Belgian Studio Nwave Pictures To Double Workforce At Its New Studio In Liège

While there’s a seemingly endless stream of layoffs and contraction within the animation industry, there’s also numerous examples of growth, with the most recent positive news out of Belgium.

Belgian producer Nwave Pictures has revealed that they are doubling their staff at their new satellite studio in Liège, Belgium. Nwave, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and recently released its tenth feature film The Inseparables, is in fact expanding its workforce at all three of its studios across Belgium and France (its new studio in Roubaix, France, is operated with co-production partner Octopolis).

Matthieu Zeller, president and founder of Octopolis, became CEO of Nwave Pictures after acquiring a majority stake in 2018 from its founders Ben Stassen, Caroline Van Iseghem, and Ben Dillens. Zeller recently spoke with Cartoon Brew about the studio’s growth.

“We are adapting our business model by opening ourselves to opportunities for co-production and service provision,” Zeller said. “We had been asked this for a long time by potential partners, but we remained focused on our own feature film production. Today, opening up to other projects allows us to diversify our revenue streams and mitigate the risks, while expanding to a broader scope of activity by promoting our know-how and our resources. The creation of Nwave Liège studio and its expansion are part of this strategy, as well as the birth of another development center in Hauts de France [called] La Plaine Image.”

Founded in early 2023, Nwave Liège is now expanding its team from 30 to 60 workers in the coming months, in order to accommodate the workload and skills requirements of the studio’s new projects. Upcoming productions include Norwegian co-production Kaja, as well as Nwave’s own features and series, such as Chickenhare 2, which is a sequel to one of the studio’s popular films, and an untitled collaboration with fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, slated for 2027. The studio also has a well known reputation for creating location-based immersive films for theme park attractions and ride-simulations.

“Nwave Liège is a production tool completely integrated into the Nwave galaxy,” Zeller explained. “There, we have the same technical resources, including pipeline and renderfarm, as in Brussels and the same desire for artistic excellence, thanks to our high-level teams.”

Overall, Nwave Pictures’ total workforce fluctuates between 150 and 200 employees depending on the production cycles. “We have many distributors and broadcast partners around the world who have been loyal to Nwave films for years,” Zeller added. “The regularity of our production and its quality make our films rare products which retain strong potential in cinemas. Like the entire sector, the decline in investments from streamers has had an impact on our revenues, but we have never been exclusively dependent on them.”