Sony Pictures AnimationInc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio's movies are distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing under their Columbia Pictures label, while all direct-to-video releases are released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
In 2001, Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks but after failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the CGI sequences of Stuart Little 2 and seeing the box office successes of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek and Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc., SPI was reconfigured to become an animation studio. Astro Boy, which had been in development at Sony since 1997 as a live-action movie, was set to be SPI's first all-CGI movie, but never made it to fruition.[3] On May 9, 2002, Sony Pictures Animation was established to develop characters, stories and movies with SPI taking over the digital production while maintaining its visual effects production.[4] Meanwhile, SPI produced two short movies, the Academy Award-winning The ChubbChubbs! and Early Bloomer, as a result of testing its strengths and weaknesses in producing all-CGI animation.[5]
Sony Pictures Animation (2003–2011)
On its first anniversary on May 9, 2003, Sony Pictures Animation announced a full slate of animated projects in development: Open Season, an adaptation of a Celtic folk ballad Tam Lin, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Surf's Up, and a feature-length movie version of The ChubbChubbs!.[6]
On May 2014, it was announced that Netflix had acquired streaming rights to movies produced by Sony Pictures Animation.[7]
Sony Pictures Animation (2011–18)
In June 2019, Sony Pictures Animation announced that they had launched an "International" division headed by Aron Warner at the 2019 Annecy International Animated movie Festival, with Wish Dragon set to be the division's first movie. The same day, they also announced an "Alternative" division aimed at producing adult animated content, headed by Katie Baron and Kevin Noel. In addition to Tartakovsky's movies Black Knight and Fixed, the division's TV shows are set to include The Boondocks, a reboot of the original TV series that originally aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block from 2005 to 2014; Superbago, a co-production with Stupid Buddy Studios that was originally green lit as a feature movie; and Hungry Ghosts, a series based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose.[10] They had previously announced their plans to produce adult content at the 2017 Annecy festival.[11]
Sony Pictures Animation (2018–present)
According to Kristine Belson, president of SPA, the studio produces movies on a 1:1 development-to-production ratio, meaning that the studio puts movies into development as much as it places movies in production, unlike other animation studios.[11]
↑Sony Pictures Animation was involved in the second movie despite them not being involved in the first one, with the upcoming third movie now being distributed by Paramount Pictures and Sega, replacing Sony Pictures as distributor.
