Co-founder Catmull to retire

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, who helped transform the animated movie business over three decades, will retire at the end of the year.

Catmull, 73, known as the technical brains behind Pixar, will stay on in an advisory role until July. His role as president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios in Emeryville, won’t be replicated, parent company Disney said. The two studios each have individual presidents.

“Ed Catmull’s impact on the entertainment industry is immeasurable,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. “A pioneer of the intersection of creativity and technology, Ed expanded the possibilities for storytellers along with the expectations of audiences.”

Catmull’s fellow cofounder John Lasseter is also leaving Pixar at the end of the year, citing “missteps.” Employees alleged repeated episodes of sexual harassment to the Hollywood Reporter last year.

Pixar, the studio behind hits like “Finding Nemo” and “Monsters, Inc.,” has 1,200 employees in its Emeryville headquarters, where it is the city’s largest employer.

“It’s so easy to go to a conservative place. You know something that works, and you don’t want to change,” Catmull told The Chronicle in 2011. “We’re always going to have something that is a little chaotic and messy . ... As a company, we’re just trying to allow unpredictable things to happen.”

Catmull was hired in 1979 by Star Wars creator George Lucas. He helped start a Lucasfilm division that became Pixar in 1986, when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs bought the company. It had the breakout 1995 hit “Toy Story,” a tale about a toy astronaut and cowboy vying for the affections of their boy owner. Walt Disney bought Pixar in 2006.

Catmull grew up in Salt Lake City with a steady diet of Disney movies. He studied computer graphics at the University of Utah and New York Institute of Technology, where he founded the computer graphics laboratory. He has won four Academy Awards.