7. Toy Story (1995)
Given that computer-animated movies are now released with increasing regularity, its hard to forget that the genre itself is less than 20 years old. It's even harder to imagine that the movie that started it all went through such a troubled pre-production that it almost never saw the light of day. After spending two years working the original idea into a script that was finally green-lit in January 1993, production was shut down in November after a test screening of the movie's first half to Disney executives yielded disastrous results. The script was drastically reworked before production resumed three months later, with the story now resembling the buddy-movie dynamic between Woody and Buzz Lightyear we all know and love. Despite only clocking in at 80 minutes, the movie required a team of 110 (including 27 animators) that clocked up over 800,000 hours to render the finished movie. There was an air of trepidation surrounding the November 1995 release, and Disney only contributed a marketing budget of $20m despite all of the associated merchandising deals. Of course, Toy Story was a resounding success and grossed over £360m worldwide against a $30m budget, as well as receiving universal critical acclaim. John Lasseter was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for the groundbreaking movie, and it also became the first animated movie nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The resounding success of Toy Story ultimately established Pixar as one of the industry's premier studios, spawned one of the greatest trilogies of all time, and of course saw the incredible rise of computer-animated movies, now one of the most commercially successful genres. A huge gamble that paid off to become one of the most influential movies ever made.