In Brief:
- Unity to purchase Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.62 billion.
- It aims to unlock full potential of the Metaverse.
- Weta Digital will continue as a standalone entity known as WetaFX and will become Unity’s largest customer in the Media & Entertainment space.
Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s visual effects studio, will be acquired by Unity for about $1.62 billion in cash and stock. Unity’s 3D content development toolkit and skills will be enhanced as it joins the metaverse bandwagon.
Weta is a New Zealand-based visual effects company that earned Oscars for its work on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s Avatar. The transaction is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
Peter Jackson’s Weta visual effects company will be recognized as WetaFX. He will continue to hold a majority stake in it. Weta Digital will continue as a standalone entity known as WetaFX and will become Unity’s largest customer in the Media & Entertainment space.
VFX on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Godzilla vs. Kong are among Weta’s most recent projects. Weta is currently working on the Avatar sequels alongside Cameron and Jon Landau.
Unity is the developer of the Unity real-time gaming engine, which is widely utilised in the rapidly expanding field of virtual creation for entertainment material. Jackson said in a statement that with Weta Digital’s skills, they were able to bring to life the worlds and creatures that had previously only existed in people’s minds.
He also mentioned that together, Unity and Weta Digital can pave the road for every artist, from any industry, to take advantage of these immensely creative and powerful tools. It is providing ambitious creatives with access to Weta Digital’s technology will be game-changing, and Unity is the perfect company to realise this goal.
WetaFX will continue to be led by Prem Akkaraju, who joined Weta Digital in early 2020. Joe Marks, Weta’s CTO, has joined Unity and will be in charge of Weta Digital.
Unity acquired Weta’s 275 engineers and proprietary technologies, including Weta’s cloud service and tools, such as the Manuka and Gazebo renderers, Barbershop hair and fur system, Loki physics-based simulation tool for water, and smoke, and facial capture technology.
In a statement, Unity president and CEO John Riccitiello stated, “we are thrilled to democratize these industry-leading tools and bring the genius of Sir Peter Jackson and Weta’s amazing engineering talent to life for artists everywhere.”
In similar circumstances, social media platform Facebook has changed its brand name to “Meta” as part of its Metaverse Push.
