If you are reading this, you may be familiar with Sausage Party, which at the time of this writing is on its way to becoming one of the most successful talking-food movies of all time. You might have read some stuff about how raunchy or funny it is or isn't. I don't care about any of that. Whether they made a masterpiece or a turd, they apparently did it by treating their animators like trash.

This is not new or rare, as I mentioned in an article six years ago, but what is new is that we might actually get a shot at getting people to pay attention to it this time. A run-of-the-mill fluff promo interview with the directors had its comments flooded by anonymous animators that worked on the film, complaining about unpaid overtime, threats, and being cut from the credits. While news outlets have contacted and verified some of these people as genuine ex-employees, every single one was too scared to give out their names, because blacklisting is a real thing in the industry.

I did not work at Nitrogen Studios (the studio in question), but I have experienced pretty similar horror stories from my time at another Vancouver CG shop (now defunct). Unlike those animators, I don't work in the industry anymore. So I will say what I saw and vouch for these people not being isolated cases of disgruntled animators. Here is my IMDb page; please spell my name correctly on the blacklist.