http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/star-wars-leads-ilm-launch-679678
'Star Wars' Leads ILM to Launch New London Effects Facility (Exclusive)
With plans to support additional productions including "The Avengers 2" in London, and to double its head count in Vancouver, the VFX division of Lucasfilm is poised for a major expansion
With Star Wars: Episode VII casting underway and production expected to begin in the spring in the U.K., Industrial Light & Magic -- the VFX division of Lucasfilm, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company -- is getting ready to launch a new feature visual effects facility in central London.
ILM is set to sign a lease for space just outside of Soho -- a neighborhood already populated with numerous VFX houses -- and north of Tottenham Court Road, ILM president and general manager Lynwen Brennan told The Hollywood Reporter. An extensive remodel of the space is planned, and the target to move-in is late March or early April. “It will be a full service studio,” she said. “We’ll have an art department, previsualization, and an entire end-to-end visual effects and computer graphics pipeline.”
She also revealed that since production of J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars is planned at London’s Pinewood Studios, “we’ll certainly have some art department and previs there, but we’re not currently planning on having a large ILM presence at Pinewood. We did consider splitting the facility in two, but we are now focusing on our London facility and having an as-needed facility at Pinewood to be near the production.”
ILM’s Roger Guyett (who earned his third Oscar nomination this year for Star Trek Into Darkness) will be the VFX supervisor on Star Wars Episode VII. The plan is for the ILM facilities to handle all of the work for the film, not just in the U.K., but also in ILM’s San Francisco headquarters, and Singapore and Vancouver locations, as well as at its strategic partner, Base FX in Beijing. The London facility will have a pipeline allowing it to share work with the other ILM offices.
The U.K. base is part of an overall global expansion plan -- and it is not opening just to accomodate Star Wars.
“ILM will be working on not only Lucasfilm projects, Disney projects and Marvel projects but [productions] for other studios as well,“ Brennan said. “London has such a richness of filmmakers. The team that we are building there has those relationships, so we are looking forward to the London studio really developing their local work.”
Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron will be ILM London’s first project. (Work on this project has also been commissioned to London- headquartered VFX house Double Negative and possibly others).
ILM London has already hired roughly a dozen people, including creative director Ben Morris, who comes from London VFX house Framestore and recently worked on Gravity; animation director Michael Eames, who was most recently at Prime Focus; VFX producer Nina Fallon, most recently at Double Negative; and director of operations Sue Lyster, who arrived from Framestore. They are working out of temporary space in Soho, where they are preparing to launch the company, including recruiting.
The target is to bring the London operation to about 200 employees initially. “We are mostly planning to hire U.K.-based talent; there’s a fantastic talent pool there,” said Brennan. “There is also certainly some interest here [in San Francisco], including from some expats who want to go back to London, so I’d imagine you’ll have some that will move.”
The proximity to the Star Wars production is an obvious reason why ILM is opening a U.K. operation at this time, but Brennan noted that London is attractive for numerous reasons. “We needed to expand, and London is a key place to find great [VFX] talent. We also want to work with U.K.-based directors; there’s a lot of filmmaking going on in the U.K.. And, the government has invested in the industry there. That, combined with the fact that shooting in the U.K. requires a certain amount to be spent in the U.K.”
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Star Wars: Episode VII is scheduled for a Dec. 18, 2015 release, while the upcoming Avenger film is slated to open May 1, 2015.
Additionally, ILM’s global slate includes Jurassic World, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tomorrowland, World of Warcraft, Luc Besson’s Lucy and Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken. The company is also wrapping up Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
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