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. It is also a sister studio to Sunburst Animation. 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 the studio, Open Season, was released on September 29, 2006, and their most recent film was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on June 2, 2023. Their upcoming slate of films include Tina II on August 18, 2023, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse on March 29, 2024 and Miss Twenties: The Sequel on August 16, 2024.
History[]
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 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!.
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.
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 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.
Following the support of video game works, Pixelopus is partnering with SPA, working an untitled PS5-exclusive video game with Unreal Engine 5.
Process[]
In a similar fashion to the Warner Animation Group and Paramount Animation, the studio often collaborates with Sony Pictures Imageworks to produce its films. Though certain films are sometimes outsourced to different studios. Some films, such as Arthur Christmas, The Pirates! Band of Misfits and Wish Dragon, were acquired by Sony Pictures Animation to be released under their banner; while others, such as Goosebumps and Peter Rabbit, was made with no involvement with the studio.
Filmography[]
- Main article: List of Sony Pictures Animation productions
Franchises[]
| Title | Films | Shorts | TV seasons | Release date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Season | 4 | 1 | 0 | 2006–2015 |
| Surf's Up | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2007–2017 |
| Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2009–2013 |
| The Smurfs | 3 | 2 | 0 | 2011–2017 |
| Hotel Transylvania | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2012–present |
| Goosebumps | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2015–2018 |