The owner of Framestore, the special effects powerhouse behind the visuals in many Marvel movies, has revealed that it is still reeling from the strikes which gripped Hollywood for more than six months last year and caused its revenue to plummet by $46.7 million to $665.6 million.
Framestore has worked on more than ten movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe including all of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and next year’s Fantastic Four. It is in a prime position to get the work as it is the leading SFX agency in the United Kingdom where many Marvel movies are shot due to the lucrative government incentives on offer to studios.
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The dark clouds began to gather in May last year when writers downed their tools in a bid to boost their pay and royalties from streaming shows. They were followed by actors two months later and although the curtain came down on the dispute in November, by then studios had delayed the release dates of many movies including this year’s chart-topper Deadpool & Wolverine, which Framestore also worked on.
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The financial statements confirm that “due to the challenges faced by the group arising from the writers’ and actors’ strike an impairment of $19,852,000 has been recognised in the year ended 31 December 2023 against the investment held in Infinity Bidco Limited.”
The value was written down despite an improvement in the fortunes of Framestore’s direct operating company Guidedraw, which retained its value. Its revenue rose 8.1% to $376.2 million in 2023 as the decline in business from North America was more than offset by an increase from British productions which were not part of the Hollywood strikes. Combined with careful cost control, this helped it to generate a $7.9 million operating profit, up from a $6.3 million loss in 2022.
Not in this case. I don’t know whether this particular VFX studio treats its workers fairly, but I’ve heard that the whole VFX world is generally terrible to its workers.
That all is beside the point here, though. The VFX studio doesn’t employ writers or actors, whose strikes shut down production of films. So it doesn’t matter if the VFX studio treated its staff like kings. They were still going to lose a ton of work during the strikes, so there’s no avoiding these issues.