star Wars EU stuff!

It's... not great writing and not great science fiction.

Sure, it's great plot, but that's because we already know and love the setting and stories. And "more" is enjoyable.

But I feel like holding the EU as a paragon of Star Wars salvation is overvaluing it.

Most of it would turn out just as poorly as the movies did, for the same reasons.

The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive. I bet if you just adapted some of the more popular novels they could continue making a lot of money. The problem is that in that case they'd be targeting the Star Wars fandom rather than throwing them under the bus to court as broad of an audience as possible.

The franchise just can't keep reinventing itself to target every demographic. They need to cater to existing fans.

Which is the lesson Star Trek has been learning over the last several years. Play to the fandom, and grow the fandom over time.

Making a thing into a different thing, unsurprisingly, alienates the people that pay you money for the first thing.

That doesn't mean that these IPs (and their fandoms) can't evolve, but you need to tell good stories that respect the universe they are set in.

Speaking of the Extended Universe, everyone should watch the trailers of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), especially Kathleen Kennedy and anyone at Disney working on Star Wars content.

My understanding is this universe began as fan fiction and these trailers about an MMO are probably the most interesting Star Wars films since first two trilogies.

Betrayed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWFzfQs7vmk

Sacrifice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bmsNa9GOR0

Deceived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBTDnW7d0

The MMO is over ten years old, but the trailers are so celebrated that they re-released them in 4K two years ago. In a matter of minutes, they all manage to tell a better story, with more compelling characters and dialogue, than anything Disney has put out.

The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive.

To emphasize this point: There are literally 350+ Star Wars Legends books [1].

And that's not including film novelizations, comics, or individual short stories.

[1] https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_books

Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified.

So you think Disney way overpaid?

She's not great, but mark my words, firing her will not improve the quality of Star Wars content.

The stupid Vespa scooter stuff in the Boba Fett series? Hers. Lots of the stupid stuff in Disney Star Wars is hers. The early Jedi stuff in the comics no one liked? Instigated by her.

Star Wars itself is stretched out.

Basically, KK put it on the rack!

Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Kathleen hasn’t even directed any Star Wars movies, she’s a producer. She was one of, what, 14 producers on Boba Fett? Whatever creative credit you’re giving her credit for, if it’s even true, was executed, directed, acted, filmed, and approved by many other people. This feels like some kind of bogus internet meme talking point. (Edit: aha! I see that it really is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#F...)

George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired.

Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop?

Nope. Dig into it. There's TONS of meddling she did that turned out to be cringe.

George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired.

This absolutely doesn't track with people wishing for the prequel days again. Yes, the prequels were disappointing, but still we didn't imagine how much worse it could be.

I remember 1990s frustration over the lack of Star Wars development.

George Lucas was seen as a dictator who was just sucking in legacy money without doing any real work.

Now the owners are criticizing it for being overstretched.

The Mandalorian was good. I’ll never forget Werner Herzogs character defending the Empire: “on every possible metric life improved!”

I haven’t seen Andor, but it got great reviews.

Star Wars seems in a good place.

You haven't seen Andor and it's been out for 2 years, why would anyone take your opinion about where Star Wars is?

"On every possible metric, life improved" -- what riveting dialog.

She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite canvas. It's this very narrow thing, that's not exceedingly popular outside North America.

You're minimising her reach and impact on the industry, for better or worse.

Dial of Destiny was her last film. As for Star Wars, it's huge across the anglosphere and even in countries where English isn't spoken. I've personally queued for hours in Japan to get tickets.

Look I'm not denying anything you're saying, but I'm arguing against the idea that this woman at the head of Star Wars is the problem! If only she was fired!

That Kathleen Kennedy is in the room for all the important decisions about Spielberg and Lucas' best films in the 80s and 90s is outside the scope of this insane idea that somehow firing her will fix Star Wars. Star Wars itself is the problem. It was underplayed in the early 90s, and is massively overplayed now.

And I should have been clearer about its global reach. Star Wars is not this hallowed franchise outside the anglosphere, and is actually not particularly popular in China.

She's just at the head of a one-trick poney

A really, really big pony.

Disney's biggest opportunity of the last...forever? (Tied with Marvel)

And an opportunity that was squandered more than it needed to be.

not exceedingly popular outside North America

I can tell you it is exceedingly popular in Hungary. I have no reason to believe it is not similarly exceedingly popular elsewhere.

Star Wars itself is stretched out.

It is now. Franchises need nurturing to remain valuable.

The biggest crime they commited is that they did not employ the same screenwriter for all 3 of the sequels. When you are making a trilogy, and you know that you are making a trilogy, you better write the complete arch as a consistent whole and then find the 3 separate sub arches in that.

Instead of that what we got is 2 different teams subverting each other’s ideas and basically messaging to each other. (And the message was that “your ideas are baaad”) It was as if watching someone build a sand castle, someone else comming along kicking it down starting to build a different one, and then the first person returning and kicking the second sandcastle down to build a third.

“Yes, and…” is not just the way to do good improv, but also the way to build good movies built on each other.

How Kathleen Kennedy fumbled this much but still had a job is truly beyond me and is the best American corporate circus you can watch, live.

According to Wikipedia she's produced five of the fifty highest-grossing movies in film history.

I bet you too could’ve produced Star Wars and landed on that list a few times. It’s /Star Wars/.

Sure, but she also did ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, The Sixth Sense, Twister, War of the Worlds, Back to the Future, Lincoln, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gremlins, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seabiscuit, Shindler's List, The Color Purple, The Goonies, The Land Before Time and much more.

Anything in the last 15 years?

The five Star Wars movies she oversaw from 2015-2019 made $5.92 billion at the box office, but let me know if that's not enough money for her to be considered successful.

You mean the ones that are widely panned, sold no merchandise, and poisoned the franchise? Those movies? I wonder about the people who defend those movies, I really do.

People get far too much up in arms over some movies.

You can't not give her credit for Star Wars and then try to blame her for the bad ones.

Either she matters or she doesn't, you can't only give her blame while denying credit for the same job.

