Acquisition to put award-winning VFX tools and
technology into the hands of millions of creators and artists
Unity (NYSE: U), the world’s leading platform for creating and
operating interactive, real-time 3D (RT3D) content, announced today
it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weta
Digital’s tools, pipeline, technology, and engineering talent.
Ultimately, this acquisition is designed to put Weta’s incredibly
exclusive and sophisticated visual effects (VFX) tools into the
hands of millions of creators and artists around the world, and
once integrated onto the Unity platform, enable the next generation
of RT3D creativity and shape the future of the metaverse.
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the full release here:
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Weta Digital will join Unity’s Create Solutions focused on the
continual evolution of Weta Digital’s dozens of proprietary
graphics and VFX tools, such as Manuka, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid,
Barbershop, HighDef, CityBuilder, and many more. In the future,
with Unity’s deep expertise in real-time, these world-class artist
tools will be available to creators through an accessible
cloud-based workflow.
Weta Digital’s Academy Award-Winning VFX teams will continue to
exist as a standalone entity known as WetaFX and is expected to
become Unity’s largest customer in the Media and Entertainment
space. WetaFX will still be under majority ownership by Sir Peter
Jackson and helmed by CEO Prem Akkaraju.
“Weta Digital’s tools created unlimited possibilities for us to
bring to life the worlds and creatures that originally lived in our
imaginations,” said Sir Peter Jackson, Chairman & Co-Founder,
Weta Digital. “Together, Unity and Weta Digital can create a
pathway for any artist, from any industry, to be able to leverage
these incredibly creative and powerful tools. Offering aspiring
creatives access to Weta Digital’s technology will be nothing short
of game changing and Unity is just the company to bring this vision
to life.”
“We are thrilled to democratize these industry-leading tools and
bring the genius of Sir Peter Jackson and Weta’s amazing
engineering talent to life for artists everywhere,” said John
Riccitiello, President and Chief Executive Officer, Unity. “By
combining the power of Unity and Weta Digital, the tools and
technology that built characters and scenes from the world’s most
iconic films such as Avatar, Lord of the Rings, and Wonder Woman,
will enable an entirely new generation of creators to build,
transform, and distribute stunning RT3D content.”
Weta Digital is the premier creator and innovator of visual
effects and animation, pushing what is possible in pursuit of
artistic vision and delivering high-quality, ultra-realistic
characters, objects, and worlds for a wide variety of award-winning
movies and television shows, such as Avatar, Black Widow, Game of
Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, The Suicide Squad,
and more. Weta Digital achieves this superior level of performance
with a world-class creative team of VFX artists and engineers, who
helped build an extremely sophisticated artist pipeline and set of
tools to conduct advanced facial capture and manipulation,
anatomical modeling, advanced simulation and deformation of objects
in movement, procedural hair and fur modeling, and many more
techniques that have been galvanized, developed, and perfected
through hundreds of properties across thousands of shots for more
than 20 years.
“Unity is the best at delivering world-class tools and
technology to creators. Together we have the opportunity to make
Weta Digital’s award-winning, high-end artist pipeline and tools,
which are in a class by themselves, accessible to a much broader
audience of artists than what has been historically possible,” said
Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Weta Digital. “Weta’s goal has always been to
inspire and motivate a whole new generation of creators and it’s
exciting to pass the mantle over to Unity. I see a future where
more and more content shares the same level of visual fidelity as
Avatar and Game of Thrones and Unity is the ideal company to lead
us into this future.”
With this transaction, Unity will acquire:
- Weta’s world-class engineering talent of 275 engineers that are
known for architecting, building, and maintaining Weta Digital
tools and core pipeline;
- Dozens of industry-leading tools such as Manuka, Gazebo,
Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru, and more, all integrated
seamlessly into Weta’s industrial strength production
pipeline;
- A foundational data platform for interoperable 3D art creation,
making it easy for hundreds of artists to work seamlessly together;
and
- A library of thousands of incredible assets that the WetaFX
team will continue to accumulate as they create world class VFX in
the years to come.
“Weta Digital’s sophistication is represented by dozens of tools
that all build on the same, unified pipeline. Alone, each tool is
uniquely powerful, but as a complete platform, they represent a
quantum shift in our ability to make it easy for artists to bring
their imagination to life and work together like never before,”
said Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager of
Unity Create. “We are excited to work closely with WetaFX to
continue to push the edge of the art of possible with these tools
and to bring them to VFX, entertainment, and eventually gaming and
other artists as we evolve our pipeline for content creators.”
