1923–1929: Early years Kansas City, Missouri, natives
Walt Disney and
Roy O. Disney founded
Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in
Los Angeles in 1923 after the bankruptcy of the
Laugh-O-Gram Studio. They got their start producing a series of silent
Alice Comedies short films, a pioneer of the
live-action animated film genre. The
Alice Comedies were picked up by
Margaret J. Winkler's
Winkler Pictures, who handled production and distribution duties of the studio's films. Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the
Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, then, in October 1923, formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby
Silver Lake neighborhood, which came to be known as the Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and, in January 1926, the studio moved there and took on the name
Walt Disney Studio. The Walt Disney Studio at the time solely handled animation services, while all other aspects of production were handled by Winkler Pictures; Winkler eventually dropped their distribution services and found a distributor in
Universal Pictures. The all-animated
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, starting in 1927, was a great success for Universal Pictures, causing the studio's reputation to skyrocket.
Charles Mintz wanted to force Disney to accept a lower advance payment for each
Oswald short as a cost-cutting measure. Disney refused and, as Universal owned the rights to
Oswald rather than Disney, Mintz set up his own animation studio to produce
Oswald cartoons. Most of Disney's staff was hired away by Mintz to move over once Disney's
Oswald contract expired in mid-1928. . Working in secret while the rest of the staff finished the remaining
Oswalds on contract, Disney and his head animator
Ub Iwerks led a small handful of loyal staffers in producing cartoons starring a new character named
Mickey Mouse, renaming the company
Disney Cartoons in the process. The first two
Mickey Mouse cartoons,
Plane Crazy and
The Galloping Gaucho, were previewed in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the third
Mickey cartoon, however, Disney produced a soundtrack, collaborating with musician
Carl Stalling and businessman
Pat Powers of Celebrity Productions, who provided Disney with his bootlegged "Cinephone" sound-on-film process. Subsequently, the third
Mickey Mouse cartoon,
Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first
cartoon with synchronized sound and was a major success upon its November 1928 debut at the West 57th Theatre in New York City. The
Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons, distributed by Celebrity Productions, quickly became the most popular cartoon series in the United States.
, the first short in the Silly Symphonies'' series A second Disney series of sound cartoons,
Silly Symphonies, debuted in 1929 with
The Skeleton Dance. In total, five different shorts from the
Silly Symphonies series were released by the end of 1929. All were scored by Stalling and involved animation by Iwerks.
1929–1940: Reincorporation, Silly Symphonies and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs In 1929, disputes over finances between Disney and Powers led to Disney's animation production company, reincorporated on December 16, 1929, as
Walt Disney Productions, signing a new distribution contract with
Columbia Pictures. Powers, in return, signed Ub Iwerks'
studio, although he would return to Disney in 1940. Columbia distributed Disney's shorts for two years before the Disney studio entered a new distribution deal with
United Artists in 1932. The same year, Disney signed a two-year exclusive deal with
Technicolor to utilize its new
3-strip color film process, which allowed for fuller-color reproduction where previous color film processors could not. The result was the
Silly Symphony cartoon
Flowers and Trees, the first film commercially released in full Technicolor.
Flowers and Trees was a major success and all
Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. By the early 1930s, Walt Disney had realized that the success of animated films depended upon telling emotionally gripping stories that would grab the audience and not let go, and this realization led him to create a separate "story department" with
storyboard artists dedicated to story development. With well-developed characters and an interesting story, the 1933 Technicolor
Silly Symphony cartoon
Three Little Pigs became a major box office and pop culture success, with its theme song "
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" becoming a popular chart hit. In 1934, Walt Disney gathered several key staff members and announced his plans to make his first animated feature film. Despite derision from most of the film industry, who dubbed the production "Disney's Folly", Disney proceeded undaunted into the production of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which would become the first animated feature in English and Technicolor. Considerable training and development went into the production of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the studio greatly expanded, with established animators, artists from other fields and recent college graduates joining the studio to work on the film. The training classes, supervised by head animators such as
Les Clark,
Norm Ferguson and
Art Babbit and taught by
Donald W. Graham, an art teacher from the nearby
Chouinard Art Institute, an invention that split animation artwork layers into several planes, allowing the camera to appear to move dimensionally through an animated scene. in a scene from the original 1937
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theatrical trailer.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete (including $100,000 on story development alone) and was an unprecedented success when released in February 1938 by
RKO Radio Pictures, which had assumed distribution of Disney product from United Artists in 1937. It was briefly the highest-grossing film of all time before the unprecedented success of
Gone with the Wind two years later, grossing over $8 million on its initial release, the equivalent of $ in 1999 dollars. During the production of
Snow White, work had continued on the
Mickey Mouse and
Silly Symphonies series of shorts.
Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935, by which time the series had added several major supporting characters, among them Mickey's dog,
Pluto, and their friends
Donald Duck and
Goofy. Donald, Goofy, and Pluto would all be appearing in series of their own by 1940, and the
Donald Duck cartoons eclipsed the
Mickey Mouse series in popularity.
