By Jazz Tangcay
The VFX house, headquartered in New Zealand and responsible for some of the most memorable visual effects in film over the past two decades, had to deal with the spread of the disease early due to Weta’s close proximity to China.
By Jan. 24, the company had formed a COVID-19 task force, holding weekly meetings. By the time it put together a two-part action plan, including what it thought would happen once the pandemic hit New Zealand, the country had announced its first case.
“The speed with which it accelerated caught us off guard,” says David Conley, Weta Digital executive VFX producer. The company had to move 1,500 employees off-site and get them working from home. “We thought we had five to 10 days,” he says. “We had three.”
Read the full article in Variety.