 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(February 2020) |
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| Formerly | Orange Eyes Limited (2008–2019) [1] |
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| Company type |
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| Founded | 2003 |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | London |
| Website | magiclightpictures |
Magic Light Pictures Limited (founded in 2003 by producers Martin Pope and Michael Rose) is an English London-based independent production company, which produces film and television.
Since 2009, Magic Light Pictures have produced eleven half-hour animated specials based on the best-selling children's story books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler: The Gruffalo (2009), The Gruffalo's Child (2011), Room on the Broom (2012), Stick Man (2015), The Highway Rat (2017), Zog (2018), The Snail and the Whale (2019), Zog and the Flying Doctors (2020), Superworm (2021), The Smeds and The Smoos (2022), and Tabby McTat (2023). Their productions have won over forty awards between them, including two Children's BAFTAs [2] and the Prix Jeunesse, [3] [4] and have twice been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Animation. [5] [6] Their most recent production, Tabby McTat, premiered on BBC One on Christmas Day 2023 at 2:35pm.
Their other productions include: the Oscar-nominated [7] Revolting Rhymes (2016), a two-part animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name; and feature films including the Oscar-nominated [8] Chico & Rita (2010), a Spanish language animated feature; Wild Target (2010), a comedy thriller starring Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt; The English version of Terkel in Trouble , a Danish language animated feature and Sparkle (2007), a romantic comedy feature starring Shaun Evans and Stockard Channing.
| Title | Year | Co-produced with | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terkel in Trouble (English UK dub) | 2006 | Animated Feature | |
| Sparkle | 2007 | Romantic Comedy | |
| Glorious 39 | 2009 | Thriller | |
| The Gruffalo | Studio SOI | Animated Short | |
| Wild Target | 2010 | Black Comedy | |
| Chico and Rita | Animated Feature | ||
| The Gruffalo's Child | 2011 | Studio SOI | Animated Short |
| One Life | Documentary | ||
| Room on the Broom | 2012 | Studio SOI | Animated Short |
| Stick Man | 2015 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| Revolting Rhymes | 2016 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| The Highway Rat | 2017 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| Zog | 2018 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| The Snail and the Whale | 2019 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| Zog and the Flying Doctors | 2020 | Triggerfish Animation Studios | |
| Superworm | 2021 | Blue Zoo Animation Studio | |
| Pip and Posy | Blue Zoo Animation Studio | Animated TV Series | |
| The Smeds and The Smoos | 2022 | Blue Zoo Animation Studio | Animated Short |
| The Velveteen Rabbit | 2023 | Red Knuckles Studio | Animation |
| Tabby McTat | Red Star Animation Studio | Animated Short |
| Production | Ceremony | Category | Recipient | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Highway Rat | 46th Annie Awards [9] | Best Animated Special Production | Magic Light Pictures | Nominated |
| Rose d'Or [10] | Children and Youth | Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| Revolting Rhymes | 90th Academy Awards [11] | Best Animated Short Film | Jakob Schuh Jan Lachauer | Nominated |
| British Academy Children's Awards 2017 [12] | Best Animation | Jakob Schuh Jan Lachauer Martin Pope Michael Rose | Won | |
| 6th International Emmy Kids Awards [13] | Kids: Animation | Michael Rose Martin Pope Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| Stick Man | British Academy Children's Awards 2016 [14] | Best Animation | Production Team | Nominated |
| British Animation Awards [15] | Best Use of Sound | Adrian Rhodes Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| Best Voice Performance | Martin Freeman Magic Light Pictures | Won | ||
| Best Long Form | Jeroen Jaspaert Daniel Snaddon Magic Light Pictures | Nominated | ||
| Room on the Broom | 86th Academy Awards [16] | Best Animated Short Film | Max Lang Jan Lachauer | Nominated |
| British Academy Children's Awards | Best Animation | Max Lang Jan Lachauer Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| International Emmy Kids Awards | Kids: Animation | Max Lang Jan Lachauer Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| The Gruffalo's Child | British Animation Awards [17] | Best Long Form | Johannes Weiland Uwe Heidschötter | Won |
| British Academy Children's Awards | Best Animation | Johannes Weiland Uwe Heidschötter Magic Light Pictures | Nominated | |