Silly Symphonies, which garnered seven
Academy Awards, ceased in 1939, until the shorts returned to theatres with some re-issues and re-releases.
1940–1948: New feature films, strike and World War II The success of
Snow White allowed Disney to build a new, larger studio on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, where
the Walt Disney Company remains headquartered to this day. Walt Disney Productions had its
initial public offering on April 2, 1940, with Walt Disney as president and Roy Disney as CEO. The studio launched into the production of new animated features, the first of which was
Pinocchio, released in February 1940.
Pinocchio was not initially a box office success. The box office returns from the film's initial release were below both
Snow White's unprecedented success and the studio's expectations. Of the film's $2.289 million cost – twice of
Snow White – Disney recouped $1 million by late 1940, with studio reports of the film's final original box office take varying between $1.4 million and $1.9 million. However,
Pinocchio was a critical success, winning the
Academy Award for
Best Original Song and
Best Original Score, making it the first film of the studio to win not only either Oscar, but both at the same time.
Fantasia, an experimental film produced to an accompanying orchestral arrangement conducted by
Leopold Stokowski, was released in November 1940 by Disney itself in a series of limited-seating
roadshow engagements. The film cost $2 million to produce and, although the film earned $1.4 million in its roadshow engagements, the high cost ($85,000 per theater) later reissuing it in severely edited versions over the years. Despite its financial failure,
Fantasia was the subject of two
Academy Honorary Awards on February 26, 1942 – one for the development of the innovative
Fantasound system used to create the film's
stereoscopic soundtrack, and the other for Stokowski and his contributions to the film.
Fantasia was the final Disney animated film to be completed at the Hyperion Studio of the
Walt Disney Studios (Walt Disney Productions) in Los Angeles. Much of the character animation on these productions and all subsequent features until the late 1970s was supervised by a brain-trust of animators Walt Disney dubbed the "
Nine Old Men", many of whom also served as directors and later producers on the Disney features:
Frank Thomas,
Ollie Johnston,
Woolie Reitherman, Les Clark,
Ward Kimball,
Eric Larson,
John Lounsbery,
Milt Kahl, and
Marc Davis. Other head animators at Disney during this period included Norm Ferguson,
Bill Tytla and
Fred Moore. The development of the feature animation department created a
caste system at the Disney studio: lesser animators (and feature animators in-between assignments) were assigned to work on the short subjects, while animators higher in status such as the Nine Old Men worked on the features. Concern over Walt Disney accepting credit for the artists' work as well as debates over compensation led to many of the newer and lower-ranked animators seeking to
unionize the Disney studio. started on May 29, 1941. A bitter
union strike began in May 1941, which was resolved without the angered Walt Disney's involvement in July and August of that year. As Walt Disney Productions was being set up as a union shop, Walt Disney and several studio employees were sent by the U.S. government on a
Good Neighbor policy trip to
Central and South America. The Disney strike and its aftermath led to an exodus of several animation professionals from the studio, from top-level animators such as
Art Babbitt and Bill Tytla to artists better known for their work outside the Disney studio such as
Frank Tashlin,
Maurice Noble,
Walt Kelly,
Bill Melendez, and
John Hubley. Hubley, along with several other Disney strikers, went on to found the
United Productions of America studio, Disney's key animation rival in the 1950s.
Dumbo, in production during the midst of the animators' strike, premiered in October 1941 and proved to be a financial success. The film cost $950,000 to produce, half the cost of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, less than a third of the cost of
Pinocchio, and two-fifths of the cost of
Fantasia.
Dumbo eventually grossed $1.6 million during its original release.
Dumbo was the first Disney animated film to be completed at the original Animation Building of the Walt Disney Studios (Walt Disney Productions) in
Burbank, California. In August 1942,
Bambi was released and, as with
Pinocchio and
Fantasia, did not perform well at the box office. Out of its $1.7 million budget, it grossed $1.64 million. Production of full-length animated features was temporarily suspended after the release of
Bambi. Given the financial failures of some of the recent features and
World War II cutting off much of the overseas cinema market, the studio's financiers at the
Bank of America would only loan the studio working capital if it temporarily restricted itself to shorts production. Features then in production such as
Peter Pan,
Alice in Wonderland and
Lady and the Tramp were therefore put on hold until after the war. During the war, Disney produced the live-action/animated military propaganda feature
Victory Through Air Power (1943),
Saludos Amigos and
The Three Caballeros set the template for several other 1940s Disney releases of
anthology films: low-budget films composed of animated short subjects with animated or live-action bridging material. These films were
Make Mine Music (1946),
Fun and Fancy Free (1947),
Melody Time (1948) and
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The studio also produced two features,
Song of the South (1946) and
So Dear to My Heart (1948), which used more expansive live-action stories which still included animated sequences and sequences combining live-action and animated characters.