I think Star Wars was fumbled, but she also produced/exec-produced ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, The Sixth Sense, Twister, War of the Worlds, Back to the Future, Lincoln, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gremlins, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seabiscuit, Shindler's List, The Color Purple, The Goonies, The Land Before Time and much more.

I don't think you can have a track record like that and be bad. There's something else going on.

This is a post about Pixar, and you're calling for Kathleen Kennedy (who has nothing to do with Pixar) to be fired? You may not like them, but the Star Wars projects she produced made a ton of money. The layoffs aren't because of her.

Most of those good movies listed are from 20+ years ago. Perhaps she's lost the touch. Hard to stay sharp forever.

If "losing the touch" is a euphemism for disrespecting the audience. Yes, that's what appears to have happened.

Spielberg perhaps?

Sure, but he wouldn't keep her around if she was a bad producer.

Producers don't write or direct. They produce. And her Star Wars movies, even though not creatively great, made a ton of money – way more than Disney put in. She did her part of the job.

(And the reason the money argument is relevant here is because OP brought her up out of nowhere on a thread about layoffs at a separate entity)

I'm not sure I buy that being a good producer translates into being a good CEO. When I read your first sentence my thought is not "well she must be a good CEO then" but is instead "wow I hope she goes back to producing, these are some all-time greats".

I don't think you can have a track record like that and be bad.

As financial advisors say, past returns are no good predictors for future performance

she also produced/exec-produced...

That resume falls off a lot towards the end. Quoting Abe Simpson,

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it anymore and what's it seems weird and scary. It'll happen to you!

Idk, I guess Lightyear is the most critically panned. But Pixar's worst is any other animation studio's mid.

Elemental is one of the biggest whiplashes I've seen in animation. I didn't particularly care for it, but it may be like Turning Red where I simply wasn't the target audience. I don't want creatives to be punished for not trying to keep it safe and unoffensive to everyone.

I thought Elemental and Turning Red were very well done story wise (Romeo/Juliet, teen angst), they are worth multiple watches on Disney+. Encanto (Disney, but not Pixar) was brilliant, it is too bad it didn't get the theater release it deserved because of COVID.

I get not being in the audience for a film. I felt like that about all the Star Wars prequels, and I spent my pre-10s on the original trilogy. I couldn't tell you what is wrong about sequels, even if they were done well I probably wouldn't be in the audience for them anymore.

I think the target audience is kids and their parents. As a parent of young children, I really enjoyed both Turning Red and Elemental, as did my kids.

It isn't easy to make movies that kids like and want to watch but parents don't mind watching multiple times (because that's how kids do movies... multiple times)

Disney still does a pretty good job of that.

Saw Elemental in theaters. Liked it. Same with Strange Worlds.

I'm not sure I still buy that. Super Mario was great. I think the Troll movies are very well done and entertaining. Despicable Me, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Rio, Klaus, Iron Giant, and Studio Ghibli films are pretty good and competitive to the low-mid tier Pixar.

how the fuck is Kathleen Kennedy still employed

I don't think it can be on any one person. The CGI in some of these latest marvel movies (looking at you, Multiverse of Madness and Wakanda Forever) looks about as good as what I see when I play my PS5 which isn't terrible, but it looks cheap and lacks physical weight you normally associate with strong acting. You don't get that kind of product without the entire pipeline fouling up and then getting pushed out overtime rather than going with delays + reshoots. Add on to this that, for instance, the creators of Multiverse of Madness weren't even aware of the plot of the Scarlet Witch and allegedly it went over the same ground as her TV show (not that I've seen it), so it seems a lot more like studio dysfunction. I've got to imagine the problem is much, much larger than just one producer—one who has been attached to some of the largest Spielberg movies of the 20th century like ET and Jurassic Park.

Anyway, I'd think Kevin Fiege is far more closely tied to the decision making that appears to be hurting them right now—occasionally princess or Pixar movies miss, but they've sunk a lot of money into MCU movies that were not popular among their own fanbase, mostly due to his planning and, as I understand it from loyal fans, a lack of beloved characters returning.

You don't get that kind of product without the entire pipeline fouling up and then getting pushed out overtime rather than going with delays + reshoots

I have also done poor quality work before. It’s always managements fault for prioritizing speedy crap to meet some internal goal instead of prioritizing the end product.

Managers need to be judged on customer satisfaction not internal OKRs and metrics.

It’s always managements fault for prioritizing speedy crap to meet some internal goal instead of prioritizing the end product.

100% with you there—I meant to imply a pipeline failure was a management failure of some sort.

The marvel movies lately have just been bad. Multiverse of madness, the marvels, black panther 2. Just not good. Pretty dissapointing.

Rumor has it Victoria Alonso was fired over the pressure and mismanagement of the VFX on these (to be fair) many, many MCU projects.

In the 1980s she and her husband cofounded a successful production company with Steven Spielberg. They’re basically Hollywood royalty.

Put a chick in it and make her lame!

turning money-printing machines into dust overnight.

What are you referring to? I just looked at the 5 Star Wars movies she has producer credits on, via Wikipedia, and not one of them demonstrates losses. The profits are in the billions and only one of the 5 movies, Solo, did less than a billion at the box office.

And why are you conveniently forgetting Jar Jar Binks and blaming someone else? Lucas was making trash long before Disney got involved. I thought Force Awakens was better done than most of the franchise up to that point.

Profitability is the new target in 2024. Not losing so much money on useless underperforming movies. Let's go through the recent Pixar flops in the years before since 2020.

   Onward (2020) - Budget:     $200 million
                 - Box Office: $142 million (Loss)

   Soul (2020)   - Budget:     $150 million
                 - Box Office: $121 million (Loss)

   Luca (2021)   - Budget:     >$100+ million
                 - Box Office: $49.8 million (Loss)

   Turning Red (2022) - Budget:     $175 million
                      - Box Office: $20.1 million (Loss)

   Lightyear (2022)   - Budget:     $200 million
                      - Box Office: $226.4 million (Tiny profit)

Apart from Elemental (2023) which was highly successful, there seems to be a string of more box office failures from Pixar recently and it being turned into a high cost factory. Disney saw the same and decided to let 20% from Pixar go.

how is it possible to have such huge budgets for animation movies???

can anyone explain what are the biggest cost drivers for pixar in spending 200+ mills on a movie??

