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'Wallace & Gromit' Producer Aardman Animations Transfers Ownership to Employees
In an era of entertainment industry mergers and acquisitions, the founders of British animation powerhouse Aardman – the much-loved Oscar-winning studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep – have moved to ensure their company’s continued independence by transferring it into employee ownership.
The decision, made by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who first set up Aardman in 1972, will see the majority of company shares transferred into a trust, which will then hold them on behalf of the workforce.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, both Lord and Sproxton explained that the move was about seven years in the making, and while it wasn’t an indicator of their imminent departure, meant that Aardman was in “the best possible shape” for when that moment came and would help secure its creative legacy and culture.
“We’ve spent so much time building this company up and being so profoundly attached to it. It’s not a business to us, it’s everything, it’s our statement to the world,” said Lord. “Having done that for so many years, the last thing we wanted to do was to just flog it off to someone.”
[...] Although Lord and Sproxton insisted they weren’t yet ready to retire – “we’re not quitting!” – Sproxton said he would be looking to hire a new managing director to replace him over the next 12 months, at which point he’d segue into a consultancy role and would also look to get back behind the camera. Lord, however, will remain as creative director, with a focus on Aardman’s film output.
Despite having made the decision to prevent the company from being swallowed up by a big studio, both the Aardman founders admitted that they hadn’t actually had all that many offers over the years.
“It’s quite insulting really!” joked Lord, who revealed that DreamWorks had made the suggestion when they were working together on Chicken Run in 2000. “But we resisted because we’re fiercely independent and still are.”
Added Sproxton: “Katzenberg said, ‘Well why don’t you just sell to us?’ And we thought, ‘Well why would we?’”
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @11:31AM (7 children)
I'd just like to note that nobody seized the means of production.
There was only voluntary interaction here.
Sigh... goes to reset modem...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @03:48PM (6 children)
And sometimes it goes this way, which is what we all hope for. Mondragon is another example.
However, the capitalist powers already do, in fact, use violence against the working class. See the ICE raids in Ohio and Wisconsin. The precedent has been set. The state power of violence will come to be used against the entire working class, unless the Second Amendment people do the needful.... (However, given that we are studying history scientifically, this AC is forced to admit that "Second Amendment people," as a tribal identity, is already too far into fascism and authoritarianism to hope they will do anything other than to lend the force of their guns to the very same bourgeois elites who are the architects of the declining middle class--they find themselves incapable of looking behind the identity politics and other postmodern bullshit, already caught up in their own identity politics and equally [in]valid perhaps premodern bullshit, to see the man behind the curtain--, which is the social force that moved them to seek fascism and authoritarianism in the first place!)
First they came for the immigrants, and I was not an immigrant....
Capitalism as a force of equality is a fraud, and the idea that the capitalist elites are non-violent is a fantasy. (I have not even touched on the war crimes of capitalist imperialism, the worldwide bloodshed in the name of profits for a small group of fantastically wealthy elites.) Capitalism is mathematically bound to devolve into fascism on its deathbed. All because men are not angels....
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:03PM (4 children)
"Bloodshed in the name of profits for a small group" applies to Soviet Russia, too, which was an explicitly anti-Capitalism regime.
So, that can't be an example of Capitalism; you must be using that term incorrectly.
It is precisely because men are not angels that we need capitalism.
The only thing which saves us from Tyranny is competition, and the most humane form of competition is a market of voluntary trade (where "voluntary" means that people act according to agreements, such that the enforcement of said agreements is itself, by definition, voluntary).
What a crappy website.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)
you have your history backwards just like mainstream education and media want. Also you can't see any pattern about it right?
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @09:45PM
That stats are very clear that education (in particular) and the media have been totally captured bye the left—there are proportions of the professoriate in the softer fields who are self-described Marxists.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday November 12 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
Hello, voluntary contracts AC. Can't say I've missed you.
Turtles all the way down, and no one ever breaks a contract.
Alas, men are not angels.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @06:56PM
If men are not angels, that's all the more reason not to build society around a monopoly on violent imposition.
Bastiat ripped you a new one in 1850 [bastiat.org]:
Damn. What a savage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @01:06AM
Capitalism is distributed communism. Government is something entirely different, but easily influenced by economy.