Sad news, as Axis Studios, the Scottish animation house that had recently produced the Marvel Animation 4-episode miniseries “Eyes of Wakanda,” produced by Marvel Studios and Ryan Coogler, has reportedly filed for bankruptcy.
Forbes has revealed the tragic news of Axis Studios, founded back in 2000, going under, citing a “cashflow crisis” as the reason behind the closure, as the “Black Panther” prequel/spinoff miniseries was their last project, and despite getting the opportunity to work with Disney/Marvel and it doing solid streaming numbers alongside critic/audience praise, it wasn’t enough to save the company from closing their doors.
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As the BBC adds, the Scottish-based studio is looking at a job loss of 160 people. Their “severe cash flow problems” are said to be “due to a combination of a decline in the number of their projects and rising labour costs.”
Other things the animation studio worked on in the past included globally beloved video game franchises such as “Halo” and “League of Legends,” as well as episodes of Netflix‘s Emmy-winning anthology series “Love, Death, & Robots” produced by Tim Miller (working on projects not that dissimilar from Miller’s own Blur Studio) and David Fincher.
They even worked on the teaser trailer for the upcoming “Blade” video game directed by Paul Mitchell from Marvel, Bethesda, and Arkane Lyon.
Disney more often than not sticks to in-house animation, but has recently relied upon foreign animation studios to help out with various projects, including the recent run of MCU projects for Disney+, as outsourcing has helped ease some of the workload among different divisions for Disney-owned productions.
Certainly, not great to hear that talented animators are losing their jobs as the industry is entering a bleak new phase where the push for cheaper animation and VFX (some in the industry have called out clients who habitually low-ball in an effort to spend as little as possible, which can impact companies’ ability to stay in business and pay employees) has spawned a corporate demand for AI-generated work (backlash thankfully is making its presence known), something that isn’t part of this story, but could have some devastating impacts on industry-wide creators in the not too distant future.
Hopefully, the team at Axis Studios finds work elsewhere within the animation industry.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
