Lion King visual effects studio on brink of collapse

The visual effects group behind Disney’s Mufasa The Lion King and its upcoming Snow White remake, is on the brink of failure.

Technicolor owns a brace of leading visual effects studios including MPC, Mikros Animation and The Mill, with operations in the US, UK, Canada and India

The Paris-based company employs 446 people in the UK, according to recent corporate filings and has told staff not to come into the office.

The BBC has approached Technicolor for comment

Visual effects (VFX) studios play a key role in film production. Most modern big-budget movies and television will rely heavily on visual effects to transport actors and audiences into outer-space, the distant past or the deep-sea.

And the appearance and non-vocal performances of characters and creatures, fantastic and otherwise will often be partly or fully the creation of animators and other specialist staff.

As well as purely animated films and TV, many live action releases are in large-part the work, of the employees of VFX studios.

Many staff work film-to-film on fixed-term contracts, so redundancies if they are announced, may not reflect the total impact of the business’ troubles on jobs.

Technicolor owned MPC, was founded in 1970 as a Soho based production company. It has been a major force in the VFX industry delivering big budget movies such as recent computer-animated remakes of Disney’s The Lion King and the Jungle Book.

Recent projects include “Kraven the Hunter,” “Young Woman and the Sea” and “Emilia Perez” according to Variety.

Mikros Animation projects include two recent Mutant Ninja Turtles titles and the Paw Patrol series of films.

In an email sent to UK staff, Technicolor said the group’s UK entity Technicolor Creative Studios UK Ltd filed for administration Monday.

Staff were told not to come into the office.

US employees were also notified the company could fold via email.

According to animation news publisher Cartoon Brew an email sent over the weekend by chief executive Caroline Parot said “external headwinds” had exacerbated problems caused by factors including post-covid recovery.

She also said the US writers’ strike which led to a slow-down in demand for VFX work causing “severe” pressure on cash-flow.

Those same issues will add to the anxiety of staff and may fear re-entering what has been a relatively lean jobs market for VFX professionals.

“Render in peace” one self-described 13-year veteran of The Mill wrote on Reddit – a reference to the computationally intense process of producing final, film grade images, a process known as rendering.