The Alliance

THE ALLIANCE

16

Lucas’s Lucasfi lm, where he pursued computer anima-

tion as a member of Ed Catmull’s computer division. A

few years later, Lucas sold the then- unprofi table divi-

sion to Steve Jobs, who named the resulting company

Pixar. And in 1995, Pixar partnered with Disney to re-

lease the world’s fi rst computer- animated feature fi lm,

Toy Story .

In 2006, eleven years after Toy Story was released

and twenty- three years after Lasseter was fi red,

Disney realized it had made a mistake by rejecting

computer animation and ended up bringing Lasse-

ter back. But it would cost them— the Walt Disney

Company spent over $7 billion to buy Pixar. And

that’s how Lasseter ended up back at Disney as its

chief creative offi cer of Disney Animation ...