Just watch the credits to see how much human labor goes into animation.

So what, I could get a list of any free open source product contributors and get even longer list.

They dont work fulltime 40 hours per week on a single movie, do they? Its more like few hours here and there, as needed

They dont work fulltime 40 hours per week on a single movie, do they?

Absolutely not.

They work 50+ hour weeks for 2+ years (discounting the much smaller team doing pre-production).

No kidding. Those lists go on forever.

To elaborate on some of the items others have mention, here are head counts for Pixar's most recent film, Elemental, based on the credits on IMDB:

    1 director
    3 writers
   20 voice actors
    5 producers
    1 music composer
    2 cinematographers
   12 editing
    5 casting
    1 production designer
    2 art directors
    2 production managers
   14 art department
   42 sound department
   85 visual effects
   68 animation
   46 music
    1 continuity
   77 additional crew

That's 387 people. These kinds of movies take years to produce (7 for Elemental), although not everyone works on them full time during the full length of production.

Just curious, what distinguishes a "visual effects" staff member from an "animation" staff member when making an animation?

Are "animators" doing the original character/flow design work and then visual effects people punch up backgrounds/lighting/textures etc. and doing the rendering?

Animators do the characters.

Visual Effects do wind, water, smoke, fire, cloth, etc.

I don't know, but it will include...

A million for each main voice actor

$100k for supporting actors

Orchestral score (not many people can do those)

$50k per licensed song

Work on the "game engine" that supports the film (each film used to break technical ground... Fur in monsters Inc, hair in the Incredibles, etc)

Motion capture, clay modelling, 3D modelling, rigging, animating... everybody needs a studio quality machine and display...

The only thing I feel confident isn't a big chunk of the cost is the actual rendering.

Pixar famously spends quite a lot on compute for their render farm.

https://nofilmschool.com/why-pixars-24000-core-supercomputer...

A good video on what goes into a score for an episode of an animated TV show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiiDNusHdp0

It can get more complicated (and expensive) if you want to hire someone to play one or more parts for real.

Turning Red was better than $20M. IMHO Luca was a bit of a stinker, but Encanto (Disney but not Pixar?) was really solid!

Was it? I never saw it because my wife and the kids saw it and they said it sucked.

Turning Red v Wish Dragon are both kindof Asian-oriented kids movies with pretty decent messages and "mature" topics if you watch them with an adult mindset. Those both kindof felt "cash grabby" but I didn't feel like I wanted my time back after watching them.

Luca (to me) was just so dull I barely remember the plot or message.

Encanto (v Puss in Boots Last Wish) both had a lot of "Soul" (Soul, and Inside Out being other really good animated movies), and I'd happily watch any of them again.

Oh I disagree, Luca is great! But of course nobody saw it in the theater, approximately everyone who watches Pixar movies has a Disney+ subscription...

Turning Red released straight to Disney+ where streaming was available. So it's no surprise its box office revenue was crap.

That’s funny. I thought Luca was the best, Encanto was mediocre, and Turning Red one of the worst kid’s movies I’ve ever seen.

I would be careful about Hollywood loss numbers. Disney is in it for the merch. That said, I wonder how those movies stack up to older greats like Cars, Toy Story, or Monsters Inc. They are only true failures if they fail to sell toys. Which considering I’ve never seen merch for any of these movies on the street tells me they probably have failed.

If they were 100% in it for the merch they wouldn't be making the next Star Wars movie with Daisy Ridley as the lead.

If Grogu makes an appearance then it’s for the merch.

I’m near certain they fail compared against the original Pixar movies. Pixar used to make surefire films for the whole family. Now it’s just more Disney nonsense, the soul has been lost.

Now it’s just more Disney nonsense, the soul has been lost.

Did you see any of them? Soul is probably their best movie; Luca and Turning Red were great. Onward was surprisingly good. Elemental was a new genre for them, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was still really good.

I didn’t see Lightyear, but this is also the Pixar that did Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur, so it’s not like every movie knocked it out of the park.

Have you forgotten COVID already?

When Onward was in theaters COVID had already massively tanked attendance.

Soul, Luca, and Turning Red only had box office releases in countries that did not have Disney+, except possibly for very limited US releases (e.g., Luca had a theatrical release for 1 week in a single US theater).

In the countries where they did get a normal theatrical release if you compare them with Earlier big Pixar hits, they performed comparably.

If any one of them had been a 2019 movie instead of a 20222-2022 movie it would have easily made at least twice its budget and probably more.

Lightyear is the only real flop on your list.

So your imaginary grace period for covid effects extends until when, end of 2022 it seems like?

Maybe people didn't want to take their kids to watch a movie about panda periods?

It's crazy no one in this thread has suggested a possible drop in quality in the creativity at Disney.

So your imaginary grace period for covid effects extends until when, end of 2022 it seems like?

Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were not released in theaters in North America except for one week at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood for Luca and and one day there for Turning Red. They only got international theatrical runs, and then only in countries that did not have Disney+.

Maybe Disney lied when they said they cited COVID as the reason for cancelling the domestic and most of the international theatrical releases of those movies, but the fact remains that those releases were cancelled.

Soul only was in theaters in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia/CIS, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

Luca only was in theaters in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Türkiye, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates.

Turning Red only was in theaters in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

Compare to the last Pixar movie whose theater run occurred entirely before COVID. That was Toy Story 4, and here are the countries it was in that Turning Red was not in: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In the countries that both Toy Story 4 and Turning Red had theatrical releases in Toy Story 4 made $26 million and Turning Red made $11 million. If we assume the performance would have been similar had Turning Red been released in those other countries that comes out to about $420 million, which is indeed easily twice its budget just as I had speculated. Probably higher, but to get a more refined estimate I'd need to look at the countries it was in and see how their theater performance in general was compared to pre and post COVID.

For Luca it had $39 million in the countries it had in common with Toy Story 4. Toy Story 4 had $70 million in those countries. Assuming the same ratio if Luca had been in the other countries Toy Story 4 was in, that gives Luca a projected $560 million.

Maybe people didn't want to take their kids to watch a movie about panda periods?

