Sunday, September 9, 2012

Digital Domain in Florida closes its doors after 3 years

Digital Domain at Port St. Lucie in Florida, founded in 2009, has closed its doors after a three year effort to produce a 3D animated film to compete with the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.

Here is the text from today's Facebook post by Chuck Williams, who was co-directing, and who I worked with many years ago on "RollerCoaster Rabbit" at Disney-MGM Studios, another Florida Studio which would eventually be closed down, despite many great successes and a wealthy sponsor.

Chuck wrote as follows:

"Digital Domain - Florida, my employer, shut down today. Ran out of money. Aaron [Blaise] and I knew this start up was a risk, but we has such great momentum -- a big, emotional, funny story, appealing characters, a really unique world and mind blowing, beautiful artwork. And maybe best of all -- a super-talented crew 110% committed to bring it on screening. We were on our 3rd screening, 1 month from production. This closure was a total shot in gut, complete surprise. 

To over 300 employees, 120 on our film. I thank you all for the great effort. I hope we can work together in the future. Lots of dreams were dashed today. Lets all find new ones."

I can well imagine how they must be feeling, having poured their hearts into the project for so long. It is little consolation to know that this sort of thing is almost commonplace in our business, where the stakes are so high and the price of failure so huge.

---- Alex

1 comment: