Last year, the French Filetry animation team was on the verge of folding. Today in Annecy, its new owners have unveiled reinvention and expansion.
THE PJ masks The outfit encountered financial problems after 20 years of operation and was bought at the end of 2024 by the Riva of Italy studios for 2.6 million euros ($ 3 million) after a “highly competitive auction”.
Six months later, the new CEO MARCO BALSAMO unveiled a sextuor of shows, a push in 2D and adult animation and new technology.
During an Annecy Studio in Focus event that has just finished, Balsmo showed the public Skwad!The first adult 2D adult 2D comedy of Teamto, which takes place in the world of MMA, as well as Infinity, A drama of cinematographic cinematographic action of the famous director Jay Oliva.
Pressing Balsamo’s love for football – his family has a football team in New York – Teamto is also ShadowA sports drama inspired by anime with supernatural elements. The realization of the sexuor is What’s new, eesha?A series of whimsical preschool schools co -produced with Maga Animation (Italy) and Umedia (Belgium), Greek Mythology Show Next level: Odyssey And Home., A family fiction family comedy on a mixed household living inside a retired intergalactic battle robot.
Addressing deadlines before the Focus studio, Balsamo said that CGI “will remain our bread and our butter”, but “we have always wanted to diversify and show a variety of which team can accomplish, and it is in the 2D and the adult animation space.” In the foreseeable future. Indie will adopt an approach divided approximately 50/50 of its original IP work and production services, he added.
Balsamo and his team were interested in acquiring the studio team that was distributed at the start to save an intellectual property on which the pair worked entitled Junichiro Jackson – “In our head, it was not to buy the studio but to recover our IP,” he said- but he quickly realized that Teamto was a “turnkey” company.
“When we opened the Pandora box, there is this incredible team of people,” he added. “It’s much more than CGI. And our work is now to optimize this and do our best to instill confidence in our team and our partners that we can restore as a first animation studio. ”
About 90%, or the “central group” of the staff of Teamto CIRA-39 has retained their job, said Balsamo, although they could not keep the previous property “for various reasons”.
He said that “a handful of bad decisions at a bad time” combined with the 2023 American work strikes expressed the end of the previous iteration of Teamto.
“They decided to develop in a huge studio that cost too much money to support because they felt like they were going to manage two-digit productions,” he added. “When service projects have stopped coming, money was dried up. This was summed up in this decision. ”
Balsamo notes that this is a difficult time for animation, but said: “With this comes the opportunity”.
The new owner said that he was just as happy to work with local French players and major American studios, who are in force in Annecy this week, and he published a rallying cry so that the industry meets during conflicts and in the face of the dismissals and the dangers of artificial intelligence.
“I think we are at a inflection point,” added Balsamo. “Tribalism must go. In the end, the robots will not support us or will pay our invoices. Thus, studios, executives, partners and broadcasters really need to defend stories. Budgets and green lights are more difficult to find, so we have to work together. ”
In this spirit, the Balsamo team will also unveil this week the owner technology that it will buy on the market rather than keeping internally, in particular Tangerine, a real-time animation platform which says it is increasing the productivity of the animator up to 30%, and Yuzu, a new production management tool offering real-time visibility.
Balsamo spoke on the deadline of the Annecy International Film Festival in France.
