As Blue Sky Studios closes, Disney scraps nearly 470 jobs
Last weekend, Blue Sky Studios animator Jackie Tarascio alerted her LinkedIn followers that Illumination Mac Guff — the Paris studio carrying on the “Despicable Me” and “Minions” franchise — was bringing her on board.
The comments were immediate and plentiful. “Congrats Jackie! See you there,” wrote Justin Weg — also formerly of Blue Sky Studios.
As Walt Disney pulls the plug next week on Blue Sky Studios in Greenwich, the animation industry is getting a crack at one of the largest exoduses of talent in a generation.
Disney is scrapping nearly 470 Blue Sky jobs in Greenwich a mere two years after acquiring the studio. Many of the departing workers are seasoned animators and technicians with multiple feature films to their credit, including “Ice Age” and “Ferdinand.”
In electing to shutter Blue Sky, Disney scrapped the studio’s next big release — an adaptation of the “Nimona” online fantasy webcomic series — which had already been pushed back to 2022. Blue Sky executives have explored finding another studio to complete the film, according to trade publication Collider, which did not cite its sources by name.
Disney remains a major Connecticut employer through Bristol-based ESPN, in which Hearst Corp. holds a minority investment. Disney did not respond immediately Tuesday to a query on whether it considered selling Blue Sky or spinning it off as an alternative to closing it.
In recent years, Blue Sky has taken a back seat during awards season, with Walt Disney Animation and Pixar (also owned by Disney) dominating the Oscars for best animated feature and DreamWorks Animation landing a number of nominations.
Blue Sky came closest to winning in 2002, when “Ice Age” was beaten out by the Japanese classic “Spirited Away,” and again in 2017, when Blue Sky’s “Ferdinand” lost to Pixar’s “Coco,” which also won for best original song that year.
But respect for Blue Sky runs deep in the industry, as is clear from plum jobs some of its staff landed in short order, including positions with Pixar and Walt Disney Animation.
Walt Disney Animation brought on supervising animators Raymond Ross and Melvin Tan this month from Blue Sky. And Kevin Spencer elicited “wow” reactions from colleagues on LinkedIn after the lighting production coordinator landed at Pixar, having joined Blue Sky only five years earlier from NBCUniversal.
Those jobs are intensely competitive; Walt Disney Animation and Pixar listed less than 20 openings each as of Tuesday. Dreamworks Animation and Illumination Mac Guff each had about a dozen openings after bringing on the small Blue Sky contingent.
But the streaming era is creating new spots for animators to land — including positions at Netflix, which is building an animation team for future series and features.
Deb Stone joined Blue Sky in 2011 from Walt Disney Animation as director of recruitment and talent development. She now joins Weg and Tarascio at the Illumination division of NBCUniversal and Comcast (which owns Illumination Mac Guff), and also former Blue Sky character animator Scott Farrell.
In the words of one commenter, Stone spent her final stretch with Blue Sky as a “reverse recruitment” specialist — helping Blue Sky vets find work elsewhere.
In the closing days of Blue Sky, staff members thanked an assistant editor named Lauren Stevens, who posted a private “Sizzle for Blue Sky Studios” tribute on Vimeo, stitching together outtakes from Blue Sky movies set to a rousing score.
With the “Minions” franchise showing staying power, will the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat, or any other Blue Sky characters, end up as “Easter eggs” — imagery so fleeting it is noticeable only in super slow-mo or freeze-frame stills — in future Illumination films?
On LinkedIn, production supervisor Jason Fricchione likened the Blue Sky closure to lightning striking twice in a career, having been at the Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida studio in 2004 when Disney closed it.
Fricchione landed a job immediately with Blue Sky, where he has been ever since. April 10 now looms as the start date of his free agency.
“It’s a transient industry,” Fricchione posted last month on LinkedIn. “Hopefully we’ll all cross paths again.”