| Chico and Rita | 84th Academy Awards [18] | Best Animated Feature Film of the Year | Fernando Trueba Javier Mariscal | Nominated |
| The Gruffalo | 83rd Academy Awards [19] | Best Animated Short Film | Jakob Schuh Max Lang | Nominated |
| 62nd British Academy Film Awards [20] | Best Short Animation | Michael Rose Martin Pope Jakob Schuh Max Lang | Nominated | |
| Prix Jeunesse International [21] | Prix Jeunesse 7-11 Fiction | Magic Light Pictures | Won | |
| Prize of the Children's Jury 7-11 Fiction | Magic Light Pictures | Won | ||
| The Snail and the Whale | BAFTA Children & Young People Awards [22] | Best Director | Magic Light Pictures | Won |
| BAFTA Children & Young People Awards [23] | Best animation | Magic Light Pictures | Won |
Magic Light Pictures runs a licensing programme and carries ranges in Sainsbury's, Debenhams, John Lewis, Waterstones, and M&S, among others. [24] Launched in 2009, the programme has markets in Germany, Australia, Scandinavia, New Zealand and the USA. Products available in The Gruffalo brand include plush, stationery, homewares, games, toys and apparel. [25]
Magic Light has won five Licensing Awards [26] [27] [28] for their branded apparel, furniture and Forestry Commission trails.
Magic Light Pictures has several award-winning brand partnerships with organisations including Chessington World of Adventures Resort, [29] Forestry Commission England [30] and Arla milk. [31]
The Chessington World of Adventures Resort currently hosts the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, themed hotel rooms, an arena dedicated to the films and characters, and a food outlet. In March 2019 Chessington launched a Room on the Broom attraction with specifically themed hotel rooms. [32]
Since the year 2014, The Forestry Commission has worked with Magic Light on providing free, self-lead trails based on the Gruffalo brand family on over 20 sites around the UK, as well as offering Gruffalo orienteering, Gruffalo sculptures in several forests, and an augmented reality app, The Gruffalo Spotter. [33]
2019 marked the 20th anniversary of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's Gruffalo book and 10 years since the premiere of the animated special on BBC One. As part of the celebration, Magic Light partnered with the Royal Mint to release a set of commemorative silver and gold fifty pence collectors' coins, and with the Royal Mail to release a set of bespoke Gruffalo stamps. [34]
Since 2013, Magic Light Pictures has developed a range of mini-game and augmented reality apps based around the Gruffalo brand family. [35] Room on the Broom: Games and Gruffalo: Games were both nominated for a Children's BAFTA in the Interactive Adapted category in 2014 and 2015 respectively. [36] [37]
The Gruffalo Spotter app, launched in early 2017, is an augmented reality app that works alongside the Forestry Commission trails, where users can follow a set of clues and signs to locate animated characters from the book and take photos with them. The app was nominated at the 2017 BAFTA awards in the Interactive category. [38]
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931–32, to the present.
Chessington World of Adventures Resort is a 128 acres theme park, zoo and hotel complex in Chessington, Greater London, England, around 12 miles (19 km) southwest of Central London. The complex originally opened as Chessington Zoo in 1931; the theme park aspect was developed by The Tussauds Group, debuting on 7 July 1987 as one of the first combined animal-amusement parks in the UK. The theme park, which features over 40 rides, is now owned by Merlin Entertainments, following its merger with The Tussauds Group in 2007. Under Merlin, Chessington has been increasingly developed into a resort and tourist destination, including two on-site hotels, swimming pools, a campground, spa and fitness facilities.
The Gruffalo is a British children's picture book by author Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It tells the story of a mouse taking a walk in the woods and deceiving different predators, including the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo was first published in 1999 in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Children's Books. It is about 700 words long and is written in rhyming couplets featuring repetitive verse. It is an example of a trickster story and was inspired by a Chinese folk tale called "The Fox that Borrows the Terror of a Tiger". The Gruffalo has sold over 13.5 million copies and has won several prizes for children's literature including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. Although the book did not receive a theatrical publish date in the United States, it is about 700 words long.
The Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film is a Golden Globe Award that was awarded for the first time at the 64th Golden Globe Awards in 2007. It was the first time that the Golden Globe Awards had created a separate category for animated films since its establishment. The nominations are announced in January and an awards ceremony is held later in the month. Initially, only three films were nominated for best animated film, in contrast to five nominations for the majority of other awards. The Pixar film Cars was the first recipient of the award.
Vanitha Rangaraju-Ramanan is an Indian animator who works for DreamWorks Animation. Rangaraju was part of the team for movie Shrek that won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 74th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, United States and BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 55th British Academy Film Awards in London, United Kingdom, for which she was credited as Lighting Technical Director.
The Gruffalo is a 2009 short computer-animated television film based on the 1999 picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.
Bubbleworks was a dark water ride opened in 1990 at Chessington World of Adventures Resort in Greater London, England. It took riders through animated scenes of a comical factory producing fizzy pop. The original ride closed, to be redesigned in 2006 with a sponsorship by Imperial Leather toiletries, with the majority of the animations removed. The new Bubbleworks then closed in September 2016 to be replaced by The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure.
Michael Please is an English animator, illustrator, director, and writer.
The Gruffalo's Child is a 2011 short computer animated television film based on the 2004 picture book of the same name written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. A sequel to The Gruffalo, the film was shown on Christmas Day 2011 in the United Kingdom, exactly two years after the debut of the first film.
Triggerfish is a computer animation film studio based in Cape Town, South Africa and Galway, Ireland. The studio is best known for its animated feature films Adventures in Zambezia (2012), Khumba (2013), and Seal Team (2021), as well as the work they have done on television specials created for UK producers Magic Light Pictures. In 2016, Stick Man was awarded the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Festival. In 2017, Revolting Rhymes again won the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy Festival, and was nominated for the Best Short Film (Animated) Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards. In 2019, Netflix announced that Triggerfish would produce its first African animated TV series. In 2020, Zog won the International Emmy for Best Kids Animation. In 2021, The Snail and The Whale won Best Special Production at The Annie Awards, while Triggerfish received the Mifa Animation Industry Award at Annecy for "the pioneering role that the company has played in animation in South Africa, and Africa most widely.” In 2022, their third film, Seal Team, made the Netflix Top 10 Films global list for its launch week.
Room on the Broom is a 2012 short stop motion computer animated television film based on the picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. The film was nominated for the Best Animated Short Film at the 2014 Academy Awards. It also won the British Academy Children's Award for Animation in 2013.
Rob Coleman is a Canadian animation director; he is currently the creative director at Industrial Light & Magic's Sydney branch. Previously, he was the Head of Animation at the award-winning Australian visual effects and animation studio, Animal Logic from 2012-2021.
The Bigger Picture is a 2014 British animated short film directed by Daisy Jacobs. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 87th Academy Awards. It won the BAFTA Award for Best Short Animation at the 68th British Academy Film Awards.
Stick Man, written by former Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, is a children's story about an anthropomorphic wooden stick who becomes separated from his family home and his Odyssey-like adventure to return there. He is eventually reunited with his family in the "family tree" as a result of his interaction with Father Christmas. It takes place in England.
The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure is a dark water ride that opened in March 2017 at Chessington World of Adventures Resort in Greater London, England, developed by Merlin Entertainments. It takes riders through scenes based on The Gruffalo franchise. The scenes consist largely of digital projection and include clips from the 2009 animated film The Gruffalo.
Zog is a 2010 children's picture book by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, about a young accident-prone dragon, named Zog, who wants to be the best student in dragon school.
Robin Robin is a 2021 stop-motion animated musical short film produced by Aardman Animations, created and directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, and written by Ojari, Please, and Sam Morrison.
Michael Peter Rose OBE is a British film producer and co-founder of Magic Light Pictures, a London-based independent film production company. In 2023 Rose was awarded the OBE for services to animation.
Martin Pope is a British film producer and co-founder of Magic Light Pictures, a London-based independent film production company.
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