Of course, Disney also now owns Pixar and runs its own Walt Disney Feature Animation unit. Ultimately, The Secret Lab department closed in 2002. Co-founded by industry legends Hoyt Yeatman and Scott Squires, Dream Quest worked on the Oscar-winning James Cameron’s 1989 undersea epic The Abyss. Walt Disney Feature Animation’s Computer Graphics Unit had merged with Dream Quest Images to create Disney’s The Secret Lab department in October 1999. Dream Quest was one of the early very well respected effects houses. Sony owns Sony Pictures Imageworks and even Disney themselves have owned or own effects businesses such as the now defunct Secret Lab. Of course this close relationship with an effects house is not uncommon. While ILM has always been run as a business – the Star Wars films, Red Tails and other projects were directed and produced by the owner of the group (Lucasfilm), which is a different process than being part of a very public company such as the Disney Corporation. Star Tours at Disneyland.ĭisney as the parent of ILM does bring a new economic angle to ILM’s work. ILM has a long and successful working relationship with Disney – from Star Tours to this year’s mega-hit The Avengers. Just released is of course the epic Cloud Atlas 10/2012, Directors Tom Tykwer/Andy Wachowski/Lana Wachowski for Warner Bros.Īnd in fact we know that there are other films in production or pre-production right now but have yet to be announced publicly. * G.I Joe: Retaliation 6/29/12 Dir.Jon Chu for Paramount Darren Aronofsky for Paramount/New Regency ILM confirmed to fxguide today that the following are on ILM’s books:

To perhaps demonstrate the enormous capacity and influence of ILM and underline Iger’s point, you need only look at the films they currently have in production.

Meanwhile Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger commented on an investor call regarding ILM that, “our current thinking is that we will let it remain as is – they do great work – they work for multiple studios.” fxguide spoke directly to ILM today who commented only that “for ILM and Skywalker Sound it’s business as usual.” Today ILM for the first time in its history was sold, as part of a deal by Disney to buy LucasFilm.

George lucas sells star wars