Song of the South received significant controversy for its depiction of racial stereotypes. Shorts production continued during this period as well, with
Donald Duck,
Goofy, and
Pluto cartoons being the main output accompanied by cartoons starring Mickey Mouse,
Figaro and, in the 1950s,
Chip 'n' Dale and
Humphrey the Bear. In addition, Disney began reissuing the previous features, beginning with re-releases of
Snow White in 1944,
Pinocchio in 1945, and
Fantasia in 1946. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s before being translated into the studio's handling of
home video releases. Upon its release in 1950,
Cinderella proved to be a box-office success, with the profits from the film's release allowing Disney to carry on producing animated features throughout the 1950s. Following its success, production on the in-limbo features
Alice in Wonderland,
Peter Pan, and
Lady and the Tramp was resumed. In addition, an ambitious new project, an adaptation of the
Brothers Grimm fairy tale "
Sleeping Beauty" set to
Tchaikovsky's classic score, was begun but took much of the rest of the decade to complete.
Peter Pan, released in 1953, on the other hand, was a commercial success and the
fifth highest-grossing film of the year. In 1955,
Lady and the Tramp was released to higher box office success than any other Disney animated feature since
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, earning an estimated $6.5 million in rentals at the North American box office in 1955.
Lady and the Tramp is significant as Disney's first
widescreen animated feature, produced in the
CinemaScope process, ''
s box office success saved the studio from going out of business. By the mid-1950s, with Walt Disney's attention primarily set on new endeavours such as live-action films, television and the
Disneyland theme park, However, despite being the studio's highest-grossing animated feature since
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the film's large production costs and the box office underperformance of Disney's other 1959 output resulted in the studio posting its first annual loss in a decade for fiscal year 1960, leading to massive layoffs throughout the studio. By the end of the decade, the Disney short subjects were no longer being produced on a regular basis, with many of the shorts divisions' personnel either leaving the company or being reassigned to work on Disney television programs such as
The Mickey Mouse Club and
Disneyland. While the
Silly Symphonies shorts had dominated the
Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) during the 1930s, the studio's reign over the most awards had been ended by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio's
Tom and Jerry cartoons,
Warner Bros. Cartoons'
Looney Tunes and
Merrie Melodies, and the works of
United Productions of America (UPA), whose flat art style and stylized animation techniques were lauded as more modern alternatives to the older Disney style. During the 1950s, only one Disney short, the stylized
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, won the Best Short Subject (Cartoons) Oscar. The
Mickey Mouse,
Pluto and
Goofy shorts had all ceased regular production by 1953, with
Donald Duck and
Humphrey continuing and converting to widescreen CinemaScope before the shorts division was shut down in 1956. After that, all future shorts were produced by the feature films division until 1969. The last Disney short of the
golden age of American animation was ''
It's Tough to Be a Bird. Disney shorts would only be produced on a sporadic basis from this point on, Runaway Brain (1995, starring Mickey Mouse) and Paperman'' (2012). Despite the 1959 layoffs and competition for Walt Disney's attention from the company's expanded live-action film, TV and theme park departments, production continued on feature animation productions at a reduced level. In 1961, the studio released
One Hundred and One Dalmatians, an animated feature that popularized the use of
xerography during the process of
inking and painting traditional animation cels. Using xerography, animation drawings could be photochemically transferred rather than traced from paper drawings to the clear acetate sheets ("
cels") used in final animation production. The Disney animation training program started at the studio in 1932 before the development of
Snow White eventually led to Walt Disney helping found the
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). This university formed via the merger of Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. It included a Disney-developed animation program of study among its degree offerings. CalArts became the alma mater of many of the animators who would work at Disney and other animation studios from the 1970s to the present. A featurette adaptation of one of
A. A. Milne's
Winnie-the-Pooh stories,
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, was released in 1966, to be followed by several other
Pooh featurettes over the years and a full-length compilation feature,
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which was released in 1977. The film was a success, finishing 1967 as the fourth highest-grossing film of the year.
1966–1984: Decline in popularity; Don Bluth's entrance and departure Following Walt Disney's death, Wolfgang Reitherman continued as both producer and director of the studio's feature films. Reitherman's main priority was ensuring that the studio would continue to turn a profit and towards that end, he stressed the importance of making
family-friendly films. The studio began the 1970s with the release of
The Aristocats, the last film project to be approved by Walt Disney. Both
The Aristocats and
Robin Hood were minor box office and critical successes. Receiving positive reviews, high commercial returns, and an Academy Award nomination, it ended up being the
third highest-grossing film of the year and the most successful and best reviewed Disney animated film since
The Jungle Book. The production of
The Rescuers signaled the beginning of a changing of the guard process in the personnel at the Disney animation studio, the animation for which was directed by Bluth. Bluth and several of the other new guard animators quit to start their own studio,
Don Bluth Productions,
The Black Cauldron was intended to expand the appeal of Disney animated films to older audiences and to showcase the talents of the new generation of Disney animators from CalArts. Besides Keane, Musker and Clements, this new group of artists included other promising animators such as
Andreas Deja,
Mike Gabriel,
John Lasseter,
Brad Bird and
Tim Burton. Lasseter was fired from Disney in 1983 for pushing the studio to explore
computer animation production, but went on to become the creative head of
Pixar, a pioneering computer animation studio that would begin a close association with Disney in the late 1980s. Similarly, Burton was fired in 1984 after producing a live-action short shelved by the studio,
Frankenweenie, then went on to become a high-profile producer and director of live-action and
stop-motion features for Disney and other studios. Some of Burton's high-profile projects for Disney would include the stop-motion
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), a live-action adaptation of
Alice in Wonderland (2010), and a stop-motion feature remake of
Frankenweenie (2012). Bird was also fired after a few years working at the company for criticizing Disney's upper management as he felt that they were playing it safe and not taking risks on animation. He subsequently became an animation director at other studios, including
Warner Bros. Animation and Pixar.
