Sony Pictures Television
Sony Pictures Television Inc. (or SPT) is an American television production and distribution studio founded in 2002 as the successor to Columbia TriStar Television. Based in Culver City, it is a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment and a unit of the Japanese conglomerate Sony.
Sony Pictures Animation
In 2001, Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks. After failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the CGI sequences created for "Stuart Little 2", and seeing the box office success 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. 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. 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-CG animation.