Unity and Weta Digital are empowering the growing number of game
developers, artists, and potentially millions of consumer creators
with highly sophisticated content creation tools and a cloud-based
Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model. By moving these
high-fidelity tools and assets to the cloud, Unity and Weta Digital
will open new possibilities for creators to use the canvas they
already know and love, while getting access to incredibly powerful
artist tools, procedural building blocks, and scalable content.
Creators will have the power to improve processes and simplify
production, with stable, predictable results that approach
perfection, while ultimately building their own part of the
metaverse.
Under the terms of the agreement, Unity will acquire Weta
Digital for US$1.625B in a combination of cash and stock. Prem
Akkaraju, who joined Weta Digital as CEO in early 2020 and is the
creator of Weta’s cloud commercial service, will remain Chief
Executive Officer of WetaFX. Joe Marks, Weta Chief Technology
Officer, will join Unity as Chief Technology Officer of Weta
Digital. The proposed acquisition is expected to close during
Unity’s fourth quarter 2021 and is subject to customary closing
conditions.
The Raine Group served as exclusive financial advisor to Weta
Digital.
About Unity
Unity (NYSE: U) is the world’s leading platform for creating and
operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content. Creators, ranging from game
developers to artists, architects, automotive designers,
filmmakers, and others, use Unity to make their imaginations come
to life. Unity’s platform provides a comprehensive set of software
solutions to create, run and monetize interactive, real-time 2D and
3D content for mobile phones, tablets, PCs, consoles, and augmented
and virtual reality devices. The company’s 1,800+ person research
and development team keeps Unity at the forefront of development by
working alongside partners to ensure optimized support for the
latest releases and platforms. Apps developed by Unity creators
have been downloaded more than five billion times per month in
2020. For more information, please visit www.unity.com.
About Weta Digital
Weta Digital is the standard-bearer for creativity and
innovation in visual effects and animation, attracting talent,
partners, and clients that seek to push what is possible in pursuit
of their artistic vision. Weta’s proprietary pipeline continues to
evolve and provide artists with the tools they need to create their
best work. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Weta Digital is the
largest single-site VFX studio in the world drawing artists from
over 40 countries. They are some of the most creative and ambitious
artists, engineers, and executives in entertainment and their work
has earned six visual effects Academy Awards, 13 Academy Sci-Tech
Awards and six visual effects BAFTA Awards in addition to the 34
Visual Effects Society Awards awarded to them by their peers.
Ground-breaking, performance-driven animated characters from Gollum
to Caesar, and worlds from Middle-earth to Pandora, are regarded as
some of the best visual effects ever to appear on screen.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that
involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding
enabling millions of creators and artists around the world; the
ability of Unity and Weta Digital to enable the next generation of
RT3D creativity and shape the future of the metaverse; Unity’s
ability to democratize industry-leading tools and bring Weta
Digital’s engineering talent to life for artists everywhere; the
ability of Unity to enable an entirely new generation of creators
to build, transform and distribute stunning 3D content; Unity and
Weta Digital’s ability to create a pathway for any artists, from
any industry to leverage incredibly creative and powerful tools;
Unity’s ability to bring Weta Digital to a much broader audience;
Unity’s ability to evolve its pipeline for content creators; Unity
and Weta Digital's ability to open new possibilities for creators;
and Unity and Weta Digital’s ability to enable creators to improve
processes and simplify production, with stable, predictable results
that approach perfection while ultimately building their own part
of the metaverse. The words “will,” “allows,” “can,” “enable,”
“objective” and similar expressions are intended to identify
forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are
subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, such as Unity’s
ability to successfully integrate Weta Digital's technology and
business; costs related to the acquisition; whether potential
benefits of the transaction extend to Unity and Weta Digital's
customers and other potential creators; Unity’s and Weta Digital’s
success developing new products or modifying existing products and
the degree to which these gain market acceptance; any unanticipated
impact of accounting for the acquisition; and the conditional
closing of the transaction. If the risks materialize or assumptions
prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the
results implied by these forward-looking statements. Further
information on these and additional risks that could affect Unity’s
results is included in our filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (“SEC”), including our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on
August 11, 2021, and our future reports that we may file with the
SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary
from expectations. Unity assumes no obligation to, and does not
currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements
after the date of this release.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006514/en/
Paige Young Unity Communications paige.young@unity3d.com
Mara Buxbaum ID (Weta Digital) teamwetadigital@id-pr.com
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