'TMNT' and 'Astro Boy' Studio Stops Making Movies

Imagi International, the company that backed a couple animated flicks in the past three years, has tapped out. "No mas," said the Hong Kong-based company, although probably not in Spanish. The studio most recently produced Astro Boy, and that's about all you need to know, really. People just didn't warm up to it. I suspect it might have had something to do with the main character dying in the opening scene. Whatever the reason - either that or stateside unfamiliarity with the character or both - Imagi lost about $40 million on Astro Boy, even though its 2007 TMNT made a bit of money. 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, perhaps in mainland China, where the work could presumably be done more cheaply. But we're probably not going to get an Astro Boy 2, I guess.

Comments

[Dave Scoros]

That sucks about Astro Boy. It was actually an enjoyable film. I question its advertising though - I barely saw any ads for it, and the brief one I did see had me scratching my head a little. Glad I saw the movie though, I really enjoyed it. Imagi's artists and writers did a good job with it, but the company seems to have had managing problems if it was so deeply in debt before Astro Boy even opened.

But I did read that Astro Boy did very well in the UK over the weekend, so maybe there's hope for a sequel yet...

[Vince]

I'm a bit sad about this news. Astro Boy and TMNT, while not spectacular, state-of-the-art animated films, had a certain kind of reverence for the source material (although I'm sure fanboys will disagree with me on this), something that many movie adaptations lack now a days. The studio, you could tell, were fans of their properties as well, and they focused on making the best possible movies that they could, instead of churning out cheap cash-ins on old properties.

Also, I just remembered that at Comic-Con last year, IMAGI stated that they were working on an adaptation of Gatchaman that would be released in 2011. Colin, is there any news about this? Does that mean that the film is canned now? That's a real shame, because the image that they released got my hopes up that the film would be IMAGI's most ambitious yet.

[Get The Big Picture]

No news on Gatchaman yet that I could find.

[AStrooBOY]

what the hell, astro boy was an awesome movie. true i didnt see much advertisement, but how else could they make up for the fact that astro boy is a robot without killing the kid? serious guys don criticise, duno y people didnt enjoy it, it was a rlly nice movie. sheesh AND WTH NO MORE TMNT??!?!? thts like WAAAAAAAAAAAAT

[Lisa]

I'm down right shocked Astro boy did so bad on the box office. It's one of the first few films i considered as good as Pixar standards. if i could i'd wanted to see again and again, and I rarely feel that way about a film!

I don't know if it was protective parents not happy about Toby dying, the recession or the lack of good trailers (in the english version it was all action while the japanese told more into the depth of the plot) But Astro boy SHOULDN'T have failed! And i'll be royally pissed if a sequel never sees the light of day because of the reasons above. Imagi has to attempt one someday when it's not so in the red on cash.

I hope people will be inclined to buy the dvd with all it's goodies, I'm gonna get it!

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