Life of Pi won an an Academy Award and accolades for the visual effects company responsible for many of the most memorable scenes in the movie – but that wasn’t enough to pay the bills.
Visual effects company Rhythm & Hues went bankrupt.
This isn’t a singular story, though. In cost-cutting moves, Hollywood studios are now bypassing their own back yard and outsourcing visual effects work to studios in China, India, and Malaysia. The work is done there for a fraction of the cost of which it could be done in the United States.
This comes at the cost of jobs and companies, and Rhythm & Hues isn’t the first big name VFX house to close shop. Last September, Digital Domain, founded by James Cameron, declared bankruptcy. Its buyer was an Indian company named Reliance MediaWorks, in partnership with a company from China called Galloping Horse.
Rhythm & Hues declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year and shed nearly 250 employees. Many of those workers are now involved in a class action complaint against their former employer, claiming that their contracts were terminated without proper notice.
The purchaser of the bankrupt VFX company’s assets? It’s like a script out of a movie: an Indian company called Prana Studios.
Read more by Kawika Maszak here or at his personal blog, “So Sayeth the StickMonkey.”