To Pixar and Beyond
My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year 2017
One day in November 1994, Lawrence Levy received a phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs, whom he’d never met, offering him a job running Pixar, a little-known company that had already lost Jobs $50 million. With Pixar’s prospects looking bleak, it was with some trepidation that Levy accepted the position. After a few weeks he discovered that the situation was even worse than he’d imagined.
Pixar’s advertising division just about broke even, its graphics software had few customers, its short films didn’t make any money and, on top of all that, Jobs was pushing to take the company public. Everything was riding on the studio’s first feature film, codenamed Toy Story, and even then it would have to be one of the most successful animated features of all time…
Full of wisdom on bringing business and creativity together, and recounting the touching story of Levy’s enduring friendship with Jobs, To Pixar and Beyond is a fascinating insider’s account of one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Levy, a former Silicon Valley attorney, recounts becoming a confidant of the late Steve Jobs in this engaging memoir. When Levy arrived at Pixar (where Jobs served as chairman) as chief financial officer in February 1995, it was a small but brilliant firm on the edge of failure, not for lack of talent this was the creative team that had developed the cutting-edge animation behind the still-unreleased Toy Story but from a lack of business savvy and a deep distrust of Jobs. By believing in Pixar's future and its people, Levy explains, he and Jobs turned the tide for the struggling company, despite its deeply disadvantageous deal with Disney. The solution, Jobs and Levy realized, was an IPO to garner Pixar more capital. After Pixar's value skyrocketed to billion on its first day of trading and Toy Story became an unexpected success, Pixar could finally renegotiate its deal with Disney, acquiring more creative control and a larger share of the profits. A wildly successful slate of films followed, ultimately leading to the 2006 sale of Pixar to Disney for $7.6 billion. Levy has written a fascinating look at one of the most innovative companies of the early 21st century.
