Toy Story 2 was nearly erased from existence when someone at Pixar accidentally ran a delete command on the film’s master files, wiping out roughly 90 percent of the project — and the only reason the production survived was that Galyn Susman, a technical director on maternity leave, had a working copy on a computer at her house. (opens in new tab)

It is one of the best disaster stories in modern filmmaking, and the remarkable thing is how much of it holds up. In 1998, deep in production on Toy Story 2, someone at Pixar ran a delete command on the film’s master files and watched roughly 90 per cent of the project vanish from the […]