It was the second most streamed movie in 2022 (Encanto was #1), which suggests of the theories that (1) people didn't watch it in theaters because they didn't want to watch it, or (2) people didn't watch it in theaters because it was not in theaters, the latter is much more likely. (BTW, Luca was the most streamed movie in 2021).

It's crazy no one in this thread has suggested a possible drop in quality in the creativity at Disney

That's a defensible argument in general (and since you comment a few have made that general argument), but not as an explanation for why movies that weren't in theaters didn't make a lot of money in theaters.

The problem wasn't Covid, the problem was Disney releasing them straight to Disney+ and not even putting them into the cinema.

If budget is 200m and box office is 220m it means they have insane profitability. The movie will generate revenue for decades but is already paid up.

Btw, zippia.com says their revenue is 624k USD per employee. Layoff is needed: less than 1m per employee is unacceptable! /s

Not really. If you include the costs of marketing and distribution, a film needs to gross about twice its "budget" to break even. Furthermore, this rule of thumb only applies to US gross, where studios get much more of the actual ticket price (75% iirc) than overseas. In some markets, India for example, American studios get about 15% of the actual ticket-price gross.

There are quite a few numbers on the breakeven point but a quick google says it’s usually 2.5x-3x the budget - due to marketing cost and distribution fees.

To break even at the box office, you need to make at least 2.5x your production budget (so $500M for Lightyear). It's very unlikely that they were able to close the gap with streaming - the movie lost a ton of money.

The 2.5x multiple is because the production budget doesn't include marketing costs (which can easily be as high as the production budget) as well as the fact that they only get a percentage of the box office (the movie theaters need to live too). This is especially true for the non US box office, where the percentage going back to the studio is lower than in the US

What happened to Pixar? Their storytelling used to be second to none. But most of their latest films have been so lacking that I haven’t even bothered to watch the last few. In fact, the last one I saw was Onward on the very day the theaters closed down for the pandemic. It was… okay. A bit of a disappointment. They have lost something special they used to have.

> “They have lost something special they used to have.”

Mostly it’s that you’ve just grown older.

That, but also: the recent films have not been as good.

They lost John Lasseter to Disney.

He was an awful lot of what made them work.

Surely "Box Office" isn't the best metric to look at in any of those years? I get that it's hard to figure out what the better metric is, but are we all meant to pretend that theater ticket purchases are the primary driver of revenue for movie releases nowadays, even though it's obvious that can't possibly be true?

There is a valid question on how valuable streaming is long term. The theory that we would make content once and lock in profits forever seems dubious if everyone competes on last weeks content. Non zero interest rates also pull in profitability horizons by decades.

I agree! It seems super difficult to figure out whether a movie (or literally any media) is financially successful now.

But I don't think that's a good reason to give credence to a metric that strikes me as being incredibly obsolete. A bad metric is a bad metric even if it's unclear what metric to replace it with.

I think Onward (edit: maybe not, see comment below) and Lightyear were bona fide misses, but Soul, Luca and Turning Red were all released straight to D+ during the pandemic, weren't they? You can't judge their performance without internal Disney metrics then?

Onward almost made me cry over a van, I don't think it was a miss. Really surprised that it lost money! It really holds up on rewatches.

Onward was released March 6, 2020 - things hadn't completely shut down yet but Covid surely had a huge impact on its gross as well.

Lightyear wasn't a success either when you consider marketing costs, which apparently makes it where you need 1.5x the budget just to break even, or so I've read.

Normally yes. But I wouldn't be surprised if marketing budgets were slashed with the pandemic as well. So all our usual rule if thumbs are out of whack.

A quick google says the general consensus is you need 2.5x the budget of the movie to breakeven.

I'm pretty sure these numbers don't even include the marketing budgets, which are almost always greater than production.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187076/tickets-sold-at-t...

US and Canada movie tickets sold in 2019 was approximately 1.2B. In 2020, it was down 80% to 223M, to 499M in 2021, and to 813M in 2022. Onward was the 7th highest grossing film in 2020, Lightyear was 15th in 2022. (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2020/?grossesOption=total..., https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2022/?grossesOption=total...)

Weren't Soul, Luca, and Onward direct to Disney+ because of the covid pandemic?

Your analysis is missing the elephant in the room.

Most of these losses are self inflicted, considering Disney forced all these films to debut on Disney+ in an attempt to boost subscription numbers.

Re: Lightyear, a $226.4M box office return on a $200M production budget isn't even close to being in profit, tiny or otherwise. For one thing, a film's marketing budget isn't included in the production budget figure and in this case was probably $100M+ itself. Secondly, Disney do not receive 100% of the box office take. After the distributor's cut, it's probably closer to 50%. Films of this type need to make maybe 3 times their budget at the box office to break even, making Lightyear a spectacular flop.

I'd be careful just analyzing reported budget and box office numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

I'm in the camp that believes Pixar quality has fallen, and I'm not surprised at the recent losses (COVID or not).

Onward -- what a mess. The movie about walking pants. I could feel the churn of many story drafts they went through. It was a cool world and character designs, but the overall story just didn't land.

Soul -- full of emotion and beautiful, but didn't quite nail it. The pre-birth world has echoes of Inside Out, but not nearly as well-conveyed. In fact, the abstract art representations were a bit on the nose, and a rare case where I was too aware that these were ideations from the Pixar story team in the Pixar story room. Overall it had many wonderful sequences. But the main character journey was kind of odd. Joe loved music and it certainly seemed to be his source of happiness. But his lesson was that music wasn't necessarily his purpose and he should focus more on what makes him happy. ?

Luca -- adorable, but unambitious. The undersea world was so empty!

Turning Red -- ugh. What exactly was the character development? She is announced in the very first sequence as a confident individualist, and then her panda-journey teaches her to be... a confident individualist. Did no one notice this? Also, I'm bothered by the hubris of a first-time writer-director making the main character (and locale, and the time period) exactly themselves. I suppose if you need your stories to be biographical you can get away with it once, but it's poor form IMHO.

I mean, these numbers are almost dishonesty misleading when looking in a vacuum. Onward released March 6th 2020. It was receiving mid reviews but it was very much on par to st least break even if theatres stayed open for more than 2 weeks.And Soul IMO is one of Pixar's greats completely screwed by circumstance, released in June to Disney+. I'm surprised it even crossed 100m to be honest.

