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The Imaginarium Studios

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The Imaginarium Studios
Information
Industry Performance capture, Virtual production
Founded 2012
Founder Andy Serkis, Jonathan Cavendish
Headquarters Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Notable Personnel Matthew Brown (CEO)
Products Performance capture, facial capture, virtual production and real-time visualization services
Parent Cinesite (majority stake since May 2023)
Website https://www.imaginariumstudios.co.uk


The Imaginarium Studios (also known as Imaginarium Studios) is a British performance capture and virtual production studio founded by the actor and director Andy Serkis. It records body, facial and voice performances of actors and turns them into digital characters for film, television, video games, music videos, live theatre and mixed reality content.[1][2] The studio was based at Ealing Studios in west London for most of its history and is now headquartered at Pinewood Studios. In May 2023 the visual effects and animation company Cinesite invested in the studio, taking what Variety reported as a majority stake.[2][3]

The studio's XR work has centred on augmented and mixed reality. In September 2018 it became a content partner of Magic Leap, and Serkis played an "Orc-like" character named Grishneck for the Magic Leap One Creator Edition headset.[4] The studio also motion-captured the whole of the West End musical The Grinning Man to present it as tabletop theatre on the Magic Leap headset, and it built the live digital Ariel character for the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2016 production of The Tempest.[5][6]

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Founding dates, founders, Vicon deal, 2017 buy-out report, E&T interview, Cinesite investment, Pinewood and SIDE London facilities, Tempest pipeline, Magic Leap, Grinning Man, Coldplay and Mowgli claims checked against the cited official pages, press reports and interviews. About review dates.

History

Founding at Ealing Studios

Serkis set up the studio after playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In a 2019 interview, CEO Matt Brown said that Serkis returned to the UK and saw that no one there was using digital performance capture to anything like the degree used on those films.[7][8] The company, the UK Screen Alliance profile, Variety and Cinesite all give 2012 as the founding year.[1][8][2] Other accounts use 2011: fxguide in 2016 and Foundry in 2018 gave that year, and the same 2019 Engineering & Technology interview gives both 2011 and 2012.[6][9][7] In January 2012, motion capture maker Vicon announced that it would be the main technology supplier to The Imaginarium, a London studio it described as founded by Serkis and the film producer Jonathan Cavendish. The deal covered 80 Vicon T160 cameras (16 megapixels each) and Vicon's Blade software.[10]

The studio was a resident of Ealing Studios in west London. Brown described the original space as "a concrete floor and black painted walls."[7] In 2019 the UK Screen Alliance called it "the only commercially available motion capture facility in London."[8]

Restructuring and the split from Imaginarium Productions

In May 2017 MCV reported, citing an unnamed source, that the studio had lost "1.2m in 2015 and 3m in 2016" (MCV did not state the currency) and that a cancelled project had made immediate action necessary. The founders said they were completing a management buy-out "following differences in the forward creative strategy" with the company's institutional investors.[11] Brown joined in 2016 as head of business development for work that "didn't quite fit the traditional film and TV industry. Things like VR, mixed reality and so on." He said the business was then restructured into a standalone production company and a standalone capture studio. He ran the studio day to day, and Serkis gave creative direction and kept a role in both companies.[7] In 2023 Variety and Cinesite described Serkis as running the separate production company, The Imaginarium Productions, with Cavendish.[2][12]

Cinesite investment and move to Pinewood

On 17 May 2023 Cinesite announced that it had agreed to invest in The Imaginarium Studios. The studio became a Cinesite partner company, keeping its culture, brand and facilities, with Matthew Brown staying on as CEO.[12] Variety reported the deal as a majority stake. At that time the studio had facilities at Pinewood Studios in the UK and at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.[2] Cinesite Group CEO Antony Hunt said the investment strengthened Cinesite's connections with the gaming industry.[12]

In January 2024 the studio revealed a new brand identity, with a logo that combines reflective capture markers and a figure in a T-pose. The rebrand marked one year at Pinewood Studios, where the studio uses the 820 square metre N stage. Its performance capture volume there is 10 m by 14 m and is fully sound treated.[3] In May 2024 it opened a second, smaller volume, Studio 1 at SIDE London in Tileyard, King's Cross, in partnership with the games services company PTW. That volume is 5 m long, 3 m wide and 2.4 m high and uses 16 Vicon Vantage cameras. It can capture the face, body and fingers of two characters at once while recording dialogue.[13] In October 2026 the company's website lists Pinewood Studios and Studio 1 at SIDE London as its locations, and Cinesite's website lists Brown as the studio's CEO.[14][15]

