Star Wars creator opens visual effects and animation hub in Singapore

Star Wars creator Lucasfilm formally expanded its creative universe yesterday by launching its visual effects and animation hub in Singapore, to work on Hollywood blockbusters and bolster marketing efforts in Asia.

"May the Force be with you," Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's prime minister, said in a speech at the glass-enclosed "Sandcrawler" building, modelled on vehicle from the Star Wars films.

Lucasfilm, bought by Walt Disney in 2012 for more than US$4 billion, opened a small studio in 2005 in another part of Singapore. It has built up the size and skills of the team into a staff of 400.

"This is a very robust operation that is comparable to exactly what we're doing in San Francisco or Vancouver," Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm and a producer of more than 60 films, said before the launch.

"Many of the top-end movies that are being made in the next 18 months to two years, a vast variety of that work will head in this direction."

In Singapore, about 350 artists from 40 countries are now working on a full-length animated feature and films that include Hitman and Transformers 4. More projects would be assigned as Lucasfilm's visual effects unit Industrial Light & Magic headed into its "busiest year ever", Kennedy said, including new instalments of the Star Wars franchise.

George Lucas, the company's founder, who has retired from making big-budget films to focus on smaller features, said colleagues were sceptical when he suggested an expansion into Asia a decade ago.