Ron Miller, Walt Disney's son-in-law, became president of Walt Disney Productions in 1980 and CEO in 1983.
1984–1989: Restructuring and new projects for prominence (chairman, 1985–2003), nephew of Walt Disney, was a key figure in restructuring the animation department following the reorganization of the Disney company in 1984. After a series of corporate takeover attempts in 1984,
Roy E. Disney, son of Roy O. and nephew of Walt, resigned from the company's board of directors and launched a campaign called "SaveDisney", successfully convincing the board to fire Miller. Roy E. Disney brought in
Michael Eisner as Disney's new CEO and
Frank Wells as president. Eisner in turn named
Jeffrey Katzenberg chairman of the film division, The Walt Disney Studios. Near completion when the Eisner regime took over Disney,
The Black Cauldron (1985) came to represent what would later be referred to as the "rock bottom" point for Disney animation. On February 1, 1985, Disney executives began to move the animation department from the Disney studio lot in Burbank to a variety of warehouses, hangars and trailers located about east at 1420 Flower Street in nearby
Glendale, California. About a year later, the growing computer graphics (CG) group would move there too. The film was enough of a critical and commercial success to instill executive confidence in the animation studio. Katzenberg, Schneider, and Roy Disney set about changing the culture of the studio, increasing staffing and production so that a new animated feature would be released every year instead of every two to four. While
Oliver & Company and the next feature
The Little Mermaid were in production, Disney collaborated with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and master animator
Richard Williams to produce
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a groundbreaking live-action/animation hybrid directed by
Robert Zemeckis, which featured licensed animated characters from other studios (such as Warner Bros., MGM, and Universal). Disney set up a new animation studio under Williams' supervision in London to create the cartoon characters for
Roger Rabbit, with many of the artists from the California studio traveling to England to work on the film. A significant critical and commercial success, and was key in renewing mainstream interest in American animation.
1989–1994: Beginning of the Disney Renaissance, success & impact A second satellite studio,
Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida, opened in 1989 with 40 employees. Its offices were located within the
Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park theme park at
Walt Disney World in
Bay Lake, Florida, and visitors were allowed to tour the studio and observe animators at work. That same year, the studio released
The Little Mermaid, which became a keystone achievement in Disney's history as its largest critical and commercial success in decades. Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who had been co-directors on
The Great Mouse Detective,
The Little Mermaid earned $84 million at the North American box office, a record for the studio. The film was built around a score from Broadway songwriters
Alan Menken and
Howard Ashman, who was also a co-producer and story consultant on the film.
The Little Mermaid vigorously relaunched a profound new interest in the animation and musical film genres. The film was also the first to feature the use of Disney's
Computer Animation Production System (CAPS). Developed for Disney by Pixar, The Renaissance era also saw the studio return to making films with darker themes and scarier villains, similar to the films it had made when Walt Disney was alive. The film earned six Academy Award nominations, including one for
Best Picture, a first for an animated work, winning for Best Song and Best Original Score. Its $145 million box office gross set new records, and merchandising for the film, including toys, cross-promotions, and soundtrack sales, was also lucrative.
Aladdin, released in November 1992, continued the upward trend in Disney's animation success, earning $504 million worldwide at the box office, and two more Oscars for Best Song and Best Score. Featuring songs by Menken, Ashman and
Tim Rice (who replaced Ashman after his death) and starring the voice of
Robin Williams, In June 1994, Disney released
The Lion King, directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. An all-animal story set in Africa,
The Lion King featured an all-star voice cast which included
James Earl Jones,
Matthew Broderick and
Jeremy Irons, with songs written by Tim Rice and pop star
Elton John.
