Sony Pictures Animation

Sony Pictures Animation Inc.
Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Computer animated film industry
Founded	May 9, 1986
Products	Theatrical animated short films Theatrical animated feature films Television animated series
Number of employees	255 (2018)
Parent	Sony Pictures Entertainment (Sony)
Website	Official website

Sony Pictures Animation Inc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio's films 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.

The first film produced by Sony Pictures Animation, Open Season, was released on September 29, 2006. Its latest release was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on June 2, 2023 and the Lincoln Loud: Boy Genius 3 was released on June 26, 2024; with their next scheduled release set to be Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse in TBA.

History

In 2001, Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks. 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 film, was set to be SPI's first all-CGI film, but never made it to fruition. 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. Meanwhile, SPI produced two short films, the Academy Award-winning The ChubbChubbs! and Early Bloomer, as a result of testing its strengths and weaknesses in producing all-CGI animation.

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 film version of The ChubbChubbs!.

Its first feature film was Open Season, released in September 2006, which became Sony's second-highest-grossing home entertainment film in 2007 and spawned three direct-to-video sequels. Its second feature film, Surf's Up was released in June 2007, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and won two Annie Awards. A motion-captured animated film titled Neanderthals and written and produced by Jon Favreau, was cancelled sometime in 2008 after four years in development. SPA's first 3D movie since the IMAX 3D release of Open Season, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, was released in September 2009 and was nominated for four Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature. The Smurfs (2011) was the studio's first CGI/live-action hybrid. SPA's parent company Sony Pictures had partnered in 2007 with Aardman Animations to finance, co-produce and distribute feature films. Together, they produced two films: Arthur Christmas (2011), and The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012), which was SPA's first stop-motion film. In September 2012, SPA released Hotel Transylvania, which grossed over $350 million worldwide and launched a successful franchise with two sequels and a TV series. Two sequels are released in 2013: The Smurfs 2 and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. SPA's latest releases are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated superhero film based on the Spider-Man comics and featuring the Miles Morales incarnation of the character, and The Angry Birds Movie 2, a sequel to the 2016 film The Angry Birds Movie produced by Rovio Animation. SPA has since signed Genndy Tartakovsky to a long-term deal with the studio to develop and direct original films.

On November 3, 2014, the studio collaborated with Frederator Studios' Cartoon Hangover on GO! Cartoons, an incubator series consisting of 12 short films, with at least one short film being developed into a series. The short films were funded by SPA, with the additional goal of attracting new talent for the studio.

As of June 2020, the studio is working on, a robot apocalypse/road trip film written and directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe while produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (2020), Vivo, and Hotel Transylvania 4 (2021), and a sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2022). It has many other projects in development, including an animated Ghostbusters spin-off film, two Genndy Tartakovsky projects: an R-rated comedy titled Fixed and Black Knight. There is also a Point Grey Pictures film titled Bubble in development.

In June 2019, Sony Pictures Animation announced that they had launched an "International" division headed by Aron Warner at the 2019 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, with Wish Dragon set to be the division's first film. 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 films Black Knight and Fixed, the division's TV shows are set to include The Boondocks, a reboot of the original original TV series that originally aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block from 2005 to 2014; Superbago, a co-production with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios that was originally greenlit as a feature film; and Hungry Ghosts, a series based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose. They had previously announced their plans to produce adult content at the 2017 Annecy festival.

According to Kristine Belson, president of SPA, the studio produces films on a 1:1 development-to-production ratio, meaning that the studio puts films into development as much as it places films in production, unlike other animation studios.

Process

In a similar fashion to the Warner Animation Group and Paramount Animation, the studio outsources their films to other animation companies and visual effects studios, with the majority of their films being animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks (its sister company). Some films, such as Arthur Christmas, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, The Angry Birds Movie 2 and Wish Dragon, were acquired by Sony Pictures Animation to be released under their banner while others, such as Goosebumps and Peter Rabbit, were made with no involvement from the studio.

Filmography

Main article(s): List of Sony Pictures Animation productions

See also

• Sony Pictures Imageworks
• Adelaide Productions
• Screen Gems Cartoons
• List of Sony theatrical animated features
• List of unproduced Sony Pictures Animation projects

External links

• Official website
• Sony Pictures Animation on IMDb
• Template:Bcdb

Sony Pictures Entertainment

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v - e - d

Films by Sony Pictures Animation Computer-animated films Open Season (2006) • Surf's Up (2007) • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) • Hotel Transylvania (2012) • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) • Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) • Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) • The Emoji Movie (2017) • The Star (2017) • Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) (accolades) • The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) Live-action/animated films The Smurfs (2011) • The Smurfs 2 (2013) • Goosebumps (2015) • Peter Rabbit (2018) • Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018) Produced with Aardman Animations Arthur Christmas (2011) • The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) Produced with Movie Land Animation Studios The Animals in the Attic (2019) • The Secret Life of Animals 2 (2019) • Shaun and Roger: Roger Breaks the Internet (2019) • Dimensions (2019) • Gwen and Dan (2019) • Carmen Sandiego (2019) • Hoverboard (2019) • Chocolate Fever (2019) • Spider-Gwen (2019) • Everest (2019) • Grossology (2019) • Bunny (2019) • Cool Girls (2020) • Spectrum (2020) Upcoming films Connected (2020) • Spider-Gwen 2 (2020) • Wish Dragon (2020) • Vivo (2021) • Famous 5 (2021) • Jerry & Will (2021) • Voltron (2021) • Hotel Transylvania 4 (2021) • Carmen Sandiego 2 (2021) • The Hollow (2021) • The Last Kids on Earth (2021) • Grossology 2 (2021) • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 (2022) • Spider-Woman (TBA) • Spider-Ham (TBA) Direct-to-video films Open Season 2 (2008) • Open Season 3 (2010) • Open Season: Scared Silly (2015) • Surf's Up 2: WaveMania (2017) Short films The ChubbChubbs! (2002) • Early Bloomer (2003) • Boog and Elliot's Midnight Bun Run (2007) • The ChubbChubbs Save Xmas (2007) • The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol (2011) • So You Want to Be a Pirate! (2012) • Goodnight Mr. Foot (2012) • The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow (2013) • Super Manny (2013) • Earl Scouts (2013) • Steve's First Bath (2014) • Attack of the 50-Foot Gummi Bear (2014) • Puppy! (2017) • The Bunnies in a Christmas Caper (2018) • Hair Love (2019) • Ty and Abby's Bun Run (2020) Series by Sony Pictures Animation Television series Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017–) • Hotel Transylvania: The Series (2017–) • The Boondocks (2021) Online series Go! Cartoons (2017–18) Relations Franchise Open Season (2006–15) • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009–present) • The Smurfs (2011–17) • Hotel Transylvania (2012–present) See also Sony Pictures Imageworks • Cartoon Hangover • Screen Gems Cartoons • Unproduced Sony Pictures Animation projects • Sony Pictures Animation/Gallery • The Angry Birds Movie (2016) • Sausage Party (2016) • Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021)

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