Toy Story Release, November 22, 1995: Pixar's First Feature

Toy Story opened in American theaters on November 22, 1995, the first feature-length film made entirely with computer animation. Directed by John Lasseter for Pixar and released by Disney, it became the highest-grossing film of 1995 in the United States. Its success turned a small California graphics company into a major studio and moved Hollywood animation from pencils to software.

What Happened When Toy Story Opened in November 1995

The film premiered on November 19 at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, then opened nationwide on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Families had a long holiday weekend to see it, and they did: Toy Story earned $29.1 million in its first three-day weekend in the US and Canada.

The story follows Woody, a pull-string cowboy voiced by Tom Hanks, whose place as a boy’s favorite toy is threatened by Buzz Lightyear, a space ranger action figure voiced by Tim Allen. The supporting cast included Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn and Jim Varney. Randy Newman wrote the songs, including “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” and the soundtrack album came out the same day as the film.

How Pixar Built the First Computer-Animated Feature

Pixar began in 1986 as a spin-off of the computer graphics group at Lucasfilm. Steve Jobs paid George Lucas $5 million for the technology and put another $5 million into the new company. In its early years the company developed rendering software, including RenderMan, and made short films to show what its tools could do.

One of those shorts, Tin Toy (1988), won the Academy Award for animated short film. It became the seed for Toy Story. In 1991 Pixar signed a deal with Disney, valued at about $26 million, to make three computer-animated features, with Disney controlling the films and characters.

Production was difficult. Disney approved the script on January 19, 1993, but the story still went through major rewrites in 1994. The crew grew from 24 people to 110, including 27 animators and 22 technical directors, and the team built about 400 computer models of characters and sets.

Rendering was the bottleneck. Banks of Sun Microsystems computers ran around the clock, and the studio could finish less than 30 seconds of final film per day. The whole movie took about 800,000 machine hours to render. The final budget is usually given as $30 million.

Box Office and Awards

Toy Story finished 1995 as the top-grossing film at the US and Canadian box office. Worldwide it earned nearly $362 million in its original run, second among 1995 releases only to Die Hard with a Vengeance. Re-releases, including a 3D version in 2009, later added to that figure.

At the 68th Academy Awards on March 25, 1996, the film received a Special Achievement Award, presented to John Lasseter for leading the first feature-length computer-animated film. It was nominated in three competitive categories:

• Original screenplay, the first animated film nominated in that category
• Original song, for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”
• Original musical or comedy score, for Randy Newman

Braveheart won best picture that night. You can see the date of that ceremony on the 1996 calendar.

Timeline: From Tin Toy to Toy Story

Date	Milestone
February 3, 1986	Pixar is spun off from Lucasfilm
1988	Pixar releases the short Tin Toy
1991	Pixar signs a three-picture deal with Disney
January 19, 1993	Disney approves the Toy Story script
November 19, 1995	Premiere at the El Capitan Theatre
November 22, 1995	Nationwide release
November 29, 1995	Pixar stock begins trading on NASDAQ
March 25, 1996	Special Achievement Academy Award
2005	Added to the National Film Registry

What Toy Story Changed for Pixar and Disney

The release gave Pixar leverage it had never had. Steve Jobs scheduled the company’s initial public offering for about a week after the film opened, and Pixar shares began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol PIXR on November 29, 1995. The film’s success also helped keep Pixar from being sold.

Pixar went on to release a string of further features with Disney. On January 24, 2006, Disney agreed to buy Pixar for about $7.4 billion in stock, a deal that closed on May 5, 2006. The 2006 calendar shows how far the studio had come in just over a decade.

Toy Story’s Legacy Today

The Library of Congress added Toy Story to the National Film Registry in 2005, recognizing it as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. The franchise kept growing with Toy Story 2 in 1999, Toy Story 3 in 2010, Toy Story 4 in 2019 and Toy Story 5 in 2026.

Computer animation has since become the norm for major studio animated features, and Toy Story was the first full-length proof that it could work. Its November 1995 release came just three months after the Windows 95 launch, in a year when personal computers were becoming household fixtures. For more of that year’s events, see the full 1995 calendar and the history of Thanksgiving, the holiday weekend that gave the film its strong start.