The Canadian government has for long been encouraging many international studios to find a home in this Maple country. The latest to be mesmerised by the incentives on offer in the nation is none other than the studio behind the visual extravaganza of 2014 – The Lego Movie – Animal Logic.
According to reports, the expansion will cost the studio a hefty sum of a few million bucks, which will be supported by Warner Bros Pictures. Talent, proximity to Hollywood and incentives from the Canadian government has lured the studio behind Happy Feet to open shop in Vancouver.
Animal Logic has worked for 15 years with Warner Bros, the only major studio besides Paramount Pictures that lacks its own animation division.
Chief executive Zareh Nalbandian, who co-founded Animal Logic in North Sydney in 1991, is confident that with the genre growing so fast, the company needed to secure more specialists to meet intense production demands for its major client.
Animal Logic, which has a small creative operation in LA, checked out several locations for its global expansion before settling on Vancouver, where the industry has blossomed in the past five years. Typically, 35 per cent of the budget for every animated production in Canada is rebated by its government. Animal Logic, which now supports 500 jobs at Fox Studios in Sydney’s east, will employ about 300 staff in Vancouver, most of whom would be Canadian residents.
Initially the studio will be launched in an exclusive partnership with Warner Bros Pictures to produce three animated features, the first of which will be The Lego Movie Sequel – starting production from January 2016 – with a view to producing subsequent projects in an ongoing collaboration with Warner.
The Australian set-up will continue to lead work on current projects in the pipeline, including the recently announced Lego Batman and Ninjago movies, slated for release in 2017, and another unnamed animated feature which is set to follow.
The studio’s recent visual effects offerings include: Insurgent and Avengers: Age of Ultron.