I'm not in charge of business, but the curve of box office seemed to rise back with the waning of the pandemic. Even for the critically panned Lightyear, so it's not like the better movies did better. It's no secret that streaming services make nowhere near the revenue of a theatrical release, but Disney aggressively shifted so it could get its handle in as 2nd in the streaming wars. I figure that unprofitable movies were a price to pay there.

If I understand what I read recently about movie budgets, for big films like these they need to make roughly double that headline budget to break even. The budget does not include distribution and marketing. So even Lightyear was actually a loss

edit: (and incidentally Lightyear is the only one of these I've seen. I've got 3 kids and we used to love Pixar films but these days.. meh. Even though we've since had the third so still should be the same demographic).

Domestic numbers for Turning Red have not been reported, and the movie is mostly streaming on Disney+. You can’t jump to conclusions about losses.

Also pay extra special attention to the warnings you find on the “sources” for this data: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets

“Note: Budget numbers for movies can be both difficult to find and unreliable. Studios often try to keep the information secret and will use accounting tricks to inflate or reduce announced budgets.”

If Disney was really losing that much money repeatedly, they would stop making movies. And yet they don’t stop, but they do keep making it look like they’re not very profitable. Why?

Some of those were released only on streaming services (Soul, Turning Red, Luca) so the box office numbers are really skewed.

They’re coming to theatres now, years after they were released.

Damn I really loved Soul

afaik it's also related to how disney treats pixar movies differently. Wasn't Soul & others first movies released exclusively/or with priority on disney+? To my knowledge they'll reverse this in 2024, will see how this pans out

With those numbers, Lightyear was definitely not profitable. Published budgets usually don't include the marketing budget, which is usually the same or more than the production budget. Even if you're skimping on marketing it's still going to be at least equal to half the production budget.

Additionally, theaters take a cut of the box office revenue. Domestically they usually take about half, internationally the average is about 60%.

Edit: Looking at the numbers, Elemental probably only broke even or made a slight profit.

I mentioned it in another thread but this is employers resetting employee expectations. Lay off a percentage and work the rest harder, make people RTO, etc.

People aren't cattle for you to get rid of. I'm tired of layoffs being a first resort rather than a last resort for companies. I'd like to see something where C-suite executives are required to resign if undergoing layoffs.

HN in 2018: "Why do you need X employees to do that? That's like a weekend project."

HN in 2024: "Companies should not reduce their headcount."

Those comments are totally consistent! If you hadn't hired X employees in the first place, you wouldn't be laying them off now. And, conversely, if you can afford to lay them off now, you could have afforded not to hire them earlier.

Apart from avoiding layoffs, hiring less quickly also lets you be more intentional about quality and culture. How can you expect any real continuity in your culture if like 30%–50% of your engineers are new in any given year?

So the hiring was the unwise action and layoffs are the wise correction.

Layoffs ruin human lives. Suicides happen. Breakups happen, with and without kids. Homes are defaulted on. Depression is almost a certainty. If the choice is between layoffs and total company ruin, okay, they’re necessary. If the layoffs are because you don’t want to try fixing anything else with the company first, you ought to be the first one fired.

Maybe in 1990s style layoffs with 2 weeks severance. Tech companies doing layoffs today are giving people 3-6-sometimes even 12 months of severance of benefits! If you can’t figure out a new job with that, it’s on you.

Companies shouldn’t overhire and also shouldn’t do layoffs. Why is this some hot take.

In 2018 people were advocating against bloat. Now they’re advocating against poor treatment of employees. Both are valid. In 2018, people were right, and the price of bloat is being paid by employees now.

Companies can start new products instead of laying people off. Companies constantly start new things, and can internally allocate resources. Google has open positions for hire right now; they just laid off 1K people.

The impotent instinct to go after top management is silly. How management performs is between them and the shareholders. The only reason to fire management is if someone else could make the shareholders more money.

If you don't think it should be legal to lay people off, then make layoffs illegal. Doing it through some weird requirement to spite management is just going to result in bizarre distortive effects in their behavior.

I think stuff like this comes from a low level caveman jealousy instinct, where management is seen as a person to envy, while shareholders are ignored as some kind of far off impersonal force.

Woah there. That’s a pretty intense opinion with some pretty harsh language.

Caveman jealous instinct? Eek. How management performs is between the management and the managed. Profit is not law, it’s not a god given right. Profit is a side affect from employees generating it. If you lay people off in a poor way, you can be chastised the same way a child gets chastised for cutting in line. Our society has an obligation to ensure everyone behaves in a pro-societal manner. Not a profitable manner. We shouldn’t need government laws to tell people to treat others well.

Oh and FWIW most companies that perform layoffs tend to not see positive outcomes for the shareholders, so you’d think they’d respond if they actually acted uniformly and rationally about shareholder value.

Profit is not law, it’s not a god given right

Neither is continued employment at a job that doesn't generate value

At the very least, layoffs should be seen as an indication of failure. Sundar Pichai should not be making as much money as he is with the amount of layoffs they did

Neither should every other Google employee.

Layoffs are an indication of failure, as much as hires are an indication of success.

That is to say: not at all.

Ultimately it’s bad management that usually leads to layoffs (barring extreme cases like the product your company makes being banned, for instance), it makes sense that leadership should be some of the first heads to roll.

I think this makes sense from the perspective of a worker and what their fears are.

I think it’s probably much simpler: money isn’t cheap anymore and everyone overhired for a long time.

Don’t let a “crisis” go to waste.

The point is that isn’t what’s happening. From the workers’ perspective it’s a convenient narrative.

The truth is, as usual, messier: constrained executives are confronted with targets they don’t know how to meet, and so start shoving round pegs into square holes.

And very seldom suffer themselves for their choices.

Sure. Yes. Wealth insulates. Firing the CEO before a lay-off is stupid; it means every hire is a job risk. If we want that, Europe has it better figured; socialise the risk of unemployment.

money isn’t cheap anymore

I know nothing about economics but I wonder if it’s time to ease up on the interest rates. Inflation might not be due to too much money in the system but rather supply simply drying up as China economy circles the drain. Maybe it’s a good idea to let money be cheap again so people could quickly set up alternative non-China suppliers to relieve the supply pressure. But then again I know anything about economics so add salt as required.