Technology and services

The studio's main system is optical motion capture. In 2018 AV Magazine described the main stage at Ealing as about 8 by 10 metres with 60 Vicon optical cameras. The studio also uses a portable Xsens inertial capture system.[16] According to a 2018 Foundry interview with Brown, data runs from Vicon's Shogun software into Autodesk MotionBuilder and then into a customized version of Unreal Engine. A virtual camera reproduces the controls of a physical camera inside the digital scene.[9] Brown said in 2019 that performers wear suits with 53 reflective markers and that more than 50 cameras cover the volume.[7]

Real-time rendering is central to the studio's virtual production work. Directors and actors can see the computer-generated character while the performance is being captured.[16] Foundry described a setup in which a director wearing a VR headset in a separate room saw a real-time virtual reality view of the capture stage. The studio also used its smaller Range of Motion stage for weekly livestreams of VR games on Twitch.[9] The services listed on the current website include optical and inertial body capture, facial capture with head-mounted cameras, real-time rendering, camera tracking, virtual camera work, Unreal Engine customization, audio recording and on-location capture volumes. At Pinewood the studio can also set up an LED volume on its main stage, in partnership with iMAG displays.[1][15] The 2024 brand announcement also mentioned a MetaHuman Animator pipeline and a pop-up LED wall synchronized with motion capture.[3]

XR work

Live digital Ariel in The Tempest (2016)

The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2016 production of The Tempest, directed by Gregory Doran, was "created in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios." It played at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in the winter 2016-17 season and later transferred to the Barbican Theatre in London.[17] Actor Mark Quartley played the spirit Ariel both in person and as a projected digital avatar. Quartley wore an Xsens MVN suit with 17 sensors under his costume. Its data went through MotionBuilder into Unreal Engine 4, and the video output went to d3 servers with Intel Xeon processors connected to the RSC lighting desk, which controlled 27 projectors around the stage.[6][18] For the scene in which Ariel becomes a harpy, the studio captured Quartley's face live with a tethered head-mounted camera through its own platform, called GRIP. Its chief scientist, Colin Davidson, told fxguide that the studio built its own tools because "all of the existing technology is closed."[6]

Magic Leap partnership and Grishneck (2018)

In September 2018 The Hollywood Reporter reported that The Imaginarium had struck a content deal with Magic Leap. The studio would create further content for the platform and support third-party developers with its production resources, including its London motion capture stage. Its first character for the platform was Grishneck, an "Orc-like" creature played by Serkis that appears in the viewer's room through the Magic Leap One Creator Edition; for example, it can stand on a coffee table. In the story, Grishneck has been rejected from a project for not being scary enough.[4] A description of the experience quoted by Next Reality said it follows Grishneck "as he hops from a physical screen into the user's environment." Brown said in a statement that with Magic Leap's technology the actor's performance "is pulled off the screen and into the world of the viewer."[19] At Magic Leap's first L.E.A.P. developer conference in October 2018, the studio also demonstrated live performance capture driving a computer-generated character in mixed reality, which it presented as real-time previsualization for film production.[20]

In 2019 Engineering & Technology reported that the studio's developers had found their facial expression and body rigs "too heavy" for the headset and, after an iterative process, developed a way to drive characters with motion capture data on the device. The work led to the studio being named "the first performance-capture partner of Magic Leap."[7]

The Grinning Man in augmented reality (2018-2019)

In June 2018 Serkis and director Tom Morris led a full motion capture recording of The Grinning Man at the studio in Ealing. The musical had premiered at Bristol Old Vic and run in the West End from December 2017 to May 2018. Magic Leap funded the capture as augmented reality content for its glasses.[5][21][20] The cast performed in motion capture suits with the original props and puppets from the show. In his keynote at Magic Leap's conference, Serkis said: "We plan to present it as a piece of tabletop theatre, so we're shrinking down the actors to perform on a tabletop and do an entire show."[5]

