Pixar Animation Studios

Pixar Animation Studios is an American CGI animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, United States. The studio has earned twenty-four Academy Awards, six Golden Globes, and three Grammys, among many other awards, acknowledgments and achievements and has made $5.5 billion worldwide. It is one of the most (according to Rotten Tomatoes, perhaps the single most) critically acclaimed film studios of all time. It is best known for its CGI-animated feature films which are created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard Renderman image-rendering API used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm before it was acquired by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006.

Pixar has produced eleven feature films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, all of which have met with critical and commercial success. Pixar followed Toy Story with A Bug's Life in 1998, Toy Story 2 in 1999, Monsters, Inc. in 2001, Finding Nemo in 2003 (to date, the most commercially successful Pixar film, grossing over $800 million worldwide), The Incredibles in 2004, Cars in 2006, Ratatouille in 2007, WALL-E in 2008, Up in 2009 (the first Pixar film presented in Disney Digital 3-D), and Toy Story 3 in 2010.

All seven Pixar films released since the inauguration of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2001 have been nominated for that award, commencing with Monsters, Inc.. Five of the seven have won the award: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Up is also the first Pixar film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Up manage to make the top 50 list of highest-grossing films of all time, with Finding Nemo making the top 20 at #20, Up at #36, The Incredibles at #45, and Ratatouille at #47.

On September 6, 2009, executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich were handed the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Biennale Venice Film Festival. The award was presented by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.