The economy is hot. Money is being allocated away from the jobs that powered that last decade’s tech boom; we’re feeling that in Silicon Valley. (It doesn’t help how expensive commodity talent is in the Bay Area. Unless you’re doing AI or something tremendously collaborative, you’ve probably already built the systems that enable your team to phone in from anywhere.)

If money is being allocated away from tech, where is it going to?

Government, healthcare & construction from the last report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Do layoffs actually motivate workers though? I feel like from the people I've spoken to that have experienced losing coworkers to layoffs, they just kind of disconnect.

I don’t think it’s about motivation. I thinks it is about saying employees have been making too much noise past couple years with their union talk, WFH, pay inequality, etc so this is going to be the year of fear for your job.

Lay off a percentage and work the rest harder, make people RTO, etc.

There is little to no evidence of this. There is a lot of evidence of layoffs, particularly across-the-board ones, costing shareholders [1]. Companies that manage little to no laying off outperform their competitors and are rewarded in the capital markets.

[1] https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-layoffs-cost...

How do you control for biases here? Of course companies who haven't needed to do layoffs are stronger than businesses who did need to.

Look at comparable profit margins before and after. A lot of these layoffs are coming to companies that are still maintaining a healthy margin.

The layoffs might prop up the margin in the short term, but I think there becomes long term lasting damage that would show as underperformance.

this is employers resetting employee expectations.

Many of these companies transitioned to remote work at the same time they did massive hiring sprees. Many of these new hires were getting their first taste of remote work in companies that were doing their first trial of remote work, all while a massive influx of new employees and initiatives introduced more chaos.

Predictably, a lot of this chaos happening all at once wasn’t a good environment for those new employees, especially those learning how to work remote for the first time.

There’s definitely a resetting going on. Many companies are reversing everything all at once in an attempt to get back to some of the stability they had before COVID.

I think we’ll see more remote work opportunities, but companies learned their lesson that throwing everyone into remote all at once doesn’t work. Remote isn’t for everyone.

My first "startup" was cartoonlagoon.com. We were going to be a site for independent animators and artists with the draw being a showcase of more well-known artists releasing exclusive content you wouldn't see anywhere else.

We had some cool stuff from Kevin Eastman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Heavy Metal) and others, but it never really took off.

Hearing the news about Pixar and other studios letting people go, made me think that something like this could totally be done today. Maybe it doesn't need to be its own site, but could be a channel on YouTube or something. There's definitely a shift happening in the space and I'm so excited for what's going to happen next.

The bar to create animation is going to be so incredibly low in just a few years time, that the skills to have will be writing, imagination, focus, clarity, cohesion, and taste making.

Katzenberg has had a lot of flops, but he's right about this [1]. I'd even wager costs will get cut by 99.9% in ten years time.

All this to say I think you're 100% correct. Now's the time to build platforms and tools for independent animators.

[1] https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/jeffrey-katzenb...

The bar to create animation is going to be so incredibly low in just a few years time, that the skills to have will be writing, imagination,

O yes, and those 'creative writers' wouldn't be humans. At least at low level it can be easily automated. After human gives the main idea and story line. Actually this can be done automatically too, but human touch is important to claim 'human made'. I'm afraid there will be radical changes. Like those which happened to photography once everybody got a camera. Now AI changes the field again. For the best or worst depends how you look at it.

Show me a great story that was written just by AI and I believe it (a story written by a good writer using AI as a tool to accelerate doesn’t count)

GPT-4 was introduced just less than a year ago. Development didn't stop. It doesn't mean that AI will invent something, but mimicking existing works is easy. After all most humans writing is just this. There are real works, while most is just a flood of some gray mass. These writers can use AI and there will be no difference. Another category is autobiographies written by celebrities with no writing skills. Today they use human coauthors, but soon AI will be doing text expansion and style correction just as well.

BTW, "good" is subjective metrics. As soon as it's known to be AI generated it becomes average at best. Just like with images today. Nobody is trying to find 'hidden depth' in them.

These writers can use AI and there will be no difference. Another category is autobiographies written by celebrities with no writing skills

I would argue this is a common fallacy: I can't do something but I can use automation to do it. But chances are, being unable to do it also means you're unable to judge the result and understand what is right/wrong.

This is the standard thing if you try to put together a UI without any design skills, you will use existing components and styles, and it will still look crap.

AI will make it easier for people who know how to write to do automated ghost writing, but it won't allow people who can't to do it.

That kind of was my point as well. If you are a good author, sure you can probably write a book faster with AI - maybe even faster than without using it.

But this fantasy of “people will just dump a prompt into GPT and it will produce a masterpiece (or at least something that a reasonably big audience perceives as good)” is just that: a fantasy.

I am open to change my mind of course once I see a good story written mostly or completely by AI. Sure “good” is subjective but I think no one can argue that the stories produced by AI today are good by any measure - at best they are a passable mimicry of a story that already existed.

I agree that writing is going to become more important. I do not think it'll be done by AI. Good stories come from quality character development, empathy, and the ability to tell a story that captures the imagination. Having an incredibly animated story is less important than the story.

The story is everything and AI writing is just not there nor do I think it ever will be.

Humans will be the soul, AI will be the mecha suit doing the heavy lifting.

Bill Watterson didn't need all these tools and platforms. Just paper and ink.

Right now we have content, info and tool overload and Layoffs are a sign of over production.

Plus people like Katzenberg love to jump around funding new stuff and telling/distracting/fomoing people more creative than them - hey you better learn this or be good at that, cause why else do people need him in the room?

But (and I say this as a huge Watterson fan and someone who kinda agrees with your crux) Watterson never animated anything. The single-strip format is far more fitting for a one-man shop than an animated film, at least at this point in time.

Watterson needed Universal Press Syndicate to distribute his drawings to newspapers. And all the people involved in making, printing, and distributing those papers. There was a pretty long chain between his drawing table and you chuckling at Calvin's antics over your morning coffee.

