10 Behind-The-Scenes Dramas That Failed To Derail Famous Movies
5. Toy Story 2 Was Almost Deleted Because Of A Computer Error
Toy Story 2 was very nearly wiped from existence. We were very nearly deprived of one of the finest sequels ever created, and Pixar very nearly lost an important piece of their legacy. Just let that sink in for a second.
The movie had been in production for around two months when Larry Cutler - Pixar's former Technical Director - was browsing a file directory in which the assets for Woody were stored. Cutler refreshed the directory, and, to his horror, discovered there were less files than before.
He then checked the directories for Hamm, Rex, and Mr. Potato Head, and refreshed again. Suddenly, only Hamm remained. One of Cutler's colleagues, who saw what was happening, quickly picked up the phone, called the people working near the main server and told them to cut the power.
When everything was powered back up, only 10% of Toy Story 2 remained - 90% of it was lost.
This was accidental, of course. An employee had mistakenly entered a delete command at the root level of the Toy Story 2 project, leading to everything being wiped.
A mishap with backup tapes meant that Pixar couldn't even restore all the lost data, but luckily, as they scrambled for a solution - for weeks and weeks - a Pixar employee who had been working from home realised that she had the deleted data stored on a computer in her house.
Pixar were able to restore most of the work they lost and continue their work on the film - finishing it in time for release - and Toy Story 2 would go on to be a roaring success, earning more than five times its budget.