Lucasfilm here to work on Avengers 2

SINGAPORE - The new Lucasfilm facility here is in "full swing" and its artists are already working on major projects, said Ms Kathleen Kennedy, the company's president, yesterday.

The projects include the upcoming superhero movie Avengers 2, the fifth instalment in the Jurassic Park movie franchise, the sequel to 2007's Hitman action movie, the fourth movie in the Transformers series, an unnamed animated feature, as well as a movie to be screened as part of a theme-park ride.

The Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Jurassic World will be released next year. The Hitman sequel, tentatively titled Agent 47, is expected to be released later this year. Transformers: Age Of Extinction will also be released this year, during the June and July blockbuster season.

"This will be our busiest year ever at ILM," said Ms Kennedy. Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM, is the arm of Lucasfilm which creates digital effects for films.

She was speaking on the sidelines of the opening of Lucasfilm's new office, where Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong unveiled a bronze statue of Star Wars character Yoda, together with Ms Kennedy and Star Wars creator George Lucas.

PM Lee said the success of a billion-dollar interactive- and digital-media industry here requires a vibrant creative ecosystem, which Singapore is trying to create.

Lucasfilm, the world's largest entertainment firm, was behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.

Its new eight-storey facility at Fusionopolis is named Sandcrawler and modelled after the slow-moving fortress seen in the Star Wars films.

This article by The Straits Times was published in MyPaper, a free, bilingual newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings. 

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