Wētā FX
Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Use New Zealand English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox company Wētā FX, formerly known as Weta Digital, is a New Zealand digital visual effects and computer animation company based in Miramar, Wellington. It was founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk in 1993 to produce the digital visual effects for Heavenly Creatures.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company went on to produce some of the highest-grossing films ever made, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Avatar series. Considered one of the most influential film companies of the 21st century, Wētā FX has won several Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company is named after the New Zealand wētā, one of the world's largest insects, which was historically featured in the company logo.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
History
The company was founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk in 1993 to produce the digital visual effects for the film Heavenly Creatures.<ref name="Gray">Template:Cite web</ref>
As of 2025, Wētā FX has won seven Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), King Kong (2005), Avatar (2009), The Jungle Book (2016), and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2000s
The studio has developed several proprietary software packages to achieve groundbreaking visual effects. The scale of the battles required for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy led to the creation of MASSIVE, a program which can animate huge numbers of agents: independent characters acting according to pre-set rules.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
To recreate 1933 New York for King Kong, the company created CityBot, an application which could "build" the city on a shot by shot basis.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Kong's fur also required the development of new simulation and modeling software.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A set of tools that combined procedural and interactive techniques added wind to the five million individual strands of fur and modeled interaction with other surfaces. New shaders were written that accounted for the scattering of light from within each hair that added to the volumetric quality of the fur. Large chunks of fur were ripped out and filled in with scars, blood, and the mud of Skull Island. Each frame of fur took two gigabytes of data.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
For James Cameron's Avatar, Weta Digital modified MASSIVE to give life to the flora and fauna on Pandora, for which the company did most of the visual effects with Joe Letteri,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> under a team led by executive and producer Eileen Moran.<ref name=thr>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The film is regarded as a landmark for visual effects.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> By 2017, Weta Digital had started visual effects development for the sequels.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2010s
In 2010, a texture painting application developed by the studio for Avatar called Mari has been bought by The Foundry Visionmongers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> For The Adventures of Tintin and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the studio developed a new grooming system called Barbershop where users can interactively manipulate digital hair. This tool received a Sci-tech award in 2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Adventures of Tintin was Weta Digital's first fully animated feature film.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
For Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, the company was able to develop their motion capture technique to be able to leave the studio for shooting on location.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The motion capture technology would be improved in the 2014 sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.<ref name=planet_apes>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This was further refined in War for the Planet of the Apes in 2017.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2020s
On June 19, 2020, Weta Digital announced that it would be producing original animation content under the name Weta Animated.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company also announced a new chief executive Prem Akkaraju, who comes from Los Angeles.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In September 2020, Weta was able to secure a multi-year deal with Amazon Web Services to use the Amazon cloud to forward its VFX and computer animation production.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In December 2020, Weta Digital CEO Prem Akkaraju announced additional board members including Tom Staggs, Jeff Huber and Ken Kamins. They join current board members Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Sean Parker and Joe Letteri.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
On June 17, 2021, Weta Digital announced they have partnered with Autodesk to productize Weta's proprietary tools based in Autodesk Maya for a cloud service called WetaM.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It will first be released in Q4 as a private beta.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On August 23, 2021, Weta Digital announced a collaboration with SideFX for a cloud service combining the studio's proprietary tools within SideFX's Houdini called WetaH.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On November 9, 2021, Jackson sold the company's VFX tools development division to video games software company Unity Technologies for US$1.625 billion.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Unity's acquired tech assets of Weta will be called Weta Digital, while the visual effects company remained separate and renamed as Wētā FX.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The acquisition was completed in December 2021.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In April 2022, Wētā FX opened a new studio in Vancouver, Canada. It is the company's first dedicated VFX and animation studio outside New Zealand.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In July 2022, Wētā FX opened a second studio outside New Zealand, temporary facility in Melbourne, Australia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
For Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022, Wētā worked on 3,240 visual effects shots, 2,225 of which involved water.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The studio developed new motion capture technology for the film's underwater sequences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The digital water in the film was created by artists using Wētā's latest Loki simulation software.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Wētā also refined their Facial Action Coding System (FACS) from Alita: Battle Angel for its use in Avatar: The Way of Water.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company eventually ended up rendering close to 3.3 billion thread hours.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Letteri won his fifth Academy Award for his work on the film.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The studio also won their seventh Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On November 25, 2023, Unity and Wētā FX mutually agreed to terminate Unity’s service agreement with Wētā FX effective December 10, 2023; this comes after Unity laying off the entire Wētā Digital staff in a "company reset".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="fxg">Template:Cite web</ref> Unity will continue to own the software from the Wētā Digital acquisition (with Wētā FX being able to continue using them), but the Wētā Digital name and related intellectual property will be transferred back to Wētā FX with no current plans to use the old Wētā Digital name. Wētā FX will be extending offers to as many of the Digital team as possible "as it looks to expand its research, development and support functions".<ref name="fxg" />
In April 2025, Wētā FX expanded its presence in Melbourne. After originally operating from a temporary facility during the production of Better Man, the company established a permanent Australian headquarters.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In early August 2025, Wētā proposed laying off 100 jobs in its support departments based in Wellington.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Workplace culture
An investigation into Wētā's workplace culture by Kiwi public TV broadcaster 1News, begun in June 2020 following a social media post by former Wētā Workshop employee Layna Lazar, resulted in more than 40 current and former Weta Digital employees anonymously sharing accounts of "sexism, bullying and harassment" in September 2020.<ref name="1News investigative">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In their testimonies, workers identified the existence of a male-only pornographic mailing list called "Caveman", which originated in 2002 following a company-wide tradition known as Porn Friday, and continued to circulate until 2015.<ref name="1News investigative"/> Several reports also alleged that the company's IT systems required upgrades in order to accommodate the volume of pornographic content hosted on the company intranet, in addition to numerous allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, intimidation, misogyny and homophobia.<ref name="1News investigative"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In response to these allegations, Wētā owners, including Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and chief executive officer Prem Akkaraju, commissioned an independent review from barrister Miriam Dean, who stated in her report that she received 80 complaints of bullying behavior, 120 complaints of inappropriate conduct and 19 complaints of sexual harassment from amongst the company's 1,500 employees.<ref name="Miriam Dean PR">Template:Cite report</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Dean put forward 17 recommendations for internal reform, including the establishment of a code of conduct, restricting the executive team, expanding the diversity and inclusion program, and reviewing the company's pay structure.<ref name="Miriam Dean PR"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her review also stated that the existing management systems were not sufficient to protect workers "from bullying, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and other inappropriate conduct".<ref name="Miriam Dean PR"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Films
1990s
| Year | Films | Studio(s) and Distributor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Heavenly Creatures<ref>"The Birth of Weta", 1994, "The Edge" TV series, S2E7</ref> | Miramax Films |
| 1995 | Forgotten Silver | TBC |
| 1996 | The Frighteners | Universal Pictures |
| 1997 | Contact | Warner Bros. |
2000s
| Year | Films | Studio(s) and Distributor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | New Line Cinema |
| 2002 | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | |
| 2003 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | |
| 2004 | Van Helsing | Universal Studios |
| I, Robot | 20th Century Fox | |
| 2005 | King Kong | Universal Studios |
| 2006 | X-Men: The Last Stand | 20th Century Fox |
| Eragon | ||
| 2007 | Bridge to Terabithia | Walt Disney Pictures |
| Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer | 20th Century Fox | |
| Enchanted | Walt Disney Pictures | |
| The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep | Columbia Pictures | |
| 30 Days of Night | ||
| 2008 | Jumper | 20th Century Fox |
| The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | Walt Disney Studios | |
| The Day the Earth Stood Still | 20th Century Fox | |
| 2009 | District 9 | TriStar Pictures |
| The Lovely Bones | Paramount Pictures DreamWorks Pictures | |
| Avatar | 20th Century Fox |
2010s
2020s
Upcoming
| Year | Films | Studio(s) and Distributor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Avatar: Fire and Ash | 20th Century Studios |
| 2026 | Moana | Walt Disney Studios |
| TBA | In the Blink of an Eye | Searchlight Pictures |
Animation
| Year | Films | Studio(s) and Distributor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Meerkat<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | Epic Games |
| 2022 | Overwatch 2: The Wastelander<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | Blizzard Entertainment |
| 2023 | War Is Over! | ElectroLeague |
| 2024 | The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Television
1990s
| Year | Series | Network |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Tales from the Crypt (Season 6) Episode: "You, Murderer" |
HBO |
2010s
| Year | Series | Network |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Game of Thrones (Season 7)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | HBO |
| 2019 | Game of Thrones (Season 8)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | |
| The Umbrella Academy (Season 1)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | Netflix |
2020s
Television films & specials
| Year | Films | Network |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special<ref>Template:Citation</ref> | Disney+ |
See also
- Wētā Workshop
- WingNut Films
- Industrial Light & Magic
- Moving Picture Company (MPC)
- Blur Studio
- Animal Logic
- Blue Sky Studios
- Pacific Data Images
- Framestore
- Digital Domain
- DNEG
- Sony Pictures Imageworks
- Rhythm & Hues Studios
- Image Engine
- Visual Works
- Pixar
- Mainframe Studios
- Sunrise Productions
- Reel FX Animation
- House of Cool