Reel FX

Reel FX Creative Studios was started in 2007 when Reel FX and Radium formed into one special effects company. In 2010 they announced that they would be creating a 3D Cirque de Soleil film. Eventually named Worlds Away and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it was released in 2012 to mediocre reviews. After that point, the company focused on creating standard CG animated films, their first being 2013’s Free Birds. Remember what I said about holiday films? Easter doesn’t have many mainstream films about it, and Thanksgiving has even less, so this seems like an unusual choice. John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, was involved in early development of the movie, but only got as far as drawing some concept art. The film was in the oven in four years, but didn’t meet a great reception when it eventually came out. The film received overtly terrible reviews, with many finding the film insensitive and just un-funny. It grossed $110 million against a $55 million, so they just broke even for the film. I’m sure that was still way under what they thought it would be, but you can’t always have a winner out of the gate.

Reel FX didn’t look too great after that “turkey” (OK, I’ll stop), and needed a course correction badly. Lucky for them, they had one with The Book of Life. Written and directed by El Tigre creator, Jorge Gutierrez, the movie focused on the Mexican Day of the Dead. The animation style in Book of Life is unique due to its very stylized look. This was due to Gutierrez’s desire to make an animated movie that actually looked like the concept art. In most concept art you see for animated movies, it never translates to the finished product. Gutierrez also did not allow the animators to go to Mexico for inspiration, as he felt those kind of trips only went to the tourist-y places and had them ask him if they had any questions on the setting. Sometimes you just have to trust people with their vision. This one happened to work out, as the film received rave reviews, but just like Free Birds, just about broke even in terms of money. This movie deserves a lot more attention, and it certainly has its fans. Many of those fans were upset when they saw that Pixar was coming out with a movie that also focused on the Day of the Dead, Coco. That film will undoubtedly do well, because it’s Pixar, and I’m sure it will be great, but it is strange that Pixar would make a similar movie so closely after The Book of Life came out. Another bit of controversy for Pixar is that they tried to trademark the phrase “Dia de los Meurtos” when that was the movie’s name, for merchandising purposes. This didn’t go over well with the Mexican-American population who saw this as cultural appropriation. Disney withdrew the request and ultimately went with another name for the film. Their next film, still in development, is an adaption of the Dark Horse Comic, Beasts of Burden.

Animal Logic

Animal Logic is a special effects/animation company that was founded by Zareh Nalbandian and Chris Godrey in 1991. Based out of Sydney, Australia, they started working on TV shows and commercials, but eventually moved onto movies. In 2002, they started working on their first animated movie, Happy Feet. Happy Feet was written and directed by George Miller, the same man who brought us all the Mad Max films. Seems like a weird transition, going from Australian post-apocalypse to a cartoon about penguins singing and dancing, but Miller also brought us Babe and its sequel. Miller had been shooting Mad Max 2 when he ran into a cameraman whose father was on the Shackleton expeditions, who told him he should make a movie about Antarctica, as it was as barren as most of Australia. That meeting always stuck with Miller and years later he brought it up to producer Doug Mitchell, who was able to get Warner Bros. to distribute. The movie wasn’t supposed to be made until after Mad Max: Fury Road, but geo-political complications caused Miller to put that one on the back burner until ten years later. The film utilized motion capture to give the penguins better movement when dancing, and it took an enormous amount of computers to make the movie. The animation process itself took four years, that’s how animation intensive this movie was. Happy Feet is a jukebox musical, as it includes only songs that are already well-known to the public. The movie proved to be extremely successful, grossing $384 million against a $100 million budget. It received rave reviews, most focusing on the animation, cinematography, and the message of the film. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for 2006. Miller decided after that success that he could make the sequel with his own company, so he formed Dr. D Studios, a partnership between Kennedy Miller Mitchell and Omnilab Media. It took them just as long to make the movie, but the results weren’t the same. Released in 2011, it received lukewarm reviews and ended up losing the studio $40 million. This, plus the continued delay of Mad Max: Fury Road caused Miller to close the studio.

