In what has been a tumultuous few days for 20th Century Fox, there's more bad news for the studio. After six years of operation, Fox Animation Studios in Phoenix, Arizona is closing its doors.? The closing sends the creative team of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman packing, along with the remaining 60 employees.??
There were signs of trouble earlier this year, when Fox laid off two-thirds of the originally 320-person staff at the Phoenix studio.? At the time the lay-offs were attributed to a desire to make films more efficiently.? The recent boom in independent production houses doing animated work allowed them to outsource the later-stage animated work.?
| The closing sends the creative team of |
Bluth and Goldman have always been artistically committed to their projects, and it's possible that they didn't fit in with the "assembly line" approach that Fox may have been pressuring them to take.? For more insight into the philosophy of Bluth and Goldman read their recent FilmForce interviews:
Ken Plume's 3-part interview with Don Bluth?
Ken Plume's 2-part interview with Gary Goldman?
This announcement follows the "resignation" of Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman and CEO Bill Mechanic, who was crucial in the development of Fox's animated ventures of late.???
Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri was able to muster up the company-man spin. Meledandri told The Hollywood Reporter, "It's certainly disappointing news for everyone in Phoenix. We are not out of the animation business, clearly from our investment in Blue Sky and the production of Monkeybone and our other projects.? The marketplace has changed dramatically in the last six years, and while we were once in the business of producing animation, we found other opportunities to make different kinds of films with different kinds of filmmakers that became attractive to us."
Fox nabbed up Blue Sky/VIFX studio in New York and has transformed it from a FX house into a CG feature film studio. So it seems that Fox is out of the traditional animation business for the foreseeable future.? It would appear that they're putting all their eggs into the Blue Sky basket, as the studio recently brought on 150 new employees there, to being production on the film Ice Age.??
Ice Age is set during the ice age no less, and tells the story of a human infant who is found by a friendly woolly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), a sabre-toothed tiger (Goran Visnjic), and a giant sloth (John Leguizamo).? The beasts' quest is to reunite the baby with his parents. Awww. How cute!? I can see the fast food tie-ins already!
Fox also has Blue Sky working on Monkeybone (2001), Little Beauty King, Fathom, and a Farrelly brothers picture Frisco Pigeon Mambo.?
-- Brian Linder hopes DreamWorks can hang in there so someone gives the mouse a run for its money in the traditional animation genre.? WB...we need more "Iron Giants!"
