What to know
Toy Story grew out of Pixar’s 1988 short Tin Toy: after its success, Disney approached the studio to make a feature told from a small toy’s point of view. John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter wrote the early story treatments; Disney wanted an edgier tone, and after several failed story reels production was halted and the script rewritten. The final screenplay is credited to Joss Whedon, Stanton, Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow.
A small team of 27 animators worked on the film. Woody alone needed 723 motion controls, 212 of them for his face, and the studio could render less than 30 seconds of the film per day. Randy Newman wrote the score and songs: Lasseter did not want a musical, so the characters do not sing and the songs play in the background.
The film premiered in Los Angeles on 19 November 1995. In 2009 it returned to cinemas in 3D (in Ukraine on 1 October), and that year the Le Doyen studio recorded its Ukrainian dub. The story continues in Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010), Toy Story 4 (2019) and Toy Story 5, released in June 2026, plus the spin-off Lightyear (2022).