While Dr. D Studios was defunct, Animal Logic was still going strong. Their next animated movie was Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole. Based on the book series by Kathryn Lasky, Warner Bros. had bought the rights back in 2005. Production took over three years, with a release in 2010. Interestingly enough, this film was directed by Zack Snyder, most known for his comic book adaptations. It received mediocre reviews upon release, most praising the animation but not the story. It was not a financial success for Warner Bros. or Animal Logic, as it grossed only $140 million against an $80 million budget. Animal Logic would rebound with 2014’s The Lego Movie, which I already talked about in the Warner Bros. Animation post. In between those movies they had one called Walking with Dinosaurs, which serves as a documentary of sorts. It received pretty bad reviews and failed to make a profit. Animal Logic continues to make the Lego Movies and has recently inked a deal to make six films for Imagine Entertainment.

Rainmaker Entertainment

Rainmaker Entertainment was founded in 1991 initially under the name Mainframe. The animation studio changed its name in 2007 to Rainmaker. In its history it has done TV, straight-to-video, and two theatrical movies. They are most known for creating the ABC Saturday Morning classic, Reboot. In 2007 after changing to Rainmaker, they also sold off their visual effects and post department, leaving just animation. They are known today more for creating all the Barbie movies and also the newer version of Bob the Builder. The company’s first foray into an animated movie was 2013’s Escape from Planet Earth. The movie had been in production since 2007 under The Weinstein Company, with Tony Leech and Cory Edwards writing the story. Leech and producer Brian Inerfield had an agreement with The Weinstein Company where they would receive at least 20% of the adjusted gross product. Leech and Inerfield eventually sued The Weinstein Company for dragging their feet and making new agreements. The Weinstein Company opened up the script for re-writes, which happened 17 times and production languished for years. In the end, both sides dropped the suits with each paying their own legal fees. I’m guessing they came to a new agreement, but the details were never released. Like with any movie that goes through a turbulent production, the movie didn’t do too well. It received bad reviews all around and grossed less than its budget.

Their second, and perhaps last theatrical film was 2016’s Ratchet and Clank, a movie based on a video game. Ratchet and Clank was a popular game series from the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 era, though the best were the first three from the Playstation 2 era. The game’s popularity had waned in the last five years, but Insomniac, the creators of the Ratchet and Clank series, sought to bring the series back with a bang. They had wanted to do a movie version of the game for a while, and for whatever reason they bypassed the obvious straight-to-dvd route. The movie opened near the same time as Disney’s live-action The Jungle Book and Zootopia, so it was already doomed. Opening weekend totals were half than expected, and the movie dropped 70% the next weekend. In the end the movie made $13.1 million against a $20 million budget. Rainmaker, in the end, lost $5 million of their $10 million investment. Reviews were even worse for this than Escape from Planet Earth. Critics who were not familiar with the game series compared it to much better animated movies being released and critics that were familiar saw it as a pale comparison to the games. To further confuse you: the movie was based around the first game in the series, and a new game was made about the movie, so there are three versions of the first story of Ratchet and Clank. While the movie tanked, the new game received rave reviews. Some games just aren’t supposed to be made into movies. By some, I mean all. Please stop making video game movies. It doesn’t matter if they are live-action or animated. They are all terrible. People play video games for a reason. They want to play as that character, not watch them do the story themselves.

Illumination Entertainment

A relatively young studio, Illumination Entertainment was founded in 2007 by Chris Meledandri. Meledandri had been President of 20th Century Fox Animation/Blue Sky and had supervised or executive produced Ice Age, its first sequel, Robots, and Horton Hears a Who! Melandadri was able to secure Universal as the parent company, with Illumination acting as their animation studio. Illumination bought French special effects company Mac Guff, which had provided animation for Despicable Me, and The Lorax. Meledandri was determined to run the studio different from his contemporaries. He sought to keep budgets small, not the usual over $100 million budget, by employing cost-cutting animation techniques. This is apparent with the budget of the first two features, Despicable Me and Hop, with budgets of $69 million and $63 million, respectively. The studio is still going strong today, thanks in part to their model of never going over $100 million in budget. Their parent company, NBCUniversal, was bought by Comcast in 2011, who in turn bought Dreamworks in 2016, effectively giving them two animation studios. Meledandri has control of both studios, but has not yet dissolved either of them. I imagine they won’t, just because people associate their franchises with the names Illumination and Dreamworks. If it was Illumination’s Shrek, it would probably cause chaos in the streets.

