MPC, the VFX studio that helped with the last-minute redesign of Sonic in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, has reportedly been shut down.
The visual effects industry can often be quite tough; long hours and stiff competition are the order of the day, pretty much every day. Now, it seems that one particular studio has been closed down, and it was done at the end of one of the finest VFX redemption stories in recent memory.
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MPC has a couple of rather impressive credits to its name in recent memory. Previously, it had done visual effects work for the latest The Lion King movie, a film that certainly required a fair amount of technical ability. More recently, the company was known for taking on the responsibility of turning around the less-than-ideal representation of Sonic in the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie.
As Cartoon Brew reports, an alleged letter from the company was sent out to employees of the Vancouver Studio. It has not yet been independently verified, but the gist of it is that the Vancouver studio is being shut down and the company will “refocus its geographical presence to other locations”. Citing “increasing external market pressures in Vancouver,” this purported MPC letter states that they are going to be looking at “more attractive” opportunities in other locations.
A submission on the /r/vfx subreddit is the original source of this claimed shutdown. Several people who say they are employees or adjacent to the industry describe contractor layoffs preceding the Canadian branch’s closure, and one person says that they saw people leaving the offices with boxes of their belongings.
While the volume of people talking about the MPC Vancouver closure lends it a bit more credibility than a single claim, we’ve yet to find anything that we can independently verify. We’ve reached out to MPC and will update this article when we receive a reply.
