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Now it's official: Disney shutting down Blue Sky Studios
February 10, 2021

Now it's official: Disney shutting down Blue Sky Studios

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Disney eventually decided to close the studios that created well-known franchises such as Ice Age, Rio and many more. Great damage but no wonder.
Blue Sky Studios based in Greenwich Connecticut are the largest animation studios on the East Coast of the United States of America, owned by Fox since 1997. They are producers of excellent films such as The Peanuts Movie, Spies in Diguise, Ferdinand, Epic, Robots, Horton Hears a Who! as well as the sagas of Rio and Ice Age, this last with five films, it raised $ 3.2 billion in theaters around the world.

After the acquisition by Disney about two years ago [news] of the 21st Century Fox assets it was clear to most that the Mickey Mouse studios would not leave a competing label open. Usually acquisitions of these proportions are likely to remove competition from the market and this last action is the testimony of this.

"Given the current economic realities, after much consideration and evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to close filmmaking operations at Blue Sky Studios," Disney spokesperson told Deadline colleagues yesterday. The last day of work is expected to be in April, with a loss of about 450 jobs, figures that Disney says it favors in re-employment on open positions at its other studios. This is very difficult for most people because they are all located thousands of kilometers away on the other coast of the United States.

Currently the studios were working on Nimona, a feature film that would be completed in about 10 months - scheduled to reach theaters in January 2022 - which is therefore canceled. Last month Disney had announced the launch of a series based on the Ice Age franchise which is very clear that it will be made elsewhere.

Blue Sky Studios was founded in February 1987 by Alison Brown, David Brown, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Dr. Eugene Troubetzkoy, and Chris Wedge, ex-crew of MAGI/Synthavision, visual effects company that, ironically, was decommissioned after Disney decided to not to renew the contract for the use of its services.

The new studios born from the ashes of MAGI were immediately hired to take care of special effects and animations for numerous films and commercials for brands such as Gillette and Braun and films such as Alien Resurrection and Fight Club, to arrive at the Oscar-winning animated short Bunny.

However, the turning point came in 2002, with the production of their first full-length animated CG film, Ice Age, whose worldwide grosses of $ 383 million convinced the studios to focus only on in these productions. Since then, 13 feature films have been produced in 17 years, the latest being Spies in Diguise.


We are very sorry for the loss of this creative entity, but we hope that its creators find the way to start a new adventure in a new home.


[ Fra - source CartoonBrew ]
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