2.5 years per Toy Story film
Each Toy Story film takes about 2.5 years of Tom Hanks's involvement, with sessions roughly every 6 months.
Snapshot · The Rest Is Entertainment
Tom Hanks on Toy Story, Sequels and The Scene He Regrets
Explore episode
Jun 17, 2026
Where this was said
Toy Story Origins: Pixar's Bold 80% Reboot
At 7:34 · chapter starts 3:51
Tom Hanks answers a listener question about whether he sensed how transformative Toy Story would be. He recalls being shown just 12 seconds of animation — Woody gesturing against a blue background — taken from a scene of Hanks yelling at a dog in Turner & Hooch. That was enough. He was in. But the path from that moment to the finished film was far from straight. Pixar assembled about 80% of a movie before deciding something was fundamentally wrong with its DNA. [1] — Tom Hanks "80% of Toy Story scrapped: Pixar threw out approximately 80% of the original Toy Story during production, deciding there was something intr…" 09:18 The call went out to the cast: everything you've recorded, we're starting over. Hanks credits John Lasseter and the Pixar team with making an extraordinarily courageous creative decision — one that reshaped the entire relationship between Woody and Buzz. He explains that Pixar's secret is a relentless internal hothouse of testing — not audience screenings, but animatics, storyboards, and crews asking themselves 'Are we doing this right?' — which is why each film takes 2.5 years of Hanks's involvement.
Pixar's iterative testing process
Tom Hanks described Pixar's internal testing process — not public screenings but a hothouse boiler-room atmosphere of constant in-house critique — as the reason the films take so long but turn out right.
Pixar Scrapped 80% of Toy Story — And Started Over
Pixar threw out 80% of the original Toy Story because the DNA was fundamentally wrong. Starting over from scratch — changing the entire Woody-Buzz dynamic — was the decision that made the franchise what it became.
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