The Lion King earned $768 million at the worldwide box office, to this date a record for a traditionally-animated film, earning millions more in merchandising, promotions and record sales for its soundtrack. Between these in-house productions, Disney diversified in animation methods and produced
The Nightmare Before Christmas with former Disney animator
Tim Burton; Walt Disney Feature Animation contributed by providing the film's second-layering traditional animation. With animation becoming again an increasingly important and lucrative part of Disney's business, the company began to expand its operations. The flagship California studio was split into two units and expanded, Walt Disney Feature Animation was also heavily involved in the adaptations of both
Beauty and the Beast in 1994 and
The Lion King in 1997 into
Broadway musicals. the first fully computer-animated feature ever produced. and commercial success, leading to Pixar signing a five-film deal with Disney, which bore critically and financially successful computer animated films such as ''
A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), and The Incredibles'' (2004). In addition, the successes of
Aladdin and
The Lion King spurred a significant increase in the number of American-produced animated features throughout the rest of the decade, with the major film studios establishing new animation divisions such as
Fox Animation Studios,
Sullivan Bluth Studios (both founded by
Don Bluth),
Amblimation,
Rich Animation Studios,
Turner Feature Animation, and
Warner Bros. Feature Animation being formed to produce films in a Disney-esque musical-comedy format such as ''
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Thumbelina (1994), The Swan Princess (1994), A Troll in Central Park (1994), The Pebble and the Penguin (1995), Cats Don't Dance (1997), Anastasia (1997), Quest for Camelot (1998), and The King and I (1999). Out of these non-Disney animated features, only Anastasia'' was a box office success, and it later ended up being
acquired by Disney through the company's acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019.
1994–1999: Late Disney Renaissance and declining returns Concerns arose internally at the Disney studio, particularly from Roy E. Disney, about studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg taking too much credit for the success of Disney's early 1990s releases. with
Joe Roth taking his place. with both computer animated films such as
Antz (1998) and traditionally-animated films such as
The Prince of Egypt (1998). In contrast to the early 1990s productions, not all the films in the second half of the renaissance were successful.
Pocahontas, released in the summer of 1995, was the first film of the renaissance to receive mixed reviews from critics. It was still popular with audiences and commercially successful, earning $346 million worldwide. The film won two Academy Awards for its music by Alan Menken and
Stephen Schwartz. The next film,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) was partially produced at the
Paris studio. Although it is considered Disney's darkest film,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame performed better critically than
Pocahontas and grossed $325 million worldwide. The following summer,
Hercules (1997) did well at the box office, grossing $252 million worldwide, but underperformed in comparison to Disney's previous films. It received positive reviews for its acting but the animation and music were mixed.
Hercules was responsible for beginning the decline of traditionally-animated films. The declining box office success became doubly concerning inside the studio as wage competition from DreamWorks had significantly increased the studio's overhead,
Mulan (1998), the first film produced primarily at the
Florida studio, opened to positive reviews from audiences and critics and earned a successful $305 million at the worldwide box office, restoring both the critical and commercial success of the studio. The next film,
Tarzan (1999), directed by
Kevin Lima and
Chris Buck, had a high production cost of $130 million, The
Tarzan soundtrack by pop star
Phil Collins resulted in significant record sales and an Academy Award for Best Song.
1999–2005: Experimentation & corporate disorder Fantasia 2000, a sequel to the 1940 film that had been a pet project of Roy E. Disney's since 1990, premiered on December 17, 1999, at
Carnegie Hall in
New York City as part of a concert tour that also visited London, Paris, Tokyo and Pasadena, California. The film was then released in 75
IMAX theaters worldwide from January 1 to April 30, 2000, making it the first animated feature-length film to be released in the format; a standard theatrical release followed on June 16, 2000. Produced in pieces when artists were available between productions,
Fantasia 2000 was the first animated feature produced for and released in IMAX format. The film's $90 million worldwide box office total against its $90 million production cost Peter Schneider left his post as president of Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1999 to become president of The Walt Disney Studios under Joe Roth. By this time, competition from other studios had driven animators' incomes to all-time highs, In October 1999,
Dream Quest Images, a special effects studio previously purchased by the Walt Disney Company in April 1996 to replace Buena Vista Visual Effects, was merged with the computer-graphics operation of Walt Disney Feature Animation to form a division called
The Secret Lab. The Secret Lab produced one feature film,
Dinosaur, which was released in May 2000 and featured CGI prehistoric creatures against filmed live-action backgrounds. and The Secret Lab was closed in 2001. In December 2000, ''
The Emperor's New Groove was released. It had been a musical epic called Kingdom of the Sun
before being revised mid-production into a smaller comedy. The film earned $169 million worldwide on release, though it was well-reviewed and performed better on video; That same year, Atlantis: The Lost Empire'', an attempt to break the Disney formula by moving into action-adventure, received mixed reviews and earned $186 million worldwide against production costs of $120 million. By 2001 and early 2002, the notable successes of Pixar's computer-animated films Disney had been distributing, along with DreamWorks'
Shrek and
Blue Sky Studios'
Ice Age, respectively, against Disney's lesser returns for ''The Emperor's New Groove
and Atlantis: The Lost Empire'' led to the speculation that hand-drawn animation was becoming obsolete. A handful of employees were offered positions doing computer animation. Morale plunged to a low not seen since the start of the studio's ten-year exile to Glendale in 1985. The Paris studio was also closed in 2003. The Burbank studio's remaining hand-drawn productions,
Treasure Planet and
Home on the Range, continued production.