An excerpt was shown on Magic Leap One headsets at South by Southwest in Austin in March 2019. Engadget described a five-minute performance of the song "Laughter is the Best Medicine" by nine miniature singing and dancing performers on a virtual stage about two meters wide, which viewers could watch from different angles.[22] The studio wrote new software so that more than one person could watch the excerpt in augmented reality at the same time. After SXSW, 100 people attended a private preview at Bristol Old Vic, which Trafalgar described as the first time anyone in the UK could try the experience with simultaneous viewing software.[21]

In a 2019 interview Brown said the studio was working with new VR hardware such as the Valve Index as well as Magic Leap's platform, and that location-based experiences were driving much of its technical development.[8]

Related games work

In August 2017 The Imaginarium announced Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, a game developed by Imaginati Studios, a team led by its founder and CEO Martin Alltimes that worked out of the same Ealing studio. Serkis was a producer, and Alltimes said the motion capture came from The Imaginarium.[23][24] Imaginati also made the VR game Crisis on the Planet of the Apes (2018), which FoxNext VR Studio produced in partnership with it.[25]

Selected projects

The table lists projects that the studio or reputable press have credited to it, in approximate chronological order. It is not a complete credit list.

Project Medium Notes
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Film Captured characters including Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o)[8]
Avengers: Age of Ultron Film Listed by AV Magazine among the studio's projects[16]
Coldplay, "Adventure of a Lifetime" Music video 2015 video; band members performed in full performance capture rigs and were turned into chimpanzees; directed by Mat Whitecross, with visual effects by Mathematic[26][27]
The Tempest (Royal Shakespeare Company) Theatre Live real-time digital Ariel, with Intel; 2016-17 season[17][6]
Battlefield 1 Video game Cited by MCV as one of the studio's games credits[11]
Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier Video game Motion capture for the Imaginati Studios game[24]
Grishneck Mixed reality (Magic Leap One) Performance-captured character played by Serkis[4]
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle Film Netflix film directed by Serkis, who used the studio extensively in production[28]
The Grinning Man Augmented reality theatre (Magic Leap One) Full musical captured in June 2018; excerpt shown at SXSW 2019[21][22]
Spider-Man: Far From Home Film Named by Cinesite among the studio's recent work[12]
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Television Marvel series[2]
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Film Marvel Studios film[2]
Napoleon, Haunted Mansion Film Listed in the 2024 brand announcement[3]
Alan Wake 2 Video game Listed in the 2024 brand announcement[3]
Stormzy digital concert for Rockstar Energy Drink Music, in-app virtual concert Listed in the 2024 brand announcement[3]
Cyberpunk 2077 Video game Listed in the 2024 brand announcement[3]
Dance Monsters Television Netflix series[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Imaginarium Studios - Motion Capture Specialists". Imaginarium Studios. https://www.imaginariumstudios.co.uk/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 K.J. Yossman (2023-05-23). "Cinesite Takes Majority Stake in Andy Serkis's Mo-Cap Production Outfit The Imaginarium Studios (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. https://variety.com/2023/film/global/cinesite-majority-stake-andy-serkiss-the-imaginarium-1235621547/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 "Imaginarium Studios reveals new brand identity". Animation UK. 2024-01-29. https://www.animationuk.org/news/imaginarium-studios-reveals-new-brand-identity/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Carolyn Giardina (2018-09-05). "Andy Serkis Creating New "Orc-like" Performance-Capture Character for Magic Leap (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/andy-serkis-creating-new-performance-capture-character-magic-leap-1138355. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Alex Wood (2018-10-24). "Andy Serkis' Imaginarium has recorded a virtual version of The Grinning Man". WhatsOnStage. https://www.whatsonstage.com/bristol-theatre/news/andy-serkis-imaginarium-grinning-man_47875.html/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Mike Seymour (2016-11-17). "The Imaginarium Studios bring first live digital Shakespeare character to the stage". fxguide. https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/the-imaginarium-studios-bring-first-live-digital-shakespeare-character-to-the-stage/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Nick Smith (2019-03-15). "'The whole point of the process is to tell a good story': Matt Brown, Imaginarium Studios". Engineering & Technology. Institution of Engineering and Technology. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/03/the-whole-point-of-the-process-is-to-tell-a-good-story-matt-brown-ceo-imaginarium-studios/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 "Spotlight On... The Imaginarium Studios: The world-leading conjurers of mixed-reality storytelling". UK Screen Alliance. 