Loveday Writing

Now that I’ve finished reviewing and analysing Pixar’s Golden Age, the next era I will be exploring is the Merger Era.

The Merger Era consisted of five animated feature films, and lasted for four years from 2006 until 2010:

• Cars
• Ratatouille
• WALL-E
• Up
• Toy Story 3

The Merger Era is known as the first Era after Disney purchased Pixar in early-to-mid 2006. The purchase enabled for the combination of Pixar’ s creative teams and technological resources with Disney’s portfolio of family entertainment, theme parks and other franchises. This included Pixar President, Ed Catmull, also serving as President of the Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Pixar Executive President, John Lasseter, also serving as Chief Creative Officer at both companies.

The Merger Era is known for films that continued to tell imaginative and original stories (with the exception of Toy Story 3), showing further development of computer generated animation, and focusing on more mature and darker themes, as well as realism.

The Merger Era ended with Toy Story 3, with the Experimental Era kicking off the following year in 2011 with Cars 2.

References:

• https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-to-acquire-pixar/
• https://decentfilms.com/articles/threeagesofpixar
• https://pixune.com/blog/disney-pixar-merger-in-details/
• https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/business-studies/business-case-studies/disney-pixar-merger-case-study/#:~:text=Walt%20Disney%20purchased%20Pixar%20company,corporate%20transactions%20in%20recent%20years.