Toy Story opened in American theaters, introducing audiences to Woody and Buzz Lightyear and proving that computer-generated animation could carry a full-length, emotionally resonant feature film. Directed by John Lasseter and produced with Disney, it grossed over $373 million worldwide and effectively launched the modern era of CGI filmmaking, reshaping the animation industry within a decade.
Pixar had been a struggling hardware company before pivoting to animation, and Toy Story was a gamble few in Hollywood expected to pay off; traditional animators dismissed computer graphics as sterile and technical, incapable of real storytelling warmth. The film's budget, roughly $30 million, was modest by studio standards, and its production used render farms that took hours per frame, a process almost unimaginably slow by later standards.
Tom Hanks and Tim Allen voiced Woody and Buzz with a chemistry that grounded the technical novelty in genuine feeling, and screenwriters (including Joss Whedon among others) built a script about obsolescence and jealousy that resonated with adults as much as children. Randy Newman's score, especially "You've Got a Friend in Me," became inseparable from the film's identity.
The film's success didn't just make money; it restructured an entire industry. Traditional hand-drawn animation studios scrambled to adapt, and within fifteen years CGI had become the default mode for mainstream animated features, a shift so complete that audiences under thirty could scarcely imagine the industry any other way.