What is Sony Pictures Animation?
{{unreferenced|date=February 2012}} {{Infobox company}} '''Sony Pictures Animation''' '''Inc.''' is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio's films are distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing under their Columbia Pictures label, while all direct-to-video releases are released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Their first movie ''[[Open Season (movie)|Open Season]]'' was released on September 29, 2006, it's latest release was [[Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse]] on June 2, 2023 and upcoming film Untitled Christmas Snow film December 25, 2025, ''Fixed'' and ''Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse'' TBA. The studio's most successful movie to date is ''[[The Smurfs (movie)|The Smurfs]]''. However, its most critically acclaimed movie is ''[[Arthur Christmas]]'', which was co-produced with [[Aardman Animations]]. == History == === Sony Pictures deal (2001–03) === In 2001, Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks but after failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the CGI sequences of Stuart Little 2 and seeing the box office successes of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek and Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc., SPI was reconfigured to become an animation studio. Astro Boy, which had been in development at Sony since 1997 as a live-action film, was set to be SPI's first all-CGI film, but never made it to fruition.[3] On May 9, 2002, Sony Pictures Animation was established to develop characters, stories and movies with SPI taking over the digital production while maintaining its visual effects production.[4] Meanwhile, SPI produced two short films, the Academy Award-winning The ChubbChubbs! and Early Bloomer, as a result of testing its strengths and weaknesses in producing all-CGI animation.[5] === Sony Pictures Animation (2003–2011) === On its first anniversary on May 9, 2003, Sony Pictures Animation announced a full sl