News

100 Out of 400 Laid Off at CG Astro Boy's Imagi Studio

IMAGI, the company that produced the computer-animated film adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (Mighty Atom) manga from its offices in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, laid off a significant number of its employees on Friday. According to the newspaper Oriental Daily News, about 100 out of IMAGI's 400 employees were laid off. The affected employees — most of whom were animators — will be compensated in accordance to employment laws in Hong Kong.

The Sing Tao Daily newspaper reports that IMAGI invested almost HK$500 million (about US$60 million) into its Astro Boy film. The film has so far earned about HK$3 million (about US$400,000) in Hong Kong theaters and an estimated US$19.073 million in the United States. In October, it earned earned US$328,457 in its first weekend in Japan and debuted at #10 in the weekend box office rankings.

Felix Ip, the creative director at IMAGI, confirmed the layoffs in his blog. IMAGI produced the 2007 computer-animated film adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book franchise. IMAGI has since announced that it is working a planned film adaptation of Tatsunoko Production's Gatchaman anime series.

Sources: Oriental Daily News (link 2)

Thanks to dormcat for the news translation.