Supercharging Canary Island animation studio Anima Kitchen, VFX giant DNEG has acquired the Canary Islands’ Anima Kitchent.<\/p>\n
The operation is backed by the support of the state-owned Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), a sovereign venture capital fund which has invested \u20ac24.9 million ($28.8 million) in Anima Kitchent. The joint investment, which sees both entities becoming Anima Kitchent shareholders, will be channelled via DNEG’s ReDefine Originals, an animation studio and creative incubator.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/p>\n
Established in the Canary Islands’ Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 2017 and run by CEO Angel Molinero with Ariana Villalobos as operations manager, Anima Kitchent has grown from just a staff of a dozen workers to a current 170, thanks to banner shows such as pre-school “Cleo & Cuqu\u00edn,” “Lea & Pop” and “Cuqu\u00edn” for Warner. Bros. Discovery. The company is also renown for leveraging YouTube, where it has over 67 million subscribers, in order to launch and consolidate IPs.<\/p>\n
The objective of DNEG and SETT investment is to take Anima Kitchent to the next level, creating 275 new jobs, “developing and producing original features of great quality, creating long-term value through their IP,” Spain’s Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function has announced.<\/p>\n
The SETT investment forms part of the second-phase Plan Spain Audiovisual Hub, with a \u20ac1.7 billion ($2.0 billion) budget, which forms part of the European Union’s Recuperation, Transformation and Resilience Plan.<\/p>\n
The new Anima Kitchent will continue to benefit from Canary Island tax credits of 54%-45% on film-TV expenditure, capped at \u20ac36 million ($41.8 million) per feature film and \u20ac18 million ($20.9 million) per TV episode for both animation and VFX.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As an outlying part of the European Union., the Canary Islands also offers a Special Zone (ZEC) corporate income tax of 4% and 7% VAT, compared to 25% and 21% in mainland Spain.<\/p>\n
“The Canary Islands have bounties of climate, gastronomy and landscapes, its tourism and trade are fundamental but we need to diversify its economy and here Spain’s government bets clearly on the audiovisual sector, especially in the Canary Islands,” said Angel V\u00edctor Torres P\u00e9rez, Spain’s Minister for Territorial Policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The real edge is the combination: strong IP and production values paired with data analysis that tracks audience trends in real time. Producing quickly and at high quality is precisely what makes that IPs travel into new markets,” Pablo Hern\u00e1ndez, ZEC executive president, said of Anima Kitchent.<\/p>\n
Anima Kitchent’s new deal also mark a milestone step in the muscular growth of the Canary Islands’ animation industry which has expanded from one production house in 2018 to over 30 studios.<\/p>\n
These include the Canary Islands’ office of Fortiche, behind “Arcane”; Atlantis Animation, a partner on “Leo and the Giants” for Sony-Disney; Tomavision, which supplied animation on “Space Jam: A New Legacy” for Warner Bros. and on “Merry Little Batman” (Warner Bros.\/Amazon Prime); 3 Doubles Producciones, a prolific feature film production house, and Tinglado Films, a producer on Oscar pre-selected “Black Butterflies.”<\/p>\n
Finland’s Gigglebug, producer of “101 Dalmatian Street” shorts, has set up an office in the Canary Islands. Now Surfing Giant, behind Disney’s “Hey A.J.!” \u2013 from Jeff “Swampy” Marsh (“Phineas and Ferb”), Michael Hodges and Alcon Entertainment COO Scott Parish \u2013 is now opening a studio in the Canary Islands.<\/p>\n
“Combined with earlier moves \u2013 Studio 100 Media’s and Viva Pictures’ stakes in 3Doubles among them \u2013 the Anima Investment signals that the Canary Islands have become a credible, resilient alternative for global animation: in effect, a safe harbor from the disruption hitting other markets,” said Hern\u00e1ndez. “Local talent, stable regulation and competitive tax incentives are what let companies here adapt to changing conditions more quickly.”<\/p>\n
Developed with SETT, the DNEG deal was closed directly with Anima Kitchent. It followed on more than four years with ZEC and partners including Proexca\u2013Gobierno de Canarias and the island Cabildos.\u00a0“Our long-term groundwork meant that when the opportunity arose, DNEG already had a deep understanding of what the islands could deliver,” said Hern\u00e1ndez.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Best of Variety<\/p>\n
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supercharging Canary Island animation studio Anima Kitchen, VFX giant DNEG has acquired the Canary Islands’ Anima Kitchent. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16803,16801,16800,16804,16802,17],"class_list":["post-34615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-anima-kitchen","tag-anima-kitchent","tag-canary-island","tag-dneg","tag-sett","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}