Province invests $3 million for 3D project in Toronto
Funding will add 300 positions to L.A. company’s Ontario office
The provincial government is giving more than $3 million to an L.A.-based company for a project that will create almost 300 jobs in 3D in Toronto.
The funds pledged to Legend 3D, which has a large studio in the city, will double the firm’s local workforce with the new high-tech hires.
The province’s $3.1million is on top of the company’s $27-million investment, through to 2021.
“We’re investing heavily in a lot of sectors,” said Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid Wednesday morning at Legend’s office on Adelaide St. E. in downtown Toronto.
“The reason why is our economy is in a state of transition — the global economy is in a state of transition. Our choice is to sit back and watch the technological disruption run over our economy, or lead the technological disruption from here in Ontario. We have the talent here in this province to be a global leader. Legend 3D could have set up this operation in many places around the world, but they chose here.”
Legend 3D has worked on such high-profile movies as the new Ghostbusters, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Doctor Strange and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The company not only converts 2D to 3D, but also does virtual reality and visual effects for television, concerts and music videos.
Legend 3D set up shop here in Toronto in 2015, said chief financial officer Mark Steffler, a former Toronto resident who grew up in Wingham and attended the University of Windsor.
He said the firm will look to post-secondary institutions across the province of Ontario to recruit new talent, boosting the number of employees to more than 500. “It’s very easy to do business (here),” Steffler said. “We hired 200 people in three months when we first arrived. We knew the market well, we knew the local economy and we knew about the abundance of rich talent here.”
Duguid said talks with Legend have been going on for four years and its presence here, along with Stereo D, makes Toronto home to 80 per cent of the global market.
Last December, the province announced it was pledging $4.5 million to help expand Stereo D— a digital company that has converted films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Beyond — creating a total of 358 jobs.
“Ontario is absolutely killing it in our digital media, film and entertainment sector,” Duguid said, with a total of $2.7 billion in investments supporting 50,000 jobs, and breaking records every year in terms of film production.
The money for Legend 3D will help hire and train staff, purchase equipment, upgrade facilities and also go toward software research and development, Duguid said.
Most of the new Legend 3D jobs will be in post-production, special effects and 2D to 3D conversion, Duguid said, adding there are guarantees built into the investment though he could not divulge them for “commercially sensitive” reasons. The funding will create 271 new jobs on top of the current 280. The money comes from the province’s Jobs and Prosperity Fund.
In 2016, the province came under heavy criticism after a Toronto movie and animation company, Arc Productions, shut down seven years after getting a $23-million government grant.