Treasure Planet, a
futuristic outer space retelling of
Robert Louis Stevenson's
Treasure Island, was a pet project of writer-directors Ron Clements and John Musker. It received a simultaneous IMAX release and generally positive reviews but was financially unsuccessful upon its November 2002 release, resulting in a $74 million write-down for the Walt Disney Company in
fiscal year 2003. The Burbank studio's 2D departments closed at the end of 2002, following the completion of
Home on the Range, a long-in-production feature that had previously been known as
Sweating Bullets. Meanwhile, hand-drawn feature animation production continued at the Feature Animation Florida studio, where the films could be produced at lower costs. became the studio's first bonafide hit since
Tarzan upon its summer 2002 release, earning $273 million worldwide against an $80 million production budget. By this time, most of the Disney features from the 1990s had been spun off into direct-to-video sequels, television series, or both, produced by the
Disney Television Animation unit. Beginning with the February 2002 release of
Return to Never Land, a sequel to
Peter Pan (1953), Disney began releasing lower-budgeted sequels to earlier films. These films had been intended for video premieres, but they were released in theaters. In 2003, Tom Schumacher was appointed president of
Buena Vista Theatrical Group, Disney's
stageplay and
musical theater arm, and
David Stainton, then president of Walt Disney Television Animation, was appointed as his replacement. Stainton continued to oversee Disney's direct-to-video division,
Disneytoon Studios, which had been part of the television animation department, though transferred at this time to Walt Disney Feature Animation management. Under Stainton, the Florida studio completed
Brother Bear, which received a weaker response from critics than
Lilo & Stitch but still recouped its' low budget in theatres.
Home on the Range, released in April 2004, was also not as critically or commercially successful as
Lilo & Stitch. Disney officially announced its conversion of Walt Disney Feature Animation into a fully CGI studio – a process begun two years prior Talks between Eisner and Pixar CEO
Steve Jobs over renewal terms for the highly lucrative Pixar-Disney distribution deal broke down in January 2004. Jobs, in particular, disagreed with Eisner's insistence that sequels such as the then in-development
Toy Story 3 (2010) would not count against the number of films required in the studio's new deal. In 2005, Disney released its first fully computer-animated feature,
Chicken Little. The film was a success at the box office, earning $315 million worldwide, but was met with critically negative reviews. Earlier that year, after two years of Roy E. Disney's "SaveDisney" campaign, Eisner announced that he would resign and named
Bob Iger, then president of the Walt Disney Company, his successor as chairman and CEO. with the deal closing that May. Consequently, the Circle 7 studio launched to produce
Toy Story 3 was shut down. Most of that studio's employees returned to Feature Animation and
Toy Story 3 returned to Pixar's control. Iger later said that it was "a deal I wanted badly, and [Disney] needed badly." He believed that Disney Animation needed new leadership and, as part of the acquisition,
Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter were named president and
Chief Creative Officer, respectively, of Feature Animation as well as Pixar. While Disney executives had discussed closing Feature Animation as redundant, Catmull and Lasseter refused and instead resolved to try to turn things around at the studio. Lasseter said, "We weren't going to let that [closure] happen on our watch. We were determined to save the legacy of Walt Disney's amazing studio and bring it back up to the creative level it had to be. Saving this heritage was squarely on our shoulders." Lasseter and Catmull set about rebuilding the morale of the Feature Animation staff, and rehired a number of its 1980s "new guard" generation of star animators who had left the studio, including Ron Clements, John Musker,
Eric Goldberg, To maintain the separation of Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar despite their now common ownership and management, Catmull and Lasseter "drew a hard line" that each studio was solely responsible for its own projects and would not be allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other. Catmull said that he and Lasseter would "make sure the studios are quite distinct from each other. We don't want them to merge; that would definitely be the wrong approach. Each should have its own personality." Catmull and Lasseter also brought to Disney Feature Animation the Pixar model of a "filmmaker-driven studio" as opposed to an "executive-driven studio"; they abolished Disney's prior system of requiring directors to respond to "mandatory"
notes from development executives ranking above the producers in favor of a system roughly analogous to
peer review, in which non-mandatory notes come primarily from fellow producers, directors and writers. Most of the layers of "gatekeepers" (midlevel executives) were stripped away, and Lasseter established a routine of personally meeting weekly with filmmakers on all projects in the last year of production and delivering feedback on the spot. The studio's then-current team of top creatives who worked together closely on the development of its films became known as the Disney Story Trust. It was somewhat similar to the Pixar Braintrust, but its meetings were reportedly "more polite" than those of its Pixar counterpart. In 2007, Lasseter changed the name of Walt Disney Feature Animation to
Walt Disney Animation Studios, and re-positioned the studio as an animation house that produced both traditional and computer-animated projects. In order to keep costs down on hand-drawn productions, animation, design and layout were done in-house at Disney while clean-up animation and digital ink-and-paint were farmed out to vendors and freelancers. The studio released
Meet the Robinsons in 2007, its second all-CGI film, earning $169.3 million worldwide. That same year, Disneytoon Studios was also restructured and began to operate as a separate unit under Lasseter and Catmull's control. Lasseter's direct intervention with the studio's next film,
American Dog, resulted in the departure of director
Chris Sanders, who went on to become a director at DreamWorks Animation. The film was retooled by new directors
Byron Howard and
Chris Williams as
Bolt. It was released in 2008 and had the best critical reception of any Disney animated feature since
Lilo & Stitch. The film also became a moderate financial success, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film. the film was released in 2009 to a positive critical reception. It was also nominated for three Academy Awards, including two for Best Song. The box office performance of
The Princess and the Frog – a total of $267 million earned worldwide against a $105 million production budget – was seen as an underperformance due to competition with
Avatar. The film's underperformance was also attributed to the word "Princess" in the title. The future Disney films then in production which were about
princesses were given
gender-neutral, symbolic titles:
Rapunzel became
Tangled and
The Snow Queen became
Frozen. In 2014, former Disney animator
Tom Sito compared the box office performance of
The Princess and the Frog to that of
The Great Mouse Detective (1986), which was a step-up from the theatrical run of the 1985 film
The Black Cauldron. In 2009, the studio also produced the computer-animated
Prep & Landing holiday special for the
ABC television network.
