Few movie franchises have defined modern animation the way ‘Toy Story’ has. Pixar’s first full-length feature didn’t just change the animation industry; it changed cinema itself. However, as it turns out, ‘Toy Story’ as we know it almost didn’t happen.
In a fascinating revelation, Tom Hanks recently explained that the original version of the 1995 classic, the one he and Tim Allen had already recorded most of their lines for, was completely scrapped before release.
“We Recorded 80 Minutes That Were Completely Thrown Out”: Tom Hanks On Bold ‘Toy Story’ Restart
During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tom Hanks revealed how the first version of ‘Toy Story’ “was completely thrown out.” The story and tone, as it turned out, were all wrong, and the movie we know today only came to life after Pixar took the bold step of starting over from scratch. As ‘Toy Story’ approaches its 30th anniversary, Hanks reflected on the film’s surprising origins and the creative hurdles it faced early on. “Actually, it was more than 30 years,” Hanks said.
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“Because Tim Allen and I and everybody involved, we recorded a Toy Story movie, about 80 minutes of it. That was completely thrown out.” That scrapped version, according to Hanks, took a very different approach to Woody and Buzz’s relationship. Instead of the heartwarming, character-driven dynamic audiences came to love, the early iteration leaned heavily into sarcasm and bickering. This was due to the urging of executives who didn’t quite understand Pixar’s vision.
“The people who were running the studio, not Pixar, Pixar people are great, they said, ‘Look, it’s a cartoon. Let’s make them wisecrack-y and improv and insult each other,” Hanks recalled. “Which we sort of did for a while.” That comedic tone didn’t just feel off; it fundamentally clashed with the emotional core that Pixar was striving for. “Quite frankly, it didn’t work. It wasn’t Toy Story. It wasn’t what Pixar was going for,” Hanks admitted. Eventually, director John Lasseter made the difficult call to scrap nearly all of the completed work and begin again.
“We looked at it and it’s just not working,” Hanks remembered being told. “And we would like to start all over from scratch.” That decision, though time-consuming and risky, turned out to be a defining moment for Pixar. The reworked version of ‘Toy Story’ would go on to become a groundbreaking hit, setting the tone for the studio’s creative philosophy for decades to come. “So then we began the process all over again, which is about a two-and-a-half to three-year process,” Hanks said. “But we got it right that time.”
How Scrapping The Original Saved ‘Toy Story’ And Pixar Itself
Tom Hanks’ revelation gives new insight into just how close ‘Toy Story’ came to being a completely different, and potentially disastrous, movie. The studio executives’ insistence on making Woody and Buzz snarky and combative might have stripped away what would become the franchise’s emotional foundation: the unlikely friendship between two toys learning to share a child’s love.
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If the original “wisecracking” version had gone forward, ‘Toy Story’ might have been forgotten as a generic animated comedy. It wouldn’t have become a beloved cultural milestone. The heart, empathy, and charm that came to define Pixar’s storytelling could have been lost before they even had a chance to take shape. Instead, the new direction, with its sincere focus on character, growth, and emotional truth, not only saved ‘Toy Story’ but also established Pixar’s creative DNA.
The film’s success in 1995 paved the way for nearly three decades of storytelling excellence, with classics like ‘Monsters, Inc.’, ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘The Incredibles’, ‘Up’, and ‘Inside Out’. It’s not an exaggeration to say that scrapping that early version changed animation history.
