Animators Call For ‘Sausage Party’ Boycott , Claiming They Were Treated Like Shit And Not Even Credited
Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan‘s R-rated ‘Sausage Party‘ has a whole heap of mouths drooling over their raunchy, animated comedy. The trailer alone has amassed over 21 million views alone, leading to a debut in the US with a meaty $33.6 million at the Box Office.
Sausage Party follows Frank (Seth Rogen) the sausage, Brenda (Kristen Wiig) the hot dog bun, Teresa Taco and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton) escaping their fate of being murdered and eaten by humans – watch the trailer below – looks hilarious, right?
On the serious side of things, a bunch of the films animators have taken to the web to claim they were treated like slaves and not even credited for creating the flick. Some writers have said they ensured ‘so much emotional and physical trauma from having to work day in and day out again and again without compensation”. As you’ll read below, it’s nasty stuff.
The allegations all came in the comments of an interview conducted by CartoonBrew, after Tiernan bragged that they made the movie on an miniscule budget (estimated at $19 million USD). Throughout the industry, the directors have been spruiking the fact that they were able to create their lucrative smash on the cheap – because they’re creative geniuses and all…
More I read about the mistreatment of animators working on Sausage Party, the more I hope it fails at the box office pic.twitter.com/NbZIFrgrNd
— John Cullen ???? (@nellucnhoj) August 15, 2016
On the back of this, the animators have anonymously been taking to reddit, Imgr and other social media sites to discuss the piss-poor treatment they endured at Nitrogen Studios.
I'm talking about sausage party a lot cus i care deeply about animation and want it to be better than this.
— kc grəən (@kcgreenn) August 15, 2016
Nitrogen Studios is denying the allegations, with Chief Executive Nicole Stinn issuing a statement via the LA Times, saying,
These claims are without merit. Our production adhered to all overtime laws and regulations, as well as our contractual obligations with our artists.
However, it seems the effort from animators to share their voice isn’t slowing down. Here’s the full excerpt of a post now on the front page of Imgur detailing the sentiment of animators.
This movie has so many bad ethics to do with how they treated their CGI artists over the course of the development of this movie.
It wasn’t until the director was boasting about how the budget of this film was only £20million that anonymous artists came forwards on his tweet revealing how shitty he and his heads of the company had treated the people who poured their blood sweat and tears in order to make this comedy a possibility.
Threatened with termination if artists didn’t stay and do unpaid overtime for over a year, generally shitty attitude towards the artists in general and they then have their names omitted from the credits in the theatrical release.
Meanwhile the director boasts how their film budget was a mere $20 million. Easy to budget when you’re treating your artists like slaves almost.
These films don’t just magically pop up out of the blue… people spend years working on them. To not even credit them at the end because you treated them like shit for the better part of a year and they decided to walk? That’s cold. Especially after causing them so much emotional and physical trauma from having to work day in and day out again and again without compensation. It’s just disgusting.
The worst part was I was looking forwards to seeing this movie but now I don’t even want to buy it when it comes to DVD, it just makes me feel sick.
Stuff like this is becoming more prevalent in the film industry but people don’t seem to care so long as the next frozen film comes out on time or whatever, it’s like a Chinese sweatshop to keep up with the demand sometimes.
As a CGI artist myself I implore you all to not give your money to these people, show them that this isn’t acceptable behavior to treat your workers like they’re literal beasts of burden that can be whipped harder to make them work more. We are people too and deserve the recognition for the time and effort we put into these animated features that last over two hours sometimes.
I know this will probably die in user submitted. But Someone needs to get the word out.
We shouldn’t reward shitty business tactics like this with our time. Even though I was so looking forwards to seeing this film.