Rhythm & Hues is in dire financial straits and will take an emergency $20 million capital infusion from three major Hollywood studios in order to keep its doors open through April. ...
After April, the company is expected to be sold to an Indian company, Prime Focus, two of those individuals said. If Rhythm & Hues, which employs roughly 1,400 people, cannot find a buyer and is forced to close, it would be the latest blow to a struggling visual-effects industry, hit hard by the vagaries of tax credits offered by governments around the world. ...
"Rhythm & Hues is not going out of business in April, and we are continuing to bid for new work," Lee Berger, president of the company's feature film division, told TheWrap. "We are a sustainable entity. In terms of financial difficulties, we are in the visual effects business." ...
R & H has been around a long time. Back at the end of the nineties, when Disney bought DreamQuest Visual Effects and merged it with Disney Feature Animation (a brainwave of division chief Peter Schneider), DQ employees were standing up in meetings and singing the praises of Rhythm and Hues, a studio most knowledgable CG artists considered enlightened and forward-thinking, what with its generous wage and benefits packages, its positive work environment.
Of course, that was then. And this is now.
... The Los Angeles-based company has been acclaimed for the quality of its effects but has had trouble competing with generous tax subsidies that have sent much visual-effects work in cities like London and Montreal. ...
Ah yes. Tax incentives. Entertainment conglomerates' best friends. But not necessarily pals of working artists.
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