Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the third installment in the Toy Story series and the sequel to Toy Story 2 (1999). It was directed by Lee Unkrich, the editor of the first two films and the co-director of Toy Story 2, produced by Darla K. Anderson, and written by Michael Arndt, while Unkrich wrote the story along with John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, respectively, director and co-writer of the first two films. The film's ensemble voice cast includes Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Jeff Pidgeon, Jodi Benson, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, and R. Lee Ermey. In Toy Story 3, Andy Davis (Morris), now a teenager, is going to college. Woody (Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Allen), and the other toys are accidentally donated to Sunnyside Daycare, a daycare center, by Andy's mother (Metcalf), and the toys must decide where their loyalties lie. In 2004, following disagreements between the Walt Disney Company's CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, Disney planned to make Toy Story 3 at the new Circle Seven Animation studio unit, with the tentative theatrical release date in early 2008. The script was developed in multiple versions; however, after Disney bought Pixar in early 2006, the Circle Seven version of the film was canceled as the result of Circle Seven's closure. The production was then transferred to Pixar, where a new script was developed. Randy Newman returned to compose the film's musical score. With a budget of $200 million, Toy Story 3 is one of the most expensive films of all time. Toy Story 3 premiered at the Taormina Film Fest in Italy on June 12, 2010, and was released in the United States on June 18. It was the first film to be released theatrically with Dolby Surround 7.1 sound. Like its predecessors, Toy Story 3 received critical acclaim upon release, with critics praising the vocal performances, screenplay, emotional depth, animation, and Newman's musical score. The film earned $1.067 billion worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the highest-grossing film of 2010. It is also the first animated film to reach $1 billion at the box-office, and was the highest-grossing animated film of all time until the release of Frozen in 2013 and was Pixar's highest-grossing film until the release of Incredibles 2 in 2018. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named Toy Story 3 one of the top-ten films of 2010. Amongst its numerous accolades, Toy Story 3 was nominated for five awards at the 83rd Academy Awards, winning Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. One of those nominations was for Best Picture, thus making it the third and currently most recent animated film to be nominated for this award (after 1991's Beauty and the Beast and 2009's Up), although it lost to The King's Speech. A sequel, Toy Story 4, was released in 2019.