Fox Animation Restructures, Lays Off 100

Fox Animation Studios is laying off nearly 100 of its 320 workers in Phoenix and will contract out much of its production work in the future to studios throughout the world.

Florence Grace, a spokeswoman for Fox Animation parent 20th Century Fox, said the studio is the only traditional animation studio the company owns.

“We’ve kept the core creative team and we plan to continue to produce animated films,” she said. “We are not closing the studio. We are restructuring our Phoenix production unit to be more streamlined, flexible and efficient.”

Grace said there was no problem with the company’s major project in progress, “Titan A.E.,” expected to be released this summer.

The cutbacks are a result of competitive pressures, she said. The Fox staff will continue to design and storyboard ideas for films from Phoenix, thus keeping creative control but enabling the operation to work on more films at one time.

John McKenna, Phoenix general manager, said Fox is trying to find displaced workers jobs in other company operations or other animation studios.

“Anastasia,” released about two years ago, has been the operation’s major production. Animation studio heads Don Bluth and Gary Goldman brought 40 animators from the studio they founded in Ireland to form the core staff in 1994.