Illumination’s first movie, and undoubtedly their biggest cash cow, is Despicable Me. This is an interesting film, because at its core, it is a very sweet movie. On the other hand, it brought us minions, so you be the judge. Despicable Me was probably one of the strongest first films for a studio, outside of Disney and Dreamworks, with its good reviews and gigantic box office take of $543 million. It took the studio three years to come out with a sequel, Despicable Me 2, focusing on Gru becoming a good guy. While the reviews were not all good, it is still a solid movie in the series. For me, it’s a perfect movie to watch on a Saturday afternoon when you have nothing better to do. It’s also on TV all the time, so that helps. Despicable Me 2 had an equally small budget of $76 million, but this time around pulled in $970.8 million. I’d say that it was a rousing success. This all inevitably led to a movie that focused completely on Gru’s henchmen, the minions. Minions, released in 2015, followed the three main minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob as they searched for the perfect super-villain to hench for. Critics were conflicted on this one, with some praising the humor, and others calling it a stretched out premise with characters that couldn’t carry a movie by themselves. It wouldn’t have mattered if no critic liked the movie, audiences came in droves. This movie pulled in $1.159 billion against a budget of $74 million. That’s ludicrous. I wasn’t kidding when I said this series was a cash cow. There is a weird percentage of the population who really love the minions. I’m not talking kids either, this is full grown adults. For a few years you couldn’t walk outside without seeing a dad with some sort of minion merch. Minions is now the thirteenth highest grossing film of all time, the second highest animated film, and the highest grossing non-Disney animated movie. This is not adjusted for inflation, mind you. Snow White wipes the floor with Frozen and Minions with an adjusted gross of $1.8 billion. It helps when you’re the first of your kind and you don’t have to compete with TV or internet.

Illumination could probably get away with just making Despicable Me movies and they’d be all set. Their second movie, released in 2011, was Hop. Any movie that’s tied to a certain holiday has a hard time succeeding, in my mind. It’s even worse when it’s not a Halloween or Christmas movie. This one’s about Easter. It deals with who is going to take over being the Easter Bunny, the same plot that has been used for Christmas movies over the years with Santa Claus being substituted for the Easter Bunny. Critics were not enthralled by the movie, trashing it in their reviews. The movie did decent enough financially, grossing $184 million against a $63 million budget. Illumination’s next film was 2012’s The Lorax. Another Dr. Seuss adaptation, Audrey Geisel, Seuss’s wife, wanted it made since Chris Meledandri had worked with her on Horton Hears a Who! This explains why the Seuss movies jumped from Blue Sky to Illumination. Audrey Geisel seemingly will only work with Meledandri, seeing as a Grinch movie is in the works. The Lorax performed better than Hop, grossing $348.8 million against a $70 million budget. Reviews are just OK on this one, with many citing that though the animation was stellar, the message of the book was mostly lost in the usual Hollywood machine.

Outside of the Despicable Me movies and spin-offs, the most recent movies released through Illumination were both in 2016, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. Pets is a Pixar idea if I ever heard one. For the most part, their movies deal with seeing into the life of things that are either inanimate (Toy Story, Cars) or imaginary (Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Wall-E). Two of their movies have dealt with looking into the worlds of animals, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo. I’m actually a little surprised that Pixar didn’t go the pet route, though that’s probably because it’s been done. Lady and the Tramp, Oliver & Company, The Aristocats...the list goes on and on. The difference, I think, is that those movies never focused too much on the everyday life of pets, just stories that happened to star pets. Critics mostly liked the movie, though some pointed out that it too closely resembled Toy Story. That didn’t seem to bother theater-goers, as the film grossed a impressive $875 million. Illumination seems to think it did rather well, as they are already working on a sequel. Their second movie of 2016 dealt with the continued fad that is talent shows or singing competitions. Sing, released this last December, deals with anthropomorphic animals trying to win a singing competition. The movie features 65 pop songs, which buying the rights to ate up about 15% of the film’s budget. Critical reception was average, which seems to be par for the course for Illumination. You can’t seem to go wrong with talking animals; the movie grossed $631 million, marking another success for Illumination. A sequel for this movie is also in the works.

