Open Doors Animation

Open Doors Animation is an American independent animation studio founded by Joshua McCoy in 1993, and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Their films can be co-produced and distributed by any studio, but mostly by Paramount and Warner Bros.

History
Open Doors was founded on July 15, 1993 by Joshua McCoy. For its launch, the studio signed with Paramount Pictures a three-picture deal to produce traditionally-animated films for the studio. Their feature debut was Insects of Destruction, which was released on October 17, 1996, and it was a critical and financial success. The studio released two more traditionally-animated films, which are both are successful with critics and the box office as well. But then on August 3, 2001, Open Doors released an adaptation of Lord of the Flies, and it was a box office bomb with mixed reviews. On New Years Day 2002, the studio departured from hand-drawn animation to produce computer animated features, both in the likes of Pixar, and after seeing the success of Blue Sky's Ice Age, which lays off some of their traditional animators, and oppertunes them to hire some new CG animators to make their films.

Almost two years later in December 2003, they signed with Warner Bros. Pictures a five-picture deal to produce their CGI movies, as a response to the shutdown of Warner Bros. Feature Animation. The first fully computer-animated Open Doors film, which was Crazy Teens, was released on July 30, 2004, and met with critical acclaim and box office success. The two studios produced three more original computer-animated features before their 2004 film launched the studio's first franchise, with a sequel released four years after the original.

In 2009, Open Doors went back to Paramount to co-produce and release 3 movies for them, including 2 more franchises, and their first adaption since 2001, but then went back to Warner Bros. in 2013 to co-produce the third and final Crazy Teens film, which was released 9 years after the first, and 4 years after the second at the same time on May 31. That film over $1 billion, which is the first time for both a non-Disney animated feature, and an Open Doors film to do so.

On June 1, 2014, Viacom and Time Warner each purchased a 30% stake at Open Doors, which strengthens the studio's relationship between Paramount and Warner Bros., and gives the two distributors the permanent rights to their franchises (2 for Viacom, and 2 for the Warners). Then on New Years Day 2015, the studio partnered with Netflix to launch their fourth franchise with a sequel to their feature debut, which was then released 20 years after that film in 2016.

Warner Bros. and Open Doors produced one more animated feature, which is a video game-themed parody of Monster High released in summer 2015, over a year after The LEGO Movie, a film from Warner Bros.' own animation division, the Warner Animation Group, that made another $1 billion for the animation studio, launching a fifth franchise for Open Doors, before they made second installments of their last two franchises, released in 2016 (similar to the Netflix sequel) and 2018, their third adaptation, released in 2017, and a new original film, released in 2019, all with Paramount respectively. All four movies were box office hits, and one of them launched a sixth franchise.

The same year that the studio's fourth sequel was released, Open Doors signed a deal with Mattel and Universal to produce a shared universe of animated films based on their franchises besides Barbie, Hot Wheels, and their preschool franchises like Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Bob the Builder. This shared universe will be the first time that the animation studio will produce movies outside of Paramount and Warner Bros. A year and a half earlier, they decided to collaborate with Nintendo and Sony Pictures Animation to develop a film based on the Super Smash Bros. games. They also announced a trilogy of computer-animated films based on the object community, with each one having a different distributor.