Sony Pictures Animation

Sony Pictures Animation is an American animated film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, founded in May 2002. It works closely with Sony Pictures Imageworks, which handles digital production. Theatrical releases are distributed by Columbia Pictures, and direct-to-video releases are distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The studio's franchises include Open Season, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Smurfs and Hotel Transylvania.

The History of the Company:

In 2001, Sony Pictures Entertainment considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks. After failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the CGI sequences created for Stuart Little 2, and seeing the box office success of Shrek and 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. In May 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 weakness in producing all-CG animation.

In May 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 version of the short film 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, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and won two Annie Awards. A motion-captured animated film, Neanderthals, 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 and its most successful release. SPA's parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment has partnered in 2007 with Aardman Animations to finance, co-produce and distribute feature films. Together, they produced a computer-animated film, Arthur Christmas (2011), and The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012), Sony's first stop-motion film, although made entirely by Aardman. SPA's latest releases are Hotel Transylvania 2, directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and released in September 2015, and the live-action/computer-animated film Goosebumps, released in October. SPA has since signed Tartakovsky to a long-term deal with the studio to develop and direct original films.

The studio is currently working on a completely-animated Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017), Emojimovie: Express Yourself (2017), The Star (2017), the live-action/animated film Beatrix Potter (2018), Hotel Transylvania 3 (2018), and the Untitled animated Spider-Man movie (2018). It has many other projects in development, including Kazorn and the Unicorn, Genndy Tartakovsky's Can You Imagine?, Medusa, and a live-action/stop-motion film Superbago.

On November 3, 2014, the studio made a deal with Cartoon Hangover to create "GO! Cartoons".

Feature films

Released:

1. Open Season (October 13, 2006)

2. Surf's Up (August 10, 2007)

3. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (September 18, 2009)

4. The Smurfs (co-production with TKEC) (August 10, 2011)

5. Arthur Christmas (co-production with Aardman) (November 11, 2011)

6. The Pirates! Band of Misfits (co-production with Aardman) (March 28, 2012)

7. Hotel Transylvania (October 12, 2012)

8. The Smurfs 2 (co-production with TKEC) (July 31, 2013)

9. Cloudy 2: Revenge of the Leftovers (October 25, 2013)

10. Hotel Transylvania 2 (October 16, 2015)

11. Goosebumps (co-production with Village Roadshow Pictures, Original Film and Scholastic Entertainment) (February 5, 2016)

Upcoming:

Smurfs: The Lost Village (March 31, 2017)

EmojiMovie: Express Yourself (co-production with Twitter Films) (August 11, 2017)

The Star (co-production with The Jim Henson Company) (December 15, 2017)

Beatrix Potter (March 23, 2018)

Untitled Animated Spider-Man film (co-production with Marvel) (December 21, 2018)

Direct-to-video:

1. Open Season 2 (January 27, 2009)

2. Open Season 3 (January 25, 2011)

3. Open Season: Scared Silly (March 8, 2016)

4. Surf's Up 2: WaveMania (Spring 2017)