Besides a movie about The Grinch and a possible Cat in the Hat movie, all of their future projects are sequels. If the movies make money, you might as well keep re-hashing them! As stated earlier, Illumination’s report card is pretty average, with Despicable Me being the highest rated at 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. We’ll have to see if Illumination can pull out some more successful franchises, or if it’ll be stuck making the same movies over and over again.

Jam Filled Toronto

Jam Filled Toronto is the current name of Dan Krech Productions, DKP Studios, Arc Productions, and Starz Animation. Whew, that’s a lot of name changes. The studio started out as Dan Krech Productions, which mostly did CG effects for movies, but had their own straight-to-dvd movie, The Nuttiest Nutcracker. Krech changed the name to DKP Studios and continued to do effects in movies, though they had a theatrically released movie in 2006 named Everyone’s Hero. The studio was then bought by IDT Corp, who was then shortly after bought by Starz Entertainment in 2006. In 2011, Starz sold the animation company to a Canadian consortium who then changed the name to Arc Productions. Things were going pretty well at Arc until August of 2016, when they revealed that they were closing their doors and filing for bankruptcy. They locked all 500 employees out of the building on the ploy that there was a payroll glitch and they hadn’t gotten paid. Jam Filled Entertainment bought Arc shortly after and hired back about half of their employees. It is still currently in business, with an upcoming CG film titled Blazing Samurai due out in August.

The first movie released by any of the studios was Everyone’s Hero, a story about a boy that loves baseball in the early 30’s, and the possessed ball and bat that he pals around with. Look, I haven’t seen this movie, but that’s all I can really gather about it. Something interesting about the production of this film was that it was partially directed by Christopher Reeve before he passed away in 2004. His son, Will, plays a small role in the film. The film was not a hit, grossing only $16.6 million. Critical reception was not much better, with most complaints centering around the predictable story and the fact that the animation made Babe Ruth look like Shrek.

Starz’s output of movies picks up a bit, with the first being The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie in 2008. Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, had his company, Big Idea, Inc. create the popular Christian TV/straight-to-video show from 1993-2003. Big Idea produced the first VeggieTales movie, Jonah, in house for a release in 2002. The film didn’t do as well as Vischer would hope and the studio faced bankruptcy in 2003. The studio was then auctioned off to Classic Media and continued putting out VeggieTales. The second movie, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, had been written way back in 2002, but the whole financial ruin thing put a damper on that. Starz had been making the VeggieTales TV show starting in 2006, so they handled the animation for the movie as opposed to Big Idea. The movie ended up being a bomb for Starz, making $13 million against a $15 million budget. They realized after that that VeggieTales was better suited for TV, and put all their eggs into that basket. I can’t say that I’m completely shocked by the performance of both movies. At that time, the average kid that didn’t go to church didn’t know what VeggieTales was, so wouldn’t go see the movie. Heck, I knew about VeggieTales, but by the time these movies came out I had stopped watching them years ago. VeggieTales is now on TV and has really lightened the Christianity to make it appropriate for all audiences. VeggieTales is now owned by Conglom-O...er...Comcast, thanks to their buyout of Classic Media.

