Prime Focus and Dneg announce new VFX facility in Mumbai

Facility to come up at Mumbai's Film City on premises Prime Focus acquired in deal with Anil Ambani's Reliance Media Works in July last year

Prime Focus World (PFW), the creative services division of Prime Focus Limited and Europe based VFX house Double Negative (Dneg), which the former acquired last year, have announced the next phase of the companies’ expansion plans – the building of a brand new VFX facility in Mumbai.

The facility will come up at Mumbai’s Film City, on the premises Prime Focus acquired as part of its deal with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Media Works in July last year.

The new studio will be built mirroring the infrastructure and standards of Dneg’s facilities in London, Vancouver and Singapore. For this, the company will make use of Dneg’s technical infrastructure, tools and pipeline.

This also means that PFW will be expanding its work-force. To this end, the creative services outfit will be conducting recruitment roadshows throughout India and key international locations to attract the very best VFX talent across all levels of experience to work exclusively on Dneg VFX projects.

Movies already slated for work in Mumbai include ‘The Huntsman’ for Universal starring Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt, and ‘Inferno’, Ron Howard’s latest movie based on the Dan Brown novel, with many more projects in the pipeline.

In addition to being a VFX facility, the new studio will also offer rigorous training programmes for staff with the intention of creating Asia’s leading ‘VFX Campus’, complete with specifically-built classrooms and training areas, and offering Dneg’s training programmes.

“Prime Focus is the undisputed industry leader in India and knows the market, the culture and the landscape better than any other company,” said Matt Holben, CEO, Double Negative. “This collaboration plays to the strengths of both companies, the intention being to create a world-class VFX facility that can proudly sit alongside the rest of Dneg’s global network."

“This is another great step forward for Prime Focus World and Double Negative,” said Prime Focus Founder, Executive Chairman and Global CEO Namit Malhotra.

“Prime Focus is committed to supporting Dneg in achieving its vision of becoming a truly global company in the high-end film industry, and this new state-of-the-art facility will help them to remain creative and competitive across all of their locations, and to continue producing award-winning visual effects work that is second-to-none.”

In June 2014, Prime Focus Limited announced the merger of PFW and Dneg. Under the agreement, the newly formed Double Negative entity, which will include the VFX line of business under PFW, will be a 100% subsidiary of PFW.

The goal behind this deal and the ensuing business restructuring was to capitalise on the credibility and brand image of Dneg and create a differentiation between the VFX offerings and 3D conversion and animation services of PFW. The 3D animation services continue to function as a separate unit.

A month later, Prime Focus Limited merged its global film and media services business with RMW’s. As part of the transaction, the India and overseas operations of RMW's film and media services business were to be combined with PFL through a slump sale.

This includes a total of one million square feet of facilities including studio facilities in Film City, Mumbai, 30% stake in renowned Hollywood VFX house, Digital Domain, widely acclaimed for its award winning VFX work on Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button etc. and 100% ownership of Los Angeles-based digital film restoration firm, Lowry Digital, an Oscar winner for Scientific and Technical Achievement in 2012.