The Company Makes More Hires in Florida and Signs a Lease in Northern California

Though Digital Domain Productions broadened its global reach last month through a partnership with India’s Reliance MediaWorks, its parent company, Digital Domain Media Group, continues to expand here at home. A new $40 million facility in Port St. Lucie, Florida, which will house DDMG’s animation-focused Tradition Studios, is already underway, as is West Palm Beach’s Digital Domain Institute, a four-year program supported by the College of Motion Picture Arts at Florida State University. A rendering of the proposed FSU campus, to be built in collaboration with Digital Domain, is seen above. The school is scheduled to open temporary facilities in downtown West Palm Beach this January and will begin enrolling students in September 2012.
The company may also be expanding beyond its San Francisco offices in Northern California. According to a story earlier this week in the North Bay Business Journal, DDMG has plans to open an office in Larkspur, California, near San Rafael, as early as November. In an amended IPO filed on August 12, DDMG began leasing a 14,200 square foot space in Larkspur Landing Office Park with the potential for an estimated 47 employees, based on parking spaces allotted to the space.

Last fall, DDMG’s chairman John Textor said the company was on track to hire 500 people in its Port St. Lucie Tradition Studios by the end of 2014. That commitment brought Digital Domain some $70 million of building incentives from the state of Florida and the city of Port St. Lucie. In April, Textor told local officials the company was “ahead of schedule” in its hiring goals. The city is building Digital Domain a 130,000-square-foot studio, which it will lease to the company, near Interstate 95. DDMG will also relocate to Port St. Lucie the entire team from Venice’s 2D-to-3D conversion facility In-Three, which it acquired in November.

In addition to producing family-focused animated films, the company’s Florida studios create simulation training for the U.S. military.

Digital Domain announced its partnership with India’s Reliance MediaWorks in July, which added 650 VFX artists to the Mumbai-based facility and a new Digital Domain team at Reliance’s London office. This spring, DDMG’s hybrid advertising and games production arm Mothership, launched in 2010, moved into new headquarters in Marina del Rey, California.

For more information:
www.ddmg.co
www.digitaldomain.com
www.mothership.net