9 was Starz’s next film, a movie adapted from a short story by Shane Acker. Tim Burton had seen the short story version of 9 and was so impressed that he helped produce it into a full-length feature film. Production had initially started in Luxembourg at Attitude Studio, but was later taken over to Starz in Toronto. The film is definitely in the same wheelhouse as anything else with Burton’s name on it, but I can’t say that it really stuck with me. Critics seem to agree, as they weren’t entirely impressed with it either. As is customary with strange animated movies that don’t appeal to a wide audience, it didn’t do too well at the box office. Starz’s last animated movie was the Disney distributed Gnomeo and Juliet. This is another movie that’s stuck in the non-canon milieu along with Valiant, Strange Magic and The Wild. It was released under the Touchstone Pictures banner, just as The Nightmare Before Christmas was 18 years before. Those two remained the only animated films released under Touchstone until Strange Magic. In this case I believe it was to further distance the movie from the official Disney canon. There has been confusion with The Wild and Valiant being part of the canon, so this was their way of making it obvious. The film, while it didn’t get great reviews, ended up being a sleeper hit for Disney, beating out Disney’s other film, Mars Needs Moms, which had a much bigger budget. Not sure why Disney had two of their movies released around the same time. The film grossed a respectable $194 million against a surprisingly small budget of $36 million. Seriously, that’s stop-motion animation level budget, not CG animation budget.

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil was Arc Animations first attempt at a feature length film, and was meant to capitalize on the moderate hit that was Hoodwinked! The first Hoodwinked! was created by Kanbar Entertainment, in their studio in Manila, Philippines. This location was conducive to lower production costs, so the movie was made for an astoundingly low $8 million. This was the first CG film to be independently funded, so its success was even more astounding. The Weinstein Company agreed to distribute late in its production and the film was a hit due to the low production costs, grossing $110 million. Pretty good for animation that looked pretty bad by 2005 standards. The sequel was announced in 2006, but disagreements between their new financial partners at The Weinstein Company caused it to be delayed until 2011. Instead of being made in their small studio in Manila, Arc Animation made it, though in the same style as the first, and with a larger budget thanks to The Weinstein Company. This didn’t help the movie, however, and it bombed at the box office, grossing a little over $16 million against a $30 million budget. If they would have stuck with the original production costs, they would have at least broke even! I feel like it was dumb luck that the first film did as well as it had, seeing as the whole fractured fairy-tale genre was done to death by the Shrek films. Also, films with a pun in the title should not be allowed to exist. Arc Animation, like all of the previous studios, focused primarily on TV and straight-to-dvd. It seems that the future is a little more set now that it's owned by Jam Filled Entertainment, but who knows, the studio has gone through four different owners.

Lucasfilm Animation

Lucasfilm Animation is an offshoot of Lucasfilm and was created in 2003 and is based in Singapore. The studio started out by creating the TV show Star Wars: Clone Wars and created all subsequent Star Wars TV shows. Lucasfilm decided to create a movie to lead into their second TV series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Yes, they are different shows, I know they basically have the same name. Just stick The in front of anything and it’s different! The Clone Wars was released in 2008 and was meant to be both a stand alone story and a lead in to the main series. The action, like the TV show before it, is set between Episode II and Episode III.The movie had a very small budget, thanks to the fact that they just took the first couple episodes and made it into a movie. It was Lucas’s decision to make it a feature instead and it threw the crew off. The finished film was trashed critically, currently the lowest scored of all the Star Wars movies. The movie was a mild success financially due to the small budget of $8.5 million and the final gross of $68.3 million. Many critics didn’t like the animation style and were confused as to why this was being shown theatrically when it was clearly “Saturday Morning Cartoon” variety. Despite the terrible beginning to the series, the TV show proved to be popular, and ran from 2008-2014. It was replaced by Star Wars: Rebels.

Strange Magic is the studio’s second and so far only other movie. As Disney now owns Lucasfilm, the movie was distributed under Disney, though, like Gnomeo and Juliet, was under the Touchstone banner. The idea for this movie had been flopping around in Lucas’s mind for 15 years, but he was too busy with Star Wars to ever give it a go. He wanted a film that his three daughters could go and see. He wanted a Star Wars that was for girls. Lucas originally pitched it as a Beauty and the Beast story with the beast not changing back. It was about finding beauty in strange places. Production had gone on and off for years, and when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they were pretty far into production. Disney apparently didn’t have much faith in the movie, seeing as they released it under Touchstone and didn’t promote it at all. I think I saw one ad for it, and then it was already on video a short while later. The film has the unfortunate distinction of having the lowest ticket sales of any movie released in more than 3,000 theaters. The film was a huge bomb, only grossing $13 million. Reviews were even worse, with many focusing on the hollow story, but praising the animation. It is doubtful that Lucasfilm Animation will release another movie seeing as they are now owned by Disney. Disney has had a weird relationship with Lucasfilm, as they basically shut down their video game wing, LucasArts. I imagine that Disney will have them make the TV shows and nothing more.

