Will a new animation studio become the British Pixar? These women think so

The British have long dreamed of creating their own equivalent to a Disney, Dreamworks or Pixar. But they’ve invariably discovered that animation studios don’t come cheap.

Yet the dream persists. That is why there is such interest within the film industry about Locksmith Animation, the new, female-run “global animation powerhouse” set up by ex-Aardman colleagues, Sarah Smith and Julie Lockhart, together with media mogul, Elisabeth Murdoch (co-founder and chairman of the company).

“They are my co-conspirators and they are total forces of nature,” Elisabeth Murdoch commented of her partners, Smith and Lockhart, at a swanky launch party last month at the company’s new headquarters in a converted garage in Primrose Hill, north London. Cate Blanchett was in the audience, as were several of the biggest names in US animation.

There are very obvious reasons why previous British attempts at setting up big animation companies have generally foundered. Pixar spent a reported $175m (£123m) on producing Inside Out (2015), and even more on its most recent hit, Coco (2017).

These are vastly bigger budgets than the British have ever been able to dream of spending on their ‘toons – and they don’t even take into consideration the marketing and distribution costs.

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There is also the cultural question. If you’re a smallish British company making your own quirky animated movies, you might not enjoy climbing into bed with the Hollywood majors. Bristol-based Aardman Animations worked with big American outfits Dreamworks and Sony on films like Chicken Run, Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas – but Aardman founders Peter Lord and Dave Sproxton eventually decided that the US studios weren’t comfortable partners.

“If you’re taking that American money, which is where those big budgets are, they’re looking at the American market. We know that our European, British sensibilities won’t play as well or as strongly as as an all-bells-and-whistles American movie, particularly in the Midwest,” Sproxton commented in a 2016 interview.

“That’s the big learning we’ve had over the years –our films are distinctly European.”

Aardman’s most recent feature, Early Man, was made for $50m – that is to say, a quarter of what is spent on the biggest Hollywood animated features.

Smith and Lockhart don’t seem put off at all by the economics. They fervently believe that their films can find a global market and won’t have to settle for their cartoons being treated as quaint, European affairs aimed at “specialist” audiences.

The duo first met at Aardman. “Julie was at Aardman for 20 years. She’s a proper dyed in the wool animation producer ... I went there about five years,” recalls Smith, who was a successful comedy writer and producer, working with Armando Iannucci and the League of Gentlemen in the UK, and Jon Stewart and Michael Moore in the US.

Aardman invited her to be head of development; she was reluctant to take the job but went there for “six months only”. Then she got “completely sucked in”, and ended up directing and co-writing Arthur Christmas.

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Eventually, Smith suggested to Lockhart (whose producing credits included Shaun The Sheep Movie and The Pirates!) that they set up a company together. The idea at first was that that they would develop and create projects, and then sell them on to the studios. They soon decided, though, that if they were going to spend so long nurturing these projects, they would want to make them themselves. The ambition therefore grew.

Early in its existence, Locksmith Animation struck a multi-picture development and distribution deal with Twentieth Century Fox. For the business to work, Smith and Lockhart will need to ensure a continuity of production.

“If you are going to have a development deal with an American studio, what they’re most interested in is regular output because they see it as a spread bet,” Smith explains.

Locksmith will need to put itself in a position where it can deliver a new movie every year to 18 months. That will require a vast workforce. As the bosses acknowledge, it is “a mind-boggling piece of project management. (Locksmith’s “digital pipeline” partners are Double Negative, the British VFX and computer animation company whose credits include Interstellar, Dunkirk and Blade Runner 2049).

But don’t expect Locksmith to turn into a cosy British company, projecting Britain and the British character, like Ealing Studios, or indeed Aardman.

“You have to be realistic and understand what the world’s children want to see. I am ambitious for that. Animated movies are such a gigantic labour of love that you want them to be seen,” Smith states. “I want them to mean something to kids all around the world. That means you can’t be too inward looking and British. You have to look outward.”

The company already has several projects on the boil. Locksmith’s first film will be Ron’s Gone Wrong. This is billed as the story of a “wonderful walking, talking, digitally connected bot that sweeps the world becoming every kid’s new best friend”. When the bot goes wrong, the kid has to work out what friendships and relationship mean in a “world of online and screen time”. The second film will be a “punky, irreverent, kick-ass girl movie set in London”.

No, these won’t be made for $200m budgets – but Smith suggests they will look as if they are. She points out that a “substantial portion” of the huge budgets at Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney are spent on “paying for very big organisations”. These companies have huge overheads costs. Locksmith plans to be far leaner.

Its model will be closer to that of Illumination Entertainment, the guerilla-style, partly Paris-based animation studio behind the Despicable Me films whose staffing costs and budgets are far lower than those of Disney and Pixar – but whose films compete on equal terms with them at the box office.

If the Locksmith movies are successful, not all the profits will flow back to the US. The principals retain 50 per cent of the rights. They are not, they insist, just “producers for hire”.

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Smith and Lockhart have already recruited plenty of top talent. For example, their production designer on Ron’s Gone Wrong is Nathan Crowley (who has worked on Dunkirk, Interstellar and The Dark Knight) and the director is JP Vine, a Pixar-story veteran who had a prominent role in the making of Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur.

There is bound to be turbulence ahead. When (and if) Disney merges with Fox, Locksmith will find themselves in a changing world. Animation films take so long to guide to completion that the film financing landscape can change dramatically between the time a project is greenlit and when it is completed. (Locksmith was actually established in 2014 but held the launch of its new studios only last month).

And if freedom of movement is stymied among young creatives post-Brexit, that may affect the talent pool working on the movies.

Whatever the future challenges, Locksmith is already growing dramatically. November 2020 is earmarked as the release date for Ron’s Gone Wrong.

Smith has a very clear sense of what will constitute success for the company. “Sustainability,” she declares, sounding for a moment as if she is talking about an eco-business or a wind farm.

“Are the movies popular enough that we get to make the next one? That’s really the simple answer to that.”