25-02-2025
Mediawan's Montreal ‘Miraculous' & ‘The Little Prince' Production Studio ON Animation Closes As Tax Credit Squeeze Bites
ON Animation Studios, the Mediawan-owned, Montreal-based facility which worked on hits such as Mune: Guardian of the Moon, The Little Prince, Playmobil: The Movie, and Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, is shutting down.
The company announced the news on its LinkedIn page on Monday, saying the closure was due to changes across the animation industry.
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'It is sad to say goodbye to a team as incredible, talented, and skilled as ours. We will deeply miss the joy and excitement of creating outstanding films alongside such remarkable people and partners,' read the ON Animation statement.
The closure has been greeted with dismay by the Quebec animation scene and past collaborators, but is not wholly unexpected.
Both the animation and VFX sectors in Canada's province of Quebec have gone from boom to bust in recent months following the provincial government's decision to set a 65% cap on tax credits for international film studios when they employ companies operating in the mainly French-speaking region.
The local administration says the tax credit, which was introduced in 1998, has become too expensive to bankroll. Quebec animation and VFX professionals lobbied for the tax credits to remain in place, warning their reduction would decimate local businesses, but their calls went unheeded.
In the backdrop, tighter Canadian restrictions around employing Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) have also hit both sectors.
ON Animation Studios was originally created by Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam under their ON Entertainment banner to execute the animation on features The Little Prince and Playmobil: The Movie.
ON Entertainment was acquired by Mediawan in 2017, while the former producing partners have since gone their separate ways.
Soumache is now honorary chairman of Mediawan Kids & Family as well as co-head with Joann Sfar of Mediawan-owned Magical Society. Rassam produces under the banner of Chapter 2 which is also in the Mediawan fold.
Contacted by Deadline, Mediawan confirmed the closure and laid-out its animation production strategy going forward.'Mediawan Kids & Family Cinéma (formerly Onyx Films) and Miraculous Corp continue to develop their animated film production line-ups in their France-based studios, and will now collaborate with partner studios around the world for their animated films, selecting them on a project-by-project basis based on funding and the location of the talent attached to each production,' it said in a statement.
Miraculous Corp is a joint venture between producer and composer Jérémy Zag, the driving force behind the Ladybug & Cat Noir franchise, and Mediawan co-founder Pierre-Antoine Capton.
News of ON Animation's closure comes days after historic visual effects company Technicolor announced it was on the cusp of foreclosure due to long-running financial challenges, and that it was closing The Mill, MPC Advertising and Mikros Animation subsidiaries in the U.S. with immediate effect.
Its UK pole, Technicolor Creative Studios UK Limited, is also due to file administration while its French outpost has been placed in receivership.
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