The Movie Blog

Astroboy and TMNT Studio Imagi Closes Shop

By Rodney - February 11, 2010 - 09:15 America/Montreal

While many sources are claiming Imagi International (the company that brought us TMNT and Astroboy) has gone Bankrupt, it is more accurate that their animation studio will be closing its doors and they will no longer produce their own animation.

Imagi fell under speculation of financial woes when Astroboy Production was halted until the Studio generated enough money to pay their staff. While PR tried to spin it, they appeared to get more money only to take a bath on poor boxoffice performance.

Now they are not producing any animation in their Hong Kong Studio at all.

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The real problem, though, is a $93 million loss Imagi suffered between March and September, according to Yahoo!, which led the company to lay off a whopping 350 employees, to whom Imagi owes an additional $4.6 million. Sounds like a real winning recipe.

Imagi itself isn’t going out of business; it’s got a lot of tentacles and the animation was just one part of a big, big company. So movie ideas will continue to be developed, although the actual work will be outsourced, and the prevailing wisdom is that most of that stuff will be done oustide of Hong Kong

Knowing that Imagi will still be making movies is hopeful provided whatever outsourcing they do is of the same quality. I really liked their TMNT film and was blown away by the effects and style.

Astroboy was equally as visual, and had its own groove as well even though I didn’t care much for the story.

The real heartbreak here will be my life long passion to see Gatchaman brought to the big screen with Imagi’s vision and style. Known in my playground simply as G-Force (not that retarded superspy talking guinea pig movie) Battle of the Planets was my first animated love and sparked a wild obsession for me.

It was decades later that I found out it was called Gatchaman and I loved the updated look of the franchise.

Imagi was slated to produce Gatchaman, and no news of its fate has been announced with this shift in their business structure.

Check out the Teaser they released last year.

I hope that movie gets made.