Reno Studios Talks VP, AI & Putting Taiwan On The Global VFX Map – Deadline

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we’ll shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to Reno Studios, a digital studio launched in Taipei in 2017, initially handling VFX for Taiwanese films, and now also bringing work from international clients including Netflix, EuropaCorp, Saudi-owned MBC Group and India’s Zee to Taiwan. Deadline sat down with co-founders Peter Huang and Tomi Kuo, and Executive Producer/Senior VFX Supervisor Christopher Chen, to talk about how the company has grown, their future plans, and why Taiwan is an ideal destination for VFX and Virtual Production. 

Despite being known internationally for its semiconductor and computer hardware industries, Taiwan is not the first destination that springs to mind in the Asia Pacific when it comes to VFX and digital production. Australia and New Zealand have traditionally been the VFX powerhouses of the region, while South Korea has also been making its mark. But that looks set to change due to a combination of local talent and entrepreneurial spirit, as evidenced by local VFX houses such as Reno Studios; a friendly business environment with government support; and a world-beating tech industry that is primed to take the next step into storytelling.

Founded by Peter Huang and Tomi Kuo in 2017, Reno Studios started out by working on the VFX of local movies and series, during a period when the global streamers were focusing most of their Chinese-language production in Taiwan. Huang has a background in digital interactive media and business management, while Kuo previously worked in the post-production team of Taiwan’s oldest studio, Central Motion Picture Corp (CMPC). 

Within a few years of launching, the studio started picking up awards for its work on Taiwanese content – including Best VFX at the Golden Horse Awards for supernatural horror Detention in 2019 and romcom My Missing Valentine in 2020. It also opened a new facility in the southern city of Tainan. 

Christopher Chen joined Reno three years ago when he returned to Taiwan from mainland China. Born in Taiwan, Chen grew up in Brazil and Canada and has worked in the film and TV industries in both Canada and China, including stints as General Manager of the China branches of Pixomondo and Gener8 (later rebranded as DNeg Stereo), working on productions including The Last Airbender and Iron Man 2.

Although Chen returned to Taiwan for family reasons, he soon realized the advantages of working on the island and how the local VFX industry, which was already producing high-quality work, could be internationalized. “Taiwan boasts an abundance of talented creative artists, many of whom were trained abroad,” Chen says. “If you check the credits of major Hollywood blockbusters, you’ll see that many top VFX houses, including Weta, ILM, Digital Domain, DNeg and Scanline, have Taiwanese technical directors, animators and programmers working for them after graduating abroad.” 

In 2022, Reno became the first Taiwanese studio to install a Virtual Production (VP) stage, housed at the legendary CMPC studios in north Taipei, which was recently busy with EuropaCorp’s The Weekend Escape, produced by Luc Besson and starring Luke Evans and Gwei Lun-mei. 

Huang, who studied in Canada and Australia before returning to Taipei, observes that Taiwan is also an obvious destination for Virtual Production: “Taiwan has a great tradition and reputation in building world-class hardware tech gear and small pixel pitch LED panels, enabling high-quality presentation of creative content,” he says. “It’s not such a huge leap from building semiconductors to creating LED sound stages.”

Other projects that have used Reno’s LED stage over the past year include local award-winning local drama Old Fox, which needed to shoot characters talking in a car moving through the streets of 1980s Taipei, and the intro video of the 60th Golden Horse Awards, which dropped real-life stars such as Chang Chen and Tony Leung Chiu-wai into the iconic movies they’d previously appeared in. For Old Fox, Chen explains that using VP technology was much more effective and practical than shooting against a green screen or shutting down Taipei streets and dressing them.

Away from the VP stage, CGI projects recently handled by the studio include segments of MBC’s $75m historical drama series Muawiyah; upcoming indie action thriller Fight Or Flight, starring Josh Hartnett; Zee premium miniseries Barzakh (Limboland); as well as the body transformations in Malaysian filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu’s Tiger Stripes, which won the Critics Week award at Cannes last year. 

The studio is also working with global streamers including Netflix on upcoming supernatural thriller series The Oracle Rises; Paramount + on streaming movie Love In Taipei; and HBO Max on comedy series The Other Two. 

For the bigger projects, Reno is collaborating with VFX teams from around the world – Muawiyah involves talent from Europe, Asia and the Middle East – which is the usual process for big-budget productions and possible for Reno because the company has English-speaking senior talent on the team. 

