Historic visual effects studio collapses in UK

Technicolor, the visual effects (VFX) group which has worked on films ranging from Disney’s 1940 classic Pinocchio to 2024 blockbuster Mufasa The Lion King, has collapsed into administration in the UK.

The group owned several leading visual effects studios including MPC, Mikros Animation and The Mill, with operations in the US, UK, Canada and India.

Technicolor’s directors had been looking to sell the business, but were not able to find a buyer.

Its administrators said “the majority” of the more than 440 people it employed in the UK have been made redundant. The appointment of administrators relates only to the UK arm of its business.

“The economic headwinds which are affecting companies right across the creative industries have proved too challenging to overcome, which has led to Technicolor’s UK business being placed into administration today,” the firm’s joint administrator Nick Holloway said.

Technicolor was founded in 1915 and worked on its first film in 1917. In its early days it worked on projects with major studios including Disney.

It subsequently acquired major VFX studios including The Mill, which won an Oscar in 2001 for its work on Gladiator, and MPC, which recently delivered big budget remakes of Disney’s The Lion King and 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.

Visual effects studios play a key role in film production.

Most modern big-budget movies and television shows 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 may not reflect the total impact of the business’ troubles on jobs.

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 cashflow.

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.