It’s never a good sign when the people running a feature animation division step down from their roles before the company has even released its first film, but that’s what has happened with Original Force, the Chinese animation/vfx company that’s trying to enter the lucrative global feature animation market.
Original Force debuted a tired-looking trailer for its first film Duck Duck Goose in early-August, and last week Variety ran an exclusive report that Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins were leaving their roles as feature animation co-presidents of Original Force.
Finkelman Cox and Rabins were announced as co-presidents in August 2015. The veteran producing partners helped set up Dreamworks Animation and produced some of the studio’s early films including Antz, Shrek, and The Prince of Egypt. They left Dreamworks in 2002 to launch Sony’s feature animation unit, where they oversaw the studio’s first two films—Open Season and Surf’s Up.