The studio is also incorporating AI, VR, AR and XR tools into its work – again all areas that Taiwan with its advanced chips and processors excels in. However, Huang points out that the studio is deploying AI to improve processes and not in a creepy way to replace humans. 

“We’ve already been using AI in many sections of our workflow, such as doing preliminary concept designs and motion storyboards during pre-production; facial replacements for de-ageing actors or resurrecting old classic Asian stars during post-production; providing constant checking for more effective pipeline integration; and of course, the essential language learning to ensure nothing is lost in translation for intricate communication with foreign clients,” Huang explains.  

He adds that he understands the concerns the industry has regarding AI, which played a role in the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, but describes the technology as a lifesaver during critical moments in production delivery deadlines: “In spite of everything, it’s still our artists and supervisors who are making the final calls for the shots to be delivered to the client, while the AI is just there to assist us.”

Huang, Kuo and Chen are also generous enough to point out that they’re not the only VFX shop in Taiwan – it’s a growing sector, and while most are working on Taiwanese projects, some also have experience with international shows, Japanese anime and big-budget movies from mainland China. Taiwan’s CGCG has been a force in CG animation since the late 1980s, while Moonshine Studio and TWR Entertainment are also highly respected.

“We enjoy healthy competition with other companies with regards to local Taiwanese projects, while we often end up collaborating to share the workload on international projects, as they’re usually considerably larger than Taiwanese arthouse fare or streaming drama series,” Chen says. “We’re a small island and don’t have a huge population so it makes more sense to help each other as a unified community whenever we’re dealing with the big beasts.”

Reno’s investors include high-tech companies such as AUO, one of the world’s leading LED manufacturers, highlighting the growing appetite of Taiwan’s world-beating technology sector to become more involved in the content industry. This is something that Taiwan’s government is also actively encouraging through forging public-private collaborations between the two industries and offering tax deductions to companies from all sectors that decide to invest in Taiwanese content. 

Among the public-private collaborations, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) has recently signed agreements with leading memory storage company ADATA (which recently invested US$18M in Digital Domain), computer manufacturer Asus and Korean VFX house Dexter Studios, which has credits including Parasite and Along With The Gods.

In addition, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture provides cash rebates of US$1M (TWD30M) for international projects that conduct post and VFX work in Taiwan. Meanwhile, TAICCA’s Taiwan International Co-production Program (TICP), which has been involved in bringing projects such as Tiger Stripes and The Settlers to Taiwan for post-production work, is currently being revamped with details to be announced at a later date. 

With a growing pipeline of work, backed by favorable business conditions, Reno is now planning expansion on three fronts – ramping up its animation capabilities in Taipei and Tainan to realize fully CG animated shows; hiring full-time staff to work on project development and international co-productions; and opening an office in Montreal in late 2024. 

On the production front, Reno has already co-invested in Wong Ching Po’s award-winning The Pig, The Snake And The Pigeon, produced by Taiwan’s Lee Lieh, and plans to invest in a Taiwanese supernatural thriller, a CG animated feature co-production with Malaysia, and a Japan-Taiwan co-production in 2025. 

The Montreal branch will be mostly dedicated to servicing Hollywood clients, as well as developing AI tools, as Montreal is the leading centre for AI research and development in Canada. “However, since the traditional Hollywood system went through two two back-to-back labour strikes, and big-budget movies are having mixed fortunes at the global box office, we think the best opportunities probably lie in the indie world,” says Chen. 

“That’s where we’re more likely to find unusual, brilliant projects, along the lines of Everything, Everywhere All At Once and Poor Things, where we can collaborate and bring them into fruition, which would be a more interesting path for us business wise.”

When asked if the studio will find it difficult to ramp up in Taiwan, where the population is relatively small (23.59 million) and the film biz frowned on by many families, Chen smiles and says the VFX end of the industry, with its ties to the respectable worlds of technology and science, usually gets a free pass from parents. Reno is also bringing young talents from Southeast Asia to work in Taiwan and may open a facility in that region in a few years time. 

“Taiwanese family tradition has always given some kind of mandate for their children to excel in maths, physics and tech-related subjects,” he says. “Previous generations may have regarded the movie industry as being a bit sketchy or even sleazy, but the mindset of parents these days seems to be that the more high-tech side of the industry brings respectability to the family.”