Hollywood’s New Leaders of 2023

variety.com:

For editorial inquiries, please contact Peter Caranicas at peter.caranicas@variety.com. SVP, AnimationBad Robot(Film & TV) Agbaje, 36, helped to bring Charlie Mackesy’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” to life, earning Academy Award and BAFTA wins for animated short film, as well as four Annie Awards.

Bad Robot is working on diverse animation projects across film and TV, including a two-season order for Bruce Timm’s “Batman: Caped Crusader” at Amazon, and an adaptation of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” for Warner Bros.Enduring power of animation: “I’ve seen such a resurgence and celebration of animation in different forms,” says Agbaje. “I could’ve never predicted we’d get films as diverse, technically impressive and creatively excellent as ‘Across the Spider-Verse,’ ‘Nimona,’ ‘Elemental,’ ‘Ninja Turtles,’ and our own Oscar-winning short, in the same 12-month period.” COOXYZ Films(Film & TV) Newly appointed COO of the independent film studio XYZ Films, Cottray oversees the company’s financing, business affairs and day-to-day operations, as well as functioning as producer and executive producer for many of its titles.

Cottray, 34, successfully raised the company’s multimillion-dollar production financing, established XYZ as a full-fledged independent studio and launched the company’s U.S.

distribution. Cottray also initiated a collaboration between XYZ and the generative AI firm Flawless to create lip-synced versions of foreign-language films acquired for English-speaking territories. Shrinking the world with AI: “AI can be used as a positive force to bring foreign-language content to a wider U.S.