2019-05-07. https://www.ukscreenalliance.co.uk/news/spotlight-on-the-imaginarium-studios-the-world-leading-conjurers-of-mixed-reality-storytelling/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Virtual production at Imaginarium Studios". Foundry. 2018-08-17. https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/virtual-production-imaginarium-studios. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  10. ↑ "Vicon signs deal with The Imaginarium". Oxford Metrics. 2012-01-31. https://oxfordmetrics.com/news/2012-01-31/vicon-signs-deal-with-the-imaginarium. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 MCV Staff (2017-05-08). "Andy Serkis' Imaginarium Studios to restructure with management buy-out". MCV/DEVELOP. https://mcvuk.com/business-news/publishing/andy-serkis-imaginarium-studios-to-restructure-with-management-buy-out/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 "Cinesite Invests in The Imaginarium Studios". Cinesite. 2023-05-17. https://cinesite.com/cinesite-invests-in-the-imaginarium-studios/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  13. ↑ "Imaginarium Studios to open mocap studio at SIDE London in partnership with PTW". UK Screen Alliance. 2024-05-08. https://www.ukscreenalliance.co.uk/news/imaginarium-studios-to-open-mocap-studio-at-side-london-in-partnership-with-ptw/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  14. ↑ "Matt Brown". Cinesite. https://cinesite.com/bio/matt-brown/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Locations". Imaginarium Studios. https://www.imaginariumstudios.co.uk/locations. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Zoe Mutter (2018-07-25). "The Imaginarium Studios' flexible motion capture techniques". AV Magazine. https://www.avinteractive.com/markets-news/live-events/imaginarium-studios-flexible-motion-capture-25-07-2018/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "The Tempest: Gregory Doran 2016 production". Royal Shakespeare Company. https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-tempest/past-productions/gregory-doran-2016-production. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  18. ↑ "Xsens and The Imaginarium Studios collaborate to bring live motion capture to Shakespeare play". Xsens. 2016-11-22. https://www.xsens.com/resources/news/xsens-and-the-imaginarium-studios-collaborate-to-bring-live-motion-capture-to-shakespeare-play. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  19. ↑ Adario Strange (2018-09-05). "Magic Leap Teams with Andy Serkis Effects Studio Imaginarium for New AR Experience". Next Reality. https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/magic-leap-teams-with-andy-serkis-effects-studio-imaginarium-for-new-ar-experience-0186975/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Carolyn Giardina (2018-10-10). "Magic Leap Touts Hollywood Content, Launches Indie Developers Grant Program". The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/magic-leap-touts-hollywood-content-launches-developers-grant-program-1151096. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 "The Grinning Man's marvellous magical act". Trafalgar Entertainment. 2019-03-26. https://www.trafalgarentertainment.com/2019/03/26/the-grinning-mans-marvellous-magical-act/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chris Ip (2019-03-12). "Magic Leap goes to the theater". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/12/magic-leap-theater-sxsw/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  23. ↑ Ben Skipper (2017-08-16). "Andy Serkis' Imaginarium studio reveals Planet of the Apes game Last Frontier". International Business Times UK. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/andy-serkis-imaginarium-studio-reveals-planet-apes-game-last-frontier-1635302. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Dean Takahashi (2017-09-19). "How Andy Serkis' games studio created Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier". GamesBeat. https://gamesbeat.com/how-andy-serkis-games-studio-created-planet-of-the-apes-last-frontier/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  25. ↑ Janko Roettgers (2018-02-27). "'Planet of the Apes' VR Game Coming to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR This April". Variety. https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/planet-of-the-apes-vr-game-1202710961/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  26. ↑ "Coldplay 'Adventure Of A Lifetime' by Mat Whitecross". Promonews. 2015-11-30. https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2015/11/30/coldplay-adventure-lifetime-mat-whitecross/38429. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  27. ↑ Jennifer Wolfe (2015-11-30). "New Coldplay Video Features Motion Capture by Andy Serkis's The Imaginarium". Animation World Network. https://www.awn.com/news/new-coldplay-video-features-motion-capture-andy-serkis-s-imaginarium. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  28. ↑ Dan Sarto (2018-12-14). "Netflix Releases Behind-the-Scenes Featurette for 'MOWGLI: Legend of the Jungle'". Animation World Network. https://www.awn.com/news/netflix-releases-behind-scenes-featurette-mowgli-legend-jungle. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
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