Australian animation house Pixel Zoo has unveiled Pixel Zoo Studios & Labs, a Los Angeles–based offshoot that will be steered by Emmy-winning children’s producer Josh Fisher. The expansion gives the Brisbane outfit its first North-American foothold and elevates Pixel Labs—until now an internal R&D wing—into a standalone hub for developing original series and features. Founder and managing director Paul Gillett said the bi-continental model “lets our artists in Queensland collaborate in real time with creatives in Hollywood while keeping production costs competitive.”
The new unit will embed Unreal Engine-driven virtual production, AI-assisted previs and cloud asset libraries to speed up schedules, according to a technical briefing circulated to vendors this week. Fisher—whose résumé spans Netflix preschool hits and Spin Master’s “PAW Patrol” universe—began consulting for Pixel Zoo in 2023 and now joins full-time as executive vice-president of creative. “Pixel Zoo has the technical muscle and the hunger to build global franchises—my job is to make sure the ideas travel,” he wrote on LinkedIn after the announcement.
The studio is already co-producing a 52-episode adaptation of DK’s best-selling “The Secret Explorers” books with Barcelona–Miami outfit Liquid Rock Entertainment, with Fisher attached as executive producer. Pixel Labs’ proof-of-concept short “The Secrets of Sunflower Valley,” released two years ago, served as a technology testbed and has drawn 1.8 million YouTube views.
Pixel Zoo’s push follows its 2022 acquisition by toy giant MGA Entertainment, which seeded MGA Studios with US$500 million to grow content capabilities beyond dolls and playsets. Kidscreen Summit analysts say anchoring a base in Los Angeles positions the Australian studio to meet streamers’ appetite for cost-efficient CGI as U.S. budgets tighten. Recruitment is already under way, with open calls for artists on both hemispheres and a promise of “remote-friendly production.”