I wonder what he’s seen that makes him think that. I love playing with Midjourney, but if you want it to create a specific thing, you’re out of luck. I can see AI getting you somewhere, but I can’t see it coming up with a consistent, good quality result.

Don’t get too drawn in by an ad. JK is pumping his AI startup here, he is intentionally exaggerating to generate surprise and interest to pitch to indies, knowing full well that high quality animated films that make a lot of money will continue to require large staffs and large budgets and take a long time to make.

If independent animation is super cheap and easy to produce, then how will indies make any money and support themselves? It’s already extremely difficult, and lowering the costs might only bring in more people with less skill and make that problem worse.

If you’re talking about a $200M Pixar film, on the other hand, cutting costs by 99.9% means a budget of ~$200K. Think about it: that would end up being a middling 1 year salary for a single person (especially if there’s any ancillary costs like benefits, software and equipment, office rent, etc..) They certainly can’t get any A-list Hollywood voice actors for that much. They can’t record the music for that much. Pixar will never be able to make a full length movie for a $200k budget, and they don’t actually want to, because that would signal low quality and low effort. Going too cheap would mean completely abandoning their aspirational status.

And don’t forget the marketing budgets are in the tens to hundreds of millions, which will not go down just because of better animation tools. It doesn’t make sense to dump that much marketing money into a product that only costs pennies to produce.

Animation production costs have gone down steadily over time, and animation is far more accessible to independent animators now than it was 20 years ago, and that will continue. Big Budget movie studios have historically used those savings to hire more people, increase the quality, and continued to spend more or less exactly the same amount of money (or more) per film. Budgets are higher now than they were on Toy Story, same goes for VFX, and I think it’d be quite safe to predict the general trend for movie budgets that has lasted around a hundred years to continue for the next ten, with or without AI.

Animation is probably less capital-intensive than live-action film-making, but more labor-intensive given the need to care for each frame. But so long as you have an abundance of time, you can make a movie on your own.

Surprisingly, you also don't need to draw very well to animate. (But it will help a lot if you can.) There are crude works of animation that still found success (maybe more observable in the US than Japan), like South Park and Don Hertzfeldt's works. These examples might even illustrate that audiences care more about the writing than the drawings.

The tricky part may be finding an audience. There's so much content on the web, that it may still help to exhibit works in human-curated forums like film festivals. Somehow, then-student Don Hertzfeldt found his way into Cannes, where he probably gained much more exposure. Later, Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame) supported other animators find exposure by hosting The Animation Show (last held in 2008).

There are plenty of film festivals showcasing animation today, shorts and feature-length, but I wonder which ones would be most effective. The dream of "breaking in" with a film festival screening has allured many aspiring film-makers, to the extent that scammers even start their own film festivals for the sake of collecting exorbitant entry fees (which doesn't guarantee being showcased at the festival). With film-makers having to pay entry fees for numerous festivals to increase chances of finding the right audience, the "marketing" fee can become more expensive than an indie production itself.

I wonder how solo or skeleton-crew animators would "break in" and find an audience today.

All of the independent animators have their own IG/TikToks.

And they hate it. Patreon, too (particularly the ones with more risqué work). A dedicated platform would be a major boon in terms of community, reliability, and possibly remuneration.

I'd argue Patreon is dedicated enough.

If we're talking about remuneration, the audience/customer don't really want a "dedicated platform" since that's not the only thing they do, unlike the artists themselves. Or in other words, dedicated platform (like deviantart) is fine but it won't attract the largest audience.

Why are all of these announced on the same day? Is there some special date comming up or what?

This is the week when people and families return from their winter vacations in USA?

The budget cycle for 2024 has likely finished so orgs are moving to execute on 2024 plans.

Executives can finalize things a bit more easily when folks out of the office as the day to day a bit slower. HR / Acctg / IT also usually like doing a one off project in these spots - usually a smaller group is in loop on these things.

The week between Christmas and New Years for the quiet meetings and week after for plans to be finished up.

It's year-end close for most companies, so accounting is, uh, not having the best time for projects.

Pretty much any unpopular decision made since mid November will be announced starting around now.

These are popular decisions

Doing it before the holidays is bad PR

Let people run up their credit cards over Christmas first instead.

Many companies run fiscal calendars that start Feb 1 because having it Jan 1 means a bunch of year end work during the holidays.

Dated source, but AFAIK that's not common.

https://blog.auditanalytics.com/when-does-a-companys-year-en...

Most companies try to avoid holiday layoffs.

Everyone waited for end of Christmas/New Year before laying off their own people.

If every big company dumps at the same time, less chance of falling behind your competitors.

Wild guess. SEC Q1 Reporting Deadline is Jan 16th. Share prices have been flat or slightly down on a year over year basis for many companies. They're all trying to hedge the bad news?

It's interesting that Disney today almost the entire profits of the company come from the parks division (which also includes cruises, resorts and "experiences"). The media division by itself is in a massive war for eyeballs with tons of other streaming competitors, all of whom are probably over-investing in content relative to what consumers can support.

One interesting possibility is that maybe the business model of media companies in the 21st century will become content as a loss leader for the purpose of providing valuable IP to amusement parks. Certainly seems like a similar thing is happening with Comcast with their massive expansion of Universal parks.

You have what is a common misconception. That the actual IP/Content is ever what has made money. It is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...

Look at the totals broken out by area of revenue. Pokemon is a big offender, the games and movies might as well not exist from a revenue standpoint.

Pokémon $88 billion Licensed merchandise – $80.8 billion[b] Pokémon mobile games – $6.13 billion[c] Box office – $1.156 billion[26]

Now you know why everthing has to have some sort of T-shirt, hat, pen, keychain blah blah.

That is nuts. Queue up Space Balls: "MERCHANDISING!"

Well now though, I see a video game I never heard of "Dungeon Fighter Online". Here's one of the recent reviews from the Steam Store:

"I spent $45,000 on a relentless journey into the heart of darkness with Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO), a 2D beat-em-up game that has garnered both fervent enthusiasts and critical skeptics,..."

Holy Cow. I can't even.

Dungeon fighter is one of the most valuable media IPs ever, beat a ton of video games player count and revenue records. It's one of the things that put tencent on the map.