2010–2019: New leadership and return to success After
The Princess and the Frog, the studio released
Tangled in 2010, a CGI adaptation of the
Brothers Grimm fairy tale "
Rapunzel" with songs by
Alan Menken and
Glenn Slater. In development since 2002 under Glen Keane,
Tangled, directed by Byron Howard and
Nathan Greno, became a significant critical and commercial success nominated for
several accolades. The film earned $592 million in worldwide box office revenue, becoming the studio's third most successful release to date. The hand-drawn feature
Winnie the Pooh, a new feature film based on the
eponymous stories by
A. A. Milne, followed in 2011 to positive reviews; it remains the studio's most recent hand-drawn feature.
Wreck-It Ralph, directed by
Rich Moore, was released in 2012 to critical acclaim and commercial success. The film follows a video-game villain who redeems himself as a hero. It won numerous awards, including the
Annie,
Critics' Choice and
Kids' Choice Awards for Best Animated Feature Film, and received
Golden Globe and
Academy Award nominations. The film earned $471 million in worldwide box office revenue. In addition, the studio won its first
Academy Award for a short film in forty-four years with
Paperman, which was released in theaters with
Wreck-It Ralph. including an animated feature. In 2013, the studio laid off nine of its hand-drawn animators, including Nik Ranieri and
Ruben A. Aquino, leading to speculation on animation
blogs that the studio was abandoning traditional animation, an idea that the studio dismissed. Later that same year, in November,
Frozen, a CGI musical film inspired by
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "
The Snow Queen", was released to widespread acclaim and became a blockbuster hit. Directed by Chris Buck and
Jennifer Lee with songs by the Broadway team of
Robert Lopez and
Kristen Anderson-Lopez,
Frozen also became the first film from Walt Disney Animation Studios to win the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (a category started in 2001), as well as the first feature-length motion picture from the studio to win an Academy Award since
Tarzan and the first to win multiple Academy Awards since
Pocahontas. It was released in theaters with
Get a Horse!, a new
Mickey Mouse cartoon combining black-and-white hand-drawn animation and full-color CGI animation. The studio's next feature,
Big Hero 6, a comedy-adventure film inspired by the
Marvel Comics series of the same name, was released in November 2014. For the film, the studio developed new light rendering software called Hyperion, which the studio continued to use on all subsequent films.
Big Hero 6 received critical acclaim and was the highest-grossing animated film of 2014, also winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The film was accompanied in theaters by the animated short
Feast, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. In the same month that
Big Hero 6 was released, it was announced that General Manager, Andrew Millstein had been promoted as President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. In March 2016, the studio released
Zootopia, a buddy-comedy film set in a modern world inhabited by
anthropomorphic animals. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $1 billion worldwide, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Moana, a fantasy-adventure musical film, was released in November 2016. The film was shown in theaters with the animated short,
Inner Workings.
Moana was another commercial and critical success for the studio, grossing over $600 million worldwide and receiving two Academy Award nominations. In November 2017, John Lasseter announced that he was taking a six-month leave of absence after acknowledging what he called "missteps" in his behavior with employees in a memo to staff. According to various news outlets, Lasseter had a history of alleged
sexual misconduct towards employees. On June 8, 2018, it was announced that Lasseter would leave Disney and
Pixar at the end of the year after the company decided not to renew his contract. He would instead take on a consulting role until the expiration of the contract. Jennifer Lee was announced as Lasseter's replacement as chief creative officer of Disney Animation on June 19, 2018. On June 28, 2018, the studio's division
Disneytoon Studios was shut down, resulting in the layoffs of 75 animators and staff. On October 23, 2018, it was announced that Ed Catmull would be retiring at the end of the year, and would stay in an adviser role until July 2019. In November 2018, the studio released a sequel to
Wreck-It Ralph, titled
Ralph Breaks the Internet. The film grossed over $529 million worldwide and received nominations for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, both for Best Animated Feature.
