I went into Skydance thinking it was a great opportunity to grow, it was right after John Lasseter was made head of animation, so there were lots of questions about how it was going to be run. He ended up being the least of my worries. I was fortunate to work with a lot of nice, supportive people, but unfortunately the problems start at the top. David Ellison is a creatively bankrupt nepo baby who would much rather be making Cocomelon: soulless, ugly, stupid and profitable! I don't understand why you'd hire the best names in the business to make Cocomelon, but trust the process right? No. We made Luck, the worst big budget animated film you'll ever see. Senior management- the directors of the movies and single TV show we had, tend to be very sensitive toward criticisms of their bland ideas, but very insensitive towards the feelings of their employees. There are two women directors, sadly one is verbally abusive and the other is not qualified to be doing animation. Basically, the roster of high level creative leadership is a Pixar and DisneyToon retirement home. Over and over again, Skydance would push aside younger talents with fresh perspectives in favor of bringing in one of JL's friends, even when they were contractually promised things, I saw loads of young talent almost purposefully alienated, let go under suspicious circumstances, and treated like little kids. It's so sad that this would've been a great environment to mentor new talent, but none of the higher ups seemed to be interested. I can't stress enough how bad the generational gap is here. Nobody under 40 likes working there, at least on the creative side. Also, you will not see a good movie come out of this studio for at least another ten years, if it makes it that far.
