For decades, it seemed that Pixar couldn’t lose.

Starting with “Toy Story” in 1995, the Emeryville, Calif.-based computer animation studio rolled out hit after hit, with movies that achieved critical acclaim as well as box office riches.

But after the COVID-19 pandemic struck, even the once-unflappable Pixar fell victim to the doldrums plaguing the entertainment industry and the company’s own missteps.

Films such as “Lightyear” did poorly at the box office, partly due to their timing during the pandemic and a perceived falloff in quality, for which Pixar had long been considered the gold standard. Parent company Walt Disney Co. has cut back spending across the board, resulting in about 175 layoffs at Pixar, largely due to the studio pulling back on series for streaming service Disney+.

Now with “Inside Out 2,” the much-anticipated sequel to 2015’s “Inside Out,” Pixar is looking to make a comeback.

Hitting theaters this week, “Inside Out 2” is tracking for one of the highest opening weekends of the year so far, with a projected $80 million to $85 million in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada. Some analysts say the movie could become the first film of the year to clear $100 million in its domestic box office opening weekend. (The movie’s budget is estimated at $175 million.)

“Pixar was the leading edge of creating this art form,” said Ron Bernard, academic chair of animation and motion design at Otis College of Art and Design. “I’m hoping that [“Inside Out 2”] would revitalize the interest in Pixar films.”

“Inside Out 2” continues the story of Riley, now a teenager, who grapples with new emotions such as Embarrassment, Anxiety and Envy alongside longtime pals Joy, Sadness and Anger.

The anticipated numbers are remarkable, considering so many movies this year have come in below expectations on opening weekend, including George Miller’s prequel “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and the Ryan Gosling- and Emily Blunt-led action-comedy “The Fall Guy.” A strong debut will give a jolt of confidence to not only Pixar but beleaguered theaters, whose box office revenues are down 26% so far this year compared with 2023.

Presale numbers are promising. As of earlier this week, online ticketseller Fandango said “Inside Out 2” had already outsold its predecessor in advance ticket sales at five days before opening and is currently the highest advance ticket-selling Pixar film since 2019’s “Toy Story 4” at the same point in the sales process.

“Enthusiasm for the film is impressive as we prepare to dive back into the beloved world of ‘Inside Out,’” Jerramy Hainline, executive vice president of Fandango, said in a statement.

The overall box office this year has been muted due to the combination of still-slow-to-recover theater attendance, production delays from last year’s dual labor strikes and a handful of high-profile flops. Pixar hasn’t been immune to these larger, industry-wide challenges.

Bad timing doomed Pixar’s “Onward,” which was released in theaters on March 6, 2020, right before the pandemic shuttered cinemas across the nation. The movie went on to gross just $141 million worldwide. It also got mixed reviews by Pixar standards.

The move by studios early in the pandemic to move most theatrical films to streaming services also diminished the cultural effect of new Pixar releases.

“Soul” went directly to Disney+ in December 2020 and to theaters in some select countries; it wound up winning Oscars for animated feature and original score. 2022’s “Turning Red” also got sent to Disney+ first, despite theaters having reopened by then.

Exhibitors and cinephiles grumbled that Disney was training family audiences to stay home and stream new movies, rather than load up the minivan and trek to theaters.

“When a movie is a hit in theaters, you can’t do better,” said David A. Gross, who publishes FranchiseRe, a movie industry newsletter. “The theatrical release is the locomotive pulling the train.”

The studio also had some creative stumbles. 2022’s “Lightyear” bombed after replacing Tim Allen with Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz Lightyear. Last year’s “Elemental” had a slow start but eventually made about $496 million worldwide. It got decent — but not stellar — reviews.

Pixar’s quality also suffered from Disney’s orders across the board to produce more content for its streaming service, experts say. Churning out so many films and animated series led to creatives being spread thin at Disney studios, including Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel.

But the studio is also a victim of its own success. Disney’s 2006 acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion is widely credited with reviving Disney’s animation business. Pixar movies of the past regularly hit $750 million at the global box office, making even “Elemental” seem like a flop in comparison.

“There’s nothing wrong with that at all, it’s just the Pixar standard is so incredible,” Gross said. “Pixar has such a remarkable track record, and they’ve set such a high standard for the industry and for themselves.”

The original “Inside Out” generated $858 million in global sales after opening with $90 million in the U.S. and Canada. Pixar’s best-performing movie, 2018’s “Incredibles 2,” tallied $1.24 billion worldwide.

