Toy Story, Pixar and Contemporary Hollywood

In this chapter I situate the Toy Story films in the context of Pixar’s overall output, and also within hit patterns at the US box office and in Hollywood’s export markets. I pay particular attention to the increasing box office dominance of adaptations and sequels, and highlight Pixar’s role as one of the few hugely successful generators of new stories (that is, stories that are neither adapted from other sources nor sequels to previous films) in contemporary Hollywood. I then examine both the first Toy Story film and its two sequels in terms of the rather complex and very peculiar stories they tell.