Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, California
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Founded | February 3, 1986Richmond, California, U.S. | in
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Headquarters | 1200 Park Avenue, Emeryville, California, U.S. |
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Parent | Walt Disney Studios |
Website | pixar |
Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑːr/), also referred to as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California that is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
Pixar has produced eighteen feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film, and its most recent being Cars 3 (2017). All 18 of its films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least an "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences. The studio has also produced several short films. As of July 2017[update], its feature films have earned approximately $11 billion at the worldwide box office, with an average worldwide gross of $634 million per film.Finding Nemo (2003), along with its sequel Finding Dory (2016), as well as Toy Story 3 (2010) are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with the lattermost film being the third all-time highest-grossing animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion. Thirteen of Pixar's films are also among the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time.