More broadly, families were slow to return to theaters due to health concerns as well as the ease of watching movies in their living rooms. But they are coming back. Last year’s animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment brought in $1.4 billion worldwide.

Box office watchers are hopeful for an animation-heavy slate toward the end of this year, with “Despicable Me 4,” “Moana 2” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.”

While “Inside Out 2” will be a major test for Pixar, the next question, Gross said, will be whether the studio can recapture its old magic with a new story — not a sequel or spinoff. Its next opportunity to answer that is in June 2025, when Pixar is slated to release “Elio,” an original movie about a young boy’s intergalactic adventure.

Nearly 6,000 workers at Food 4 Less locations across California this week voted to authorize a strike if Kroger, the grocery chain’s owner, continues with what they say are labor violations during ongoing contract talks.

The vote comes after the union, United Food and Commercial Workers, filed multiple claims of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board in late May. The union has accused Food 4 Less managers of undermining negotiations, surveilling and discriminating against union members, and trying to prevent employees from participating in union activity.

After a five-day voting period ended Friday, union officials announced workers had “overwhelmingly” voted to approve a potential strike. They declined to disclose how many workers had voted in favor and against the authorization.

“Food 4 Less executives have decided to resort to unlawful tactics instead of following federal labor law and treating the bargaining process with the respect and seriousness that it deserves,” the union said in a statement after the vote. “Food 4 Less is trying to intimidate, bully, and strong-arm us into accepting a contract that is less than what we deserve and far less than what their parent company, Kroger, offers to other union grocery workers in the area.”

A spokesperson for Food 4 Less criticized the union’s decision to seek the strike authorization, saying, “It remains our goal to put more money in our associates’ pockets.”

“We’ve remained committed to negotiating in good faith. From the start, our focus has been on reaching an agreement that benefits our hardworking and dedicated associates,” said Salvador Ramirez, corporate affairs manager at Food 4 Less/Foods Co. “We are deeply disappointed that UFCW Southern California chose to leave the bargaining table before contract expiration, rather than working together to prioritize the needs of their members.”

The mandate gives the union’s bargaining committee more leverage at the negotiating table as Food 4 Less officials know the union could call for employees to walk off the job at any time.

Negotiations over a new contract began nearly three months ago and soon became tense, said Kathy Finn, president of UFCW Local 770, which represents grocery workers in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and is one of seven union locals involved in the negotiations.

The union locals last negotiated a contract with Food 4 Less in 2021; that contract expired on June 8.

The union has no plans to strike imminently and is preparing for negotiations to resume Monday, Finn said.

Food 4 Less workers are pushing for pay parity with their counterparts at Ralphs. Kroger owns about 300 Ralphs and Food 4 Less stores in the state.

Clerks at Food 4 Less who check groceries and stock shelves make about $4 less in hourly wages than those with the same jobs at Ralphs. That’s in part because the company classifies its Ralphs locations as supermarkets while treating Food 4 Less stores as warehouse stores.

But workers and union leaders, who say there is little meaningful difference between the two chains, also allege a racial element to the pay inequalities. Food 4 Less stores tend to be in lower-income Black and brown communities, while Ralphs generally are located in whiter and wealthier areas, the union says. When asked about the allegation, Food 4 Less representatives declined to comment.

The company’s latest proposal offers an hourly rate increase of about a $1 each year over the course of the contract, amounting to a total boost of $3.25. The union is pushing for about double that increase.

In a statement about the company’s proposal, which was sent to workers Monday, Bryan Kaltenbach, president of Food 4 Less, said, “Hardworking and dedicated associates are the heartbeat of our company, and our goal is to continue to provide market-competitive wages and benefits that we know are so important to our associates and their families.”

Friday afternoon outside a Food 4 Less in Westlake, workers gathered around a table set up to cast their votes.

Jeanne Coleman, a cashier at the Westlake store, voted to approve a strike. She said that besides pay parity with Ralphs, she’s concerned about understaffing. At night, there might be just two cashiers on duty to field the rush of customers that come in to shop after work. Customers waiting in line will begin making calls asking the store to open up another station, she said.

“It’s ridiculous, the issues we have to deal with, but they don’t want to pay us,” Coleman said.

When the union announced it would hold a strike authorization vote, the company began posting notices to hire temporary workers at rates higher than many workers are currently paid, said Tyrone Severe, a cashier at the Westlake store.

