Prime Focus’ international visual effects (VFX), animation and stereo conversion arm, DNEG, has been awarded ‘Media Company of the Year’ at the Evening Standard Business Awards 2019, which was hosted at The Landmark London on 28 June.
The shortlist was compiled by the Evening Standard’s specialist sector correspondents, before a panel of judges, compromised of leading CEOs and business people (including the Evening Standard’s Editor and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne), selected the winners based on which firms were making valuable advances in their fields: including improving diversity, innovating with technology and transforming their industries.
In February, DNEG was recognised with its fourth Oscar win in five years for its visual effects work on ‘First Man’ for Universal Pictures and director Damien Chazelle. The company has previously been honoured with the Academy Award for ‘Best Visual Effects’ for its work on ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Ex Machina’, ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Inception’.
DNEG has also worked on a number of other major film releases in the last year, including ‘Avengers: Endgame’, ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and, in television, the acclaimed Sky/HBO TV series ‘Chernobyl’ (which currently holds the highest ever IMDb rating for a television series), ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Westworld’.
Commenting on the award win, DNEG’s CEO, Namit Malhotra, said: “Over the last few years we’ve been honored with several prestigious creative awards – Oscars, BAFTAs, Visual Effects Society Awards and more. For a creative company like ours to be honored with a business award, and to be recognized as a sustainable and progressive business that is leading its field, is extremely gratifying.
“Here at DNEG we are building a company that has great credibility, not just in terms of our creative work but also in terms of how we are innovating, improving and running our business, and this is hugely important to me – both to provide long-term sustainability and stability for our talented teams across the world, and to better serve our clients.”
