Frantic Films sells division

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This article was published 28/11/2007 (6701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FRANTIC Films, the local company that put Winnipeg on Hollywood’s radar, has sold its visual effects division to a publicly traded company headquartered in Mumbai, India.

Frantic CEO Jamie Brown confirmed Tuesday evening the division was sold to Prime Focus Limited, a leader in India’s post-production and visual effects services. Frantic Films will remain a Winnipeg production entity with its live action and commercial divisions, and will even share office space, a receptionist and photocopiers with their visual effects unit, which is now considered a property of Prime Focus.

In its 10 years of existence, Frantic’s visual effects have found their way into big-budget movies such as Swordfish, X-Men 2 and Superman Returns. Two movies currently playing in theatres — Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and Across the Universe — both contain visual effects created by Frantic Films.

The visual effects division will stay here with no loss of jobs for the 80 people currently employed in the effects division, Brown says, adding the company will be able to take a larger slice of the visual effects pie by pooling its resources with Prime Focus’s other post-production facilities.

“We’ve been unable to bid on some of the bigger shoots because we haven’t had those resources,” Brown said.

Frantic’s COO Ken Zorniak and his fellow founding partner, Frantic president Chris Bond will stay with the company “as employees, instead of owners.

“They wanted to make sure Chris and I are invested in this is because they recognize that we have the entrepreneurial spirit and drive to grow the company and take the risks needed to do cool and innovative stuff,” Zorniak said, adding that the acquisition may even expand the Winnipeg office.

“Prime Focus has four offices in India alone with 100-plus people in each of those facilities and I think they’ll be looking to grow the office here as well to comparable size,” Zorniak said.

The move may take away from Frantic’s bragging rights — in the form of business awards from Manitoba and Canadian business publications — as a hometown-operated success story.

But Zorniak says the deal opens up the company to work not just for Hollywood, but for India and the U.K.

“It really opens the door to a combination of work we can do,” says Zorniak. “We’ll be able to bridge the ocean.”

Frantic’s greatest hits

In its 10-year history, Frantic Films visual effects division has contributed to some great moments in a host of Hollywood movies, including:

Superman Returns (2006)

Frantic Films developed software to convey an undersea earthquake, as well as giving eerie iridescent life to Kryptonite.

X-Men 2 (2003)

Frantic did the pre-visualization for Bryan Singer’s comic book sequel, which especially paid off when Singer utilized Frantic’s vision of how Storm (Halle Berry) evades fighter jets by creating multiple tornadoes.

Swordfish (2001)

A typical action movie explosion was transformed into a 360-degree slo-mo visual effects tour de force in this John Travolta-Halle Berry thriller, courtesy of Frantic. Indeed, the scene became an important calling card in their subsequent visual effects work.