Last time I walked onto the Pixar campus up in Emeryville—past that giant Luxo, Jr. lamp and the Lego Woody and Buzz—it was to interview its co-founder, Ed Catmull. That was late summer of 2015, at arguably the high point of the company, and I could feel the bravado, even from the quiet, all-business Catmull. Pixar had just released Inside Out, maybe its most original and entertaining film, which grossed $850 million worldwide in theaters. It capped an incredible run of 15 innovative and profitable features, dating back to Toy Story, in 1995. (The Good Dinosaur, released later in 2015, would snap the Pixar streak, grossing only $334 million.)

At the same time, Catmull and his creative partner, John Lasseter, probably the most significant figure in American animation since Walt Disney, had also taken over the struggling Disney Animation Studios after Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion, in 2006. And that studio was humming, too, with hits like Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, and Zootopia and Moana nearly finished. Catmull had even run a victory lap of sorts, writing a management book, Creativity, Inc. (with Amy Wallace), that evangelized the unique, time-consuming, and, yes, really expensive processes that allowed Pixar to kick everyone’s ass in animation.