Vanguard Films & Animation, also known as Vanguard Animation, is an American independent animation production studio founded in 2002 by producer John H. Williams and Neil Braun. The studio has offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Ealing Studios in London, England, United Kingdom. Starz Distribution (then IDT Entertainment) formerly owns a minority stake in the studio.
History The studio was founded in 2002 by John H. Williams. For its launch, it signed with Ealing Studios a four-picture deal to produce sub-$40 million computer-animated films. The following year in July 2003, Vanguard sold a minority stake to IDT Corporation and partnered with its animation unit, Digital Production Solutions, to co-produce and co-own all Vanguard's properties, including Valiant (2005) produced for Disney.
The company was part of the then-new "pipeline-free" trend (reported by Variety in 2006) in animation production, where the companies did not keep the talent on payroll and instead were "establishing a team from scratch to execute each new feature", allowing them to secure tax breaks from the governments. For example, the feature "Valiant" was produced in the UK in order to collect the tax incentives there. With UK incentives ending, the production (for "Space Chimps") moved to Canada (Vancouver).
Filmography
Feature films
# Title Release date Gross Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic 1 Valiant (US) $61,746,888 32% 45% 2 Happily N'Ever After (US) $38,085,778 6% 28% 3 Space Chimps $64,834,964 33% 36% 4 Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back (DTV) $4,124,518 0% 5 Get Squirrely $1,224,520 34% 6 Gnome Alone $10,800,715 44% 7 Charming $8,751,856 24% 8 Trouble $11,942,158 36% 9 Fearless 49% 10 Rally Road Racers $3,204,824 73%
Upcoming films
# Title Release date 11 Goose Chase TBD
Short films Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance
Unproduced projects Citizen Siege - A science fiction thriller animated film that was to be co-produced by Vanguard and video game developer Oddworld Inhabitants. The plot involves an expatriate who returns home to find that he has been repossessed, in a shady underhive-like world where a corporate government rules the continent. The film was originally scheduled to release in 2009, but the date was pushed back to an unknown date. As of 2019, there have been no recent developments regarding the film's production. Alien Rock Band Rotten Island Buzby City of Dragons Atomic Circus Oz Wars Ribbit The Twits Galaxy High The Gnome King
See also List of computer-animated films
References
Further reading
External links