Starz Sell Animation Studio to Inverstor Group

Posted by at 1:13 pm on March 6, 2011

Starz has completed a transaction resulting in a Canadian investor group purchasing a majority stake in the award-winning Starz Animation Toronto. This transaction will bolster the CG-animation and VFX company as it continues its growth in the digital media industry. The deal was announced today by Starz, LLC, President and CEO Chris Albrecht.

Starz, LLC has retained an equity stake in the company and will continue to support the studio in numerous ways. No other terms of the transaction were disclosed.

“We are very proud of the work that the Starz Animation Toronto team has created over the last few years, work that stands up to anything coming from the major studios,” Albrecht said. “As a minority partner, we remain committed to the growth of the company. Starz is turning its primary focus more toward globally appealing live action TV programming and we are confident that the best way for the animation studio to continue its growth is to go forward under Canadian majority ownership.”

Starz Animation Toronto is Canada’s leading production studio for digital animation, specializing in CG animated features. It recently opened a visual effects and creature animation unit that is creating the VFX work for Starz Entertainment’s event series, “Camelot.” The studio last year built a full stereoscopic 3-D unit to produce the animation for the new Touchstone Pictures and Rocket Pictures release, Gnomeo & Juliet. Its work can also be seen in the award-winning animated feature 9, from Focus Features, the upcoming Hoodwinked Too!: Hood Vs. Evil , for Kanbar Entertainment and the Weinstein Co., and TV holiday special, “Yes, Virginia,” for Macy’s, the Ebeling Group and JWT.

In addition to its work on “Camelot,” Starz Animation Toronto will continue to provide animation and VFX work on Robosapien: Rebooted, a live-action family feature from Avi Arad Productions, and Dolphin Tale, a fall 2011 release from Alcon Films and Warner Brothers, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd.

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