2019–present: Ongoing changes & struggles In August 2019, it was announced that Andrew Millstein would be stepping down from his role as president, before moving on to become co-president of
Blue Sky Studios alongside Robert Baird, while
Clark Spencer was named president of Disney Animation, reporting to Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Bergman and working alongside chief creative officer
Jennifer Lee. The film grossed over $1 billion worldwide and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. From 2020 to 2022, Disney Animation produced a series of experimental shorts called
Short Circuit for the
Disney+ streaming service. The first pack of shorts was released in January 2020, and a second pack was released in August 2021. During that period, Disney Animation returned to work on hand-drawn animation once again, having released the hand-drawn "At Home with
Olaf" web short "Ice," as well as three hand-drawn animated
Goofy shorts for Disney+, and a hand-drawn animated "Short Circuit" titled "Dinosaur Barbarian". In April 2022,
Eric Goldberg confirmed plans within the studio to develop hand-drawn animated films and series. That year saw the release of the hand-drawn shorts
Mickey in a Minute, released as part of the Disney+ documentary
Mickey: The Story of a Mouse, and
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which marked the
title character's first animated short produced by Disney Animation since Disney acquired the rights for the character in 2006. In December 2020, the studio announced that it was expanding into producing television series – a business usually handled by the
Disney Television Animation division. Most of the projects in development were for Disney+. The CG series produced included
Baymax! (a spin-off of
Big Hero 6),
Zootopia+ (an anthology series set in the
Zootopia universe), and
Iwájú (an original long-form science fiction anthology series co-produced with British-based
Pan-African entertainment company Kugali Media). In addition, employees from Disney Animation were involved on the Disney Television Animation series
Monsters at Work, based on
Pixar's
Monsters, Inc. franchise.
Raya and the Last Dragon, a fantasy-adventure film, was released in March 2021. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, it was released simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with
Premier Access. The film was accompanied in theaters with the animated short
Us Again.
Raya and the Last Dragon grossed over $130 million at the box office and became a hit on the streaming charts after its Premier Access charge expired on Disney+. The film became the third most streamed film title of 2021. The film also received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In August 2021, it was reported that Disney Animation was opening a new animation studio in
Vancouver. Operations at the Vancouver studio started in 2022, with former Disney Animation finance lead Amir Nasrabadi serving as head for the studio. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was given an exclusive 30-day theatrical run in theaters and was released to Disney+ on December 24, 2021. It was released in theaters with the 2D/CG hybrid short
Far from the Tree. Although
Encanto was not able to break-even at the box office by grossing $256 million against its $120–150 million budget, it went viral over the 2021
holiday season and achieved wider commercial success after its digital release to Disney+. The film went on to win the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and received Academy Award nominations for
Best Original Score and
Best Original Song. In November 2022, the studio released the action-adventure film
Strange World. Although the film received positive reviews, it was a box-office failure, grossing $73 million worldwide on a budget of $135–180 million, with an estimated loss of $100–147 million. By 2023, the studio had opened a new apprentice program for hand-drawn animators. That same year, the live-action/animated short film
Once Upon a Studio was released to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, which occurred in October 2023. It went on to win the award for
Outstanding Animated Short Form Program at the
3rd Children's and Family Emmy Awards. The 2D/CG hybrid musical-fantasy film
Wish was released in November 2023. The film's theme is inspired by Disney's 100th anniversary. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed roughly $255 million worldwide against a production budget of $175–200 million, resulting in a loss of an estimated $131 million. The film was nominated for several awards, including the
Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. The studio provided both CG and hand-drawn animation for the
Disney Parks ride
Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which opened in 2024 and is inspired by
The Princess and the Frog. In September 2024, Lee announced that she was stepping down from her position as Disney Animation's chief creative officer to return to full-time filmmaking at the studio—specifically, to direct and write
Frozen 3 and also to write and executive produce
Frozen 4.
Jared Bush was named as her successor. The film received mixed reviews and was a commercial success, grossing over $1 billion worldwide. In November 2025, the sequel
Zootopia 2 was released. The film was a commercial success, grossing $1 billion and won the
BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. It was also nominated for
Best Animated Feature at the
98th Academy Awards as well as
Best Motion Picture – Animated and
Cinematic and Box Office Achievement at the
83rd Golden Globe Awards. On December 31, 2025,
Zootopia 2 surpassed
Frozen 2 to become the studio's top-grossing movie of all time. The following month, it surpassed
Pixar's
Inside Out 2 to become Hollywood's highest-grossing animated film in history. ==Production logo==