Unity to Acquire Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.625 Billion. – The Hollywood Reporter

Publicly-traded tech agency Unity has entered right into a definitive settlement to amass Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.625 billion in a mixture of money and inventory, the businesses mentioned Tuesday.

Weta is the Wellington, N.Z.-based VFX home behind the Oscar-winning results on Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s Avatar. The deal is anticipated to shut earlier than the top of the 12 months.

James Cameron and Jon Landau are presently working with Weta on their Avatar sequels.

Unity is the maker of the Unity real-time sport engine utilizing digital manufacturing for leisure content material. “Weta Digital’s instruments created limitless prospects for us to convey to life the worlds and creatures that initially lived in our imaginations,” mentioned Jackson in a press release.

Jackson added: “Collectively, Unity and Weta Digital can create a pathway for any artist, from any {industry}, to have the ability to leverage these extremely inventive and highly effective instruments. Providing aspiring creatives entry to Weta Digital’s know-how will probably be nothing in need of sport altering and Unity is simply the corporate to convey this imaginative and prescient to life.”

Prem Akkaraju, who joined Weta Digital in early 2020, will stay CEO of WetaFX. As Weta’s CTO Joe Marks joins Unity, he additionally stays in his position.

“We’re thrilled to democratize these industry-leading instruments and produce the genius of Sir Peter Jackson and Weta’s wonderful engineering expertise to life for artists all over the place,” mentioned Unity president and CEO John Riccitiello in a launched assertion.

With this transaction, Unity acquires Weta’s 275 engineers and proprietary know-how together with Weta’s 3D knowledge platform and instruments together with Manuka, Gazebo, Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru.

Extra to return.