CEO Quits

Last month we reported that the special effects company responsible for the Ender’s Game movie, Digital Domain, dropped $15 million on Ender’s Game. The Wall Street Journal reported on Digital Domain’s losses at the time, “The decrease in the gross margin percentage of revenues in the first quarter of this year, as compared to the same period of the prior year, was primarily impacted by the inclusion of co-production revenues of $2.2 million from our work on Ender’s Game at 100 percent of the direct cost of revenues because we are investing the gross margin on our work as part of our equity in the film.”

Today the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Digital Domain’s CEO, John Textor, resigned and will be replaced by Ed Ulbrich, a longtime executive in wake of company restructuring which may lead to bankruptcy. In an effort to reduce spending, Digital Domain said in a statement that they had eliminated almost all staff in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where it’s based, but  that studios in California and Vancouver will continue to operate.

Digital Domain will continue to work on Ender’s Game. The Ender’s Game movie will hit theaters November 1, 2013.

Edit: Via Bloomberg, 

Post-production work on “Ender’s Game” remains on schedule, Peter Wilkes, a spokesman for Lions Gate, said in an interview. “We’re very excited about ‘Ender’s Game’ and we’re very confident we will release it as planned on Nov. 1, 2013.”