“They are trying to hire nonunion workers and pay them more, instead of just negotiating with us,” Severe said. “We think that sucks.”

Members of the union’s bargaining committee accused the company of bargaining in bad faith. For example, during bargaining sessions scheduled for three consecutive days last week, the company’s negotiators showed up late and would leave the negotiation table for hours at a time, workers said.

Visits by Kaltenbach to various stores in recent weeks struck workers as an intimidation tactic.

Christopher Watkins, 24, a meat cutter at a Food 4 Less store in Inglewood, said he’s previously seen the president visit his store about twice a year, but in recent weeks he’s seen him about four times.

Food 4 Less did not provide comment in response to specific questions about worker claims of intimidation and treatment at the bargaining table.

For a long time, Olivia Alexander defended MedMen.

Despite the pushback she got for partnering with the cannabis chain that some worried would box out smaller brands, Alexander — who founded Kush Queen, which sells cannabis-infused bath bombs and personal lubricant — valued the retailer’s dedication to stocking shelves with products from small, women-owned lines.

“Even though they’re a big company, they support small brands,” she recalled telling people. “They’re good for our industry.”

Now she thinks the opposite.

In March, the retailer that had been valued at more than $1.5 billion when it went public on the Canadian stock exchange six years ago was deep into a cataclysmic downfall. A few weeks later, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada, disclosing it had more than $400 million in liabilities. In Los Angeles County, meanwhile, a Superior Court judge has appointed an attorney to oversee the liquidation of the company’s California subsidiary.

MedMen owes money to not only big legal, accounting and real estate firms, but also vendors such as Alexander who supplied the retailer with products that filled its shelves.

Fed up with what she said had become an open secret in the industry, Alexander fired off a LinkedIn post at the end of last year accusing MedMen of failing to pay a $1,560 invoice for merchandise she’d delivered to them. More than a 100 people commented, including several other entrepreneurs, who said the retail chain owed them money too — often thousands of dollars.

MedMen’s fall has highlighted larger systemic struggles producers such as Alexander face as they try to operate in California’s legal cannabis marketplace. The Times spoke with Alexander about MedMen and the cannabis industry at large. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Tell me a bit about your company. And how did you start working with MedMen?

I started Kush Queen in 2015. We make a little bit of everything, and we have been working with MedMen almost since the beginning. I really believed, along the way, that we were all part of what I wanted the industry to be, which is diverse and equitable and vibrant.

When did things start to go sour?

I moved to a new distribution company and they were like, “We can’t sell to MedMen. Everyone says they’re going under any minute now.” This was the summer of 2023. But I really thought what everyone else thought, which was that they were too big to fail. So I fought with my distribution partner to deliver these orders and then, of course, they stopped paying.

I went on LinkedIn and wrote the post. And I was inundated — and this is the part that breaks my heart — with messages from tons of brands saying, “Oh yeah, they owe me money.” My LinkedIn DMs are a graveyard of people owed money by MedMen.

MedMen was so afraid of me and the pettiness and my vitriol that they overnighted us a check. They did close out their measly $1,500 invoice with us and I truly believe I was the last person to get paid by them.

How long after your post did they send you a check?

Within two weeks. I posted a follow-up that said, “Look, I’ve been paid, but all these people haven’t.”

What can unpaid invoices mean, especially for smaller companies?

It means they go under or they have to lay people off. If people think it’s bad now, it’s just going to get worse. Everyone is surviving on debt. MedMen was paying a ton of freelance writers to turn out blogs and articles. These are the people that are the most tragic collateral damage of what’s happening.

Can you speak more broadly about the challenges of running a legal cannabis company in California right now?

Like, “How do I do it without crying?” Yeah, it’s tragic. It’s impossible for anyone to make enough money on legal cannabis right now. If I was operating only in the California market, I wouldn’t have enough money to pay my own bills. It’s a loser’s game. The taxes are insane, which is then causing everyone to go to the underground market. The state of California has failed us.

How would you sum up the current state of the industry in one word?

Apocalyptic.

Last month, the Department of Justice formally moved to reclassify marijuana into a category of less regulated substances, a step many in the industry hope could eventually make it easier for cannabis retailers.

Will rescheduling positively affect our industry? Maybe, we don’t know yet. But cannabis and California — there are no two things that go together better. This is our thing and we should be leaps and bounds ahead of every other market. But it’s just been decimated.