Sony Animation
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| Subsidiary of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group | |
| Industry | Computer animated film industry |
| Founded | May 2002 |
| Headquarters | Culver City, California, U.S. |
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Key people
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Kristine Belson (President) |
| Owner | Sony |
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Number of employees
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50 (2013) |
| Parent | Sony Pictures Entertainment |
| Website | Official website |
Sony Pictures Animation is an American animation studio owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, founded in May 2002. It works closely with Sony Pictures Imageworks, which handles digital production. All of its theatrical releases are distributed worldwide by Columbia Pictures, and direct-to-video releases are distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. They are known for the film franchises Open Season, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Smurfs and Hotel Transylvania, and the 2007 Oscar-nominated film Surf's Up.
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 created for Stuart Little 2, and seeing the box office success of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek and 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. 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.
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Wikipedia