Something north of $20 billion in revenue. Just not known in the US.

This is a fair point, but as of their most recent financials merchandise (excluding merchandise sold inside the parks) only made up $5bn of the $28bn in the "Parks, Experiences and Product" category. By contrast park admissions was $8bn, resorts was $6bn and food/merchandise sold in the parks was $6bn.

So IMO this is a departure from the classic merchandise based strategy. It seems pretty clear that the theme parks more so than the products are the major profit centers today.

Obligatory 1957 Disney growth plan, which hasn't changed that much: https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2013/05/disn... [0]

Change some distribution models and mediums of distribution, and it's the same cycle between content, brand, and customer eyeballs.

Which makes sense, as the key observation was: brands and characters are more valuable than content, but content creates and sustains them.

And you can afford more content if you have more channels to monetize it through. Which is the same observation Google made with respect to advertising integration, albeit just buying platforms instead of works.

[0] From article: https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-makes-a-good-corporate-st

Amusement parks are part of the inefficient monetization Hollywood is built around. The video games that make the most money give gameplay away for free too, but the difference is you can sell infinite skins and pay only 30% to assholes like Apple. It remains to be seen if even that cost will remain.

Disney lost not due to streaming, but due to its failed interactive division.

This is if course highly subjective, but for all this investment in content I, as a consumer, seem to find less and less content I like. Maybe it's just because I'm not part of the demographics that Hollywood cares about any more, but I personally would like to get much more "good" content.

I was under the impression the real money came from merchandising the IP.

Once again the workers pay the price for bad leadership while the leadership largely continues to simply collect large paychecks for that bad execution. It's no different to the layoffs for Google Assistant. Do you think the average IC determines the outcome of Pixar (or Google) projects?

Disney's content strategy has generally been abysmal. Milking Star Wars IP with content that varies between mid and bad for the most part. Marvel really fell off post-Avengers. Pixar once made some of the great movies period, animated or otherwise.

Creative ventures can't be reduced to a formula. Corporate America seeks to cut costs and reduce their business plan to a formula.

How many times do people need to see this before they develop class consciousness?

To be fair, Bob Chapek also lost his job over how he managed Disney. I'm not sure if he actually dropped the ball, or if Iger left while things were good, but the pipeline was about to run dry.

I imagine it is mostly Iger leaving while things were good.

Disney was never going to be able to retain the amount of people’s time it had in previous decades with the competition from other forms of entertaining, from video games to YouTube to Instagram to TikTok to WhatsApp and even to sites like Reddit/HN.

I think they tried to battle this by saturating the market with their IP and that goose is done laying eggs, so I am assuming they will lean on sports gambling now as long as they have ESPN.

How many times do people need to see this before they develop class consciousness?

Never. Because the carrot to join their class will continue to be dangled.

While layoffs are detrimental to employee morale (e.g. employees take less long-term risk), I wonder how much worse the effects of layoffs are in the creative industry.

You might be able to replace employees in a more utility-driven company. But creative people are not exactly interchangeable, as creative ideas tend to bounce better among employees who have "chemistry." These collective of creatives end up sharing tribal knowledge of producing creative outputs with a given expectation or taste. If you fire them, it will be difficult to replicate or enhance the creativity (by whatever metric we can try to measure it with).

Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once lamented the dissolution of the studio system, which turned the industry into a loose gathering on freelancers. He believed it would be antithetical to creativity, which he sees to happen tribally.

A famous counter-example to layoffs in the creative industry is Nintendo. Former CEO Satoru Iwata opposed layoffs as a way to weather financial downturns, as layoffs would discourage employees from committing to their work in the long-term. Instead, Nintendo tries to guarantee stable employment with their sizable financial reserves, albeit not paying a high salary.

Animation studios were able to garner a sense of "expectation" and establish a brand (e.g. Pixar especially with their first 11 features) because of the "regulars" who worked on their releases. Layoffs would change the collaborative chemistry among employees, and can make it difficult to establish or maintain a brand.

The Nintendo model would never work in the Silicon Valley. Literally, some of the most talented video game programmers that the world has ever known worked most of their career for relative peanuts... compared to what Activision & Co. would have paid them. Much less stable? Yep.

From a purely financial perspective, Nintendo is not well run. An infamous quote: <<Nintendo has such a large cash reserve it could lose $250 million every year and wouldn't go bankrupt until 2052.>> Or: <<Nintendo cash on hand for the quarter ending September 30, 2023 was $14.250B.>> There is a limit to useful cash reserves. Else, it should be distributed as a cash dividend, share buyback, or buy a competitor / "invest".

In Japanese corporate thinking from 1950s to 1990s, lifetime employment was the singular goal for your employees, above all else. Read that twice and let that sink in. Layoffs were viewed as culturally impossible due to loss of face. It is nearly impossible to (culturally) "translate" this goal into the American state of mind. Simply stated: US employees take much more career risk and, correspondingly, are paid much more. I am not making a moral judgement here about either system -- there are pros and cons for both. My point: Little insight can be found here when comparing the layoff practices of uber-uber-uber-uber-uber-uber-uber-conservative Japanese corps vis-a-vis American tech companies. It is literally Mars vs Venus or Moon vs Earth -- a different planet (culture state of mind).

I work in Japan, but I am not Japanese. One of the biggest complaints from foreign software developers is that salaries are awful compared to their home countries. The complaining never stops about it. However, they overlook the full picture -- as noted above. From what I hear, Germany is quite similar -- much lower salaries, but way more stable (fewer layoffs) compared to SV.

Ok so Japanese game developers work for peanuts on the most beloved IP in the world... with stable lifelong careers. Are they happy? Miserable? How far does their salary go relative to their living conditions? Honestly curious.

Related?

Jeffrey Katzenberg Says A.I. Will Eliminate 90 Percent of Artist Jobs on Animated Films

https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/jeffrey-katzenberg-a...

It's a red herring.

Oof.

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This gives Disney plenty of time to have them train their replacements.

How is going from 1300 workers to under thousand only 20% cut?

According to insiders, the Pixar layoffs include headcount that was hired for Disney+ — hires Disney pushed on Pixar to produce for its streaming division, which hasn’t yet turned a profit.