VFXSoldier brings the news that Lumiere, the VFX studio that rose from the ashes of the defunct Meteor studios after the calamitous bankruptcy that left dozens of VFX artists unpaid and disheartened, is repeating history by once again filing bankruptcy.
Now just two years later my same friends are being ripped off again. The confidential sum of 1 dollar is hiding the fact that most are owed 15-35 thousand dollars. This time the project left for even cheaper outsourcing and the owners bankrupted the facility after promising that bounced and missed paychecks would never happen again if they all came back to work.
Part of me has to wonder who would go work for a studio like this after knowing how they went down the first round, but the rest of me feels sorry for all the VFX artists who are about to get screwed in this again. Unlike US artists in Los Angeles, opportunities for VFX in Montreal are few and far between, meaning the only real option is to pack up and move to Vancouver. I was going to see what information was on their website about this, but it seems their website is already “down for maintenance”, probably of the permanent variety.
Read the official filing here.