Blue Sky

Blue Sky Studios was formed in 1987 by Chris Wedge, one of the first computer animators. Like most companies trying to focus on computer animation, they did a lot of work for commercials and special effects in movies and TV shows. Starting in 1990, Wedge began working on a short animated feature to help demonstrate the power of their system, CGI Studio. It wasn’t heavily worked on until five years later and would eventually be released in 1998, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. This success gave Blue Sky the opportunity to product full length animated films. The studio was bought by 20th Century Fox in 1997, their way of getting into the CG market. Blue Sky thus turned into the successor to Fox Animation Studio. Blue Sky operates under the 20th Century Fox Animation umbrella, the same as Fox Animation Studio. 20th Century Fox Animation itself has released one movie that isn’t related to Blue Sky or produced by an outside animation company, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Directed by Wes Anderson, the quirky stop-motion film was originally going to be animated by Henry Selick, but he left to work on Coraline. He was replaced by Mark Gustafson. Fantastic Mr. Fox, while not a hit at the box office, was universally praised, as most Wes Anderson movies are. Blue Sky is strictly a CG film company, so it seems 20th Century Fox Animation just did it themselves. Blue Sky didn’t always have it easy. The studio was almost closed after the F/X market crashed. Fox had sold off special effects branch and was considering doing away with Blue Sky altogether. What really saved Blue Sky was the release of Ice Age in 2002.

Ice Age, a testing ground for Blue Sky, ended up being a smash hit, grossing $383 million against a $59 million budget. The film received generally favorable reviews, and in the end would be the best reviewed of the whole series. Ice Age gave Blue Sky the ability to continue making movies, and they did exactly that, coming out with Robots a few years later in 2005. While not as big of a hit as Ice Age, it did well enough. They followed with Ice Age’s first sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown, which grossed an impressive $660 million. As mentioned before, however, reviews were not too good. It didn’t matter! They continued to release three more Ice Age sequels with Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs grossing the highest of all of them, $886 million. Again, it doesn’t matter if the movie is crap, if kids recognize the characters, they’ll make their parents go to see it. Blue Sky has come out with eleven total films, but only has two franchises to their name: Ice Age and Rio. Ice Age is clearly paying dividends, though the last one, Ice Age: Collision Course, made about half as much as Ice Age: Continental Drift. Probably should try to make an actual good movie, huh? Rio and Rio 2 both made around $500 million but reviews weren’t terribly good for either. The most promising property that Blue Sky has right now is The Peanuts. The Peanuts Movie didn’t blow anyone away at the box office, but it is the highest rated of all their movies. Currently there is no Peanuts sequel in the works, but hopefully they’ll revisit it. Blue Sky, honestly, has one of the worst track records for a modern animation company, speaking only on critical reception. Peanuts, as mentioned before, is their highest rated, with Horton Hears a Who! not far behind. Most of their other films are very much middle of the road, or downright awful. I’m looking at you, Ice Age: Collision Course. Hopefully their next couple of films can bring them into a higher standing, but right now, they’re in the back in the animation department.

Blue Sky was part of the Disney-Fox merger that took place on March 20th, 2019. It remains to be seen if Blue Sky will operate as a separate animation studio or if it will be folded into Disney Animation. It is currently under Disney's Fox Animation Studios banner. The studio is currently working on an adaption of the web comic Nimona, which Fox bought the rights to back in 2015. The production was pushed back, with a release date of 2021 but there hasn't been any updates since the merger so it remains to be seen if this movie will be released or not.