Emmy and Annie award-winning VFX and animation company Jellyfish Pictures has restructured its leadership team. The new appointments follow Key Capital Partners’ minority investment in Jellyfish Pictures earlier in the year and the ongoing global expansion of the company’s operations powered by its virtual studio infrastructure.
David Patton, former global president of brand experience and advertising at Technicolor Creative Studios (where he led The Mill and MPC Advertising), has joined Jellyfish Pictures as CEO. In this newly created role, Patton will work closely with Jellyfish Pictures’ founder Phil Dobree to spearhead long-term growth across the business. Their focus will be to broaden the studio’s product offering, build out operational efficiencies, expand into new markets and nurture the company’s creative talent.
Also joining Jellyfish Pictures is Mark Warburg as COO. Previously global head of talent at Technicolor Creative Studios, Warburg will be responsible for all aspects of operational and talent excellence ensuring that Jellyfish Pictures continues to deliver cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art production platforms to service the demands of the best film and animation studios from across the globe.
Phil Greenlow, formerly the global managing director for film at MPC, joins Jellyfish Pictures as managing director of VFX across film and episodic content. Greenlow will leverage his 16 years of industry experience to build upon the portfolio of work delivered on a diverse range of content, spanning major feature films to the ever-expanding high-end TV market.
Natalie Llewellyn expands her role as managing director of Jellyfish Pictures’ animation & originals overseeing all the studio’s animation production output and driving business development, client relationships and partner initiatives.
Sharn Gondal, former global head of talent at MPC, has been appointed as Jellyfish Pictures’ head of people, responsible for the development and expansion of Jellyfish Pictures’ globally located talent base.
Existing CFO Michelle David and director VFX and animation Luke Dodd will support the leadership team and work closely with new CEO Patton on delivering the company’s ambitions and managing sustained growth.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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