German VFX Powerhouse RISE Launches Production Facility
After years of working on international blockbusters like the Marvel superhero movies, German visual effects studio RISE has launched its own new production subsidiary, RISE Pictures.
The new operation will allow RISE to supply production services and improve efficiency of its offering to international clients. The move will make RISE unique in the German production landscape by creating a one-stop shop for creating and overseeing producers’ ideas from inception to post-production.
“We still see ourselves as being a partner for the studios and our clients, but are now able to come on board film projects at an earlier stage and in a new dimension in both creative terms and as a producer,” said RISE partner Sven Pannicke of the production company launch. “When [we] started RISE in 2007, we’d never have thought that we would be working so quickly and closely with the major studios and production houses in Germany as well as around the world. We have since become increasingly integrated into the production process of the film projects we are working on, so it was just a logical step for us to also serve as a producer.”
The new company will be managed by Ulrich Schwarz, who joins RISE from Germany’s UFA Cinema, where he most recently worked as creative producer on 2013’s “The Physician.”
RISE Visual Effects Studios, which is headquartered in Berlin, has worked on VFX across numerous major international productions such as the Harry Potter and Marvel Studios superhero (pictured) franchises, including the upcoming “Doctor Strange.” It is currently working on the €40 million ($44.7 million) German crime drama series “Babylon Berlin,” which will be broadcast on Sky Deutschland in 2017.
Initially, RISE Pictures will focus on the co-production of German and international film and television projects with high production budgets and significant requirement of digital effects and computer animation. Additionally, it will work on productions with medium to high budgets developed in-house. These will include both German- and English-language productions.
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