Happy Feet 2 has found a new studio in Sydney, Australia.
Ian MacDonald, Minister of State Development for the Australian state of New South Wales, announced Sunday that director George Miller will produce the film at a new digital production facility in Sydney, called Dr D. According to MacDonald, this development will ensure that Sydney is "once again front and centre of the national film industry.'
Happy Feet 2 Coming
According to News.com.Au, the state government ensured Happy Feet 2's production would stay in Australia by offering a payroll tax assistance package to Miller and helped establish the production facility.
New South Wales coughed up the cash after Miller threatened to move Happy Feet 2 – and all future movie productions – out of Australia when he didn't receive a recently-enacted 40% producer rebate for his upcoming film Justice League Mortal.
MacDonald said Dr. D will employ an average of 438 people over the next 3 years, including 230 computer graphics imaging artists.
"This incentive by the New South Wales government is a significant step. It allows us to make Happy Feet 2 in Sydney and it will be the first of many productions from our new digital studio, Dr D," Miller said in a prepared statement.
"It helps us in our attempts to attract substantial foreign investment which will create hundreds of high-end, highly skilled jobs as well as nurture the careers of many people coming out of our educational institutions who would otherwise have no place to grow their talents."
Happy Feet: Oscar-Winning And Controversial
The original Happy Feet was released in the fall of 2006, and earned around $384.3 million worldwide. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2007, but failed to take the Annie Award, the only year the Oscar winner did not also win that award (Disney/Pixar's Cars won the Annie that year).
Despite the film's box office success, conservative commentators went ballistic over Happy Feet's messages about the environment and overfishing.
"Let me know that I'm walking into propaganda!" frothed CNN commentator Glenn Beck in November of 2006, railing that the flick was environmental indoctrination disguised as children's entertainment.
"I guess (the movie producers) knew they might not pull in $42 million (Happy Feet's initial box office)," he sneered, "if people knew they were going to see an animated Inconvenient Truth."
George Miller will start production on Happy Feet 2 in January of 2009, and he is hoping for a 2011 theatrical debut.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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