Comes to Sydney, does Jedi Academy, to make Star Wars shine

One of the larger tenants in a certain Sydney data centre is digital film studio Animal Logic, which employs plenty of techies, buys rack-loads of storage kit from Dell and rents fat pipes to move data to make its movies.

SFX jobs to Sydney come, said Master Yoda

And now Sydney will get another similar driver of IT buys, and developer of IT talent, thanks to news that Disney-owned visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic has established a studio in the harbour city.

The facility will ramp up fast: ILM executive creative director and Rob Bredow and executive Luke Hetherington today they’ll start hiring immediately “to complete post, digital and visual effects for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” As that flick is due to debut in late December 2019, jobs should flow fast.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian has even put her name on a pledge of “more than 500 local jobs”, albeit without a timeframe.

To help things along, the government of New South Wales offered a ten percent tax break and found $6 million, matched by ILM, “to establish training programs to build specialised post, digital and visual effects skills for local workers.”

The program is literally called “Jedi Academy”.

ILM’s arrival will mean a decent amount of tech spend to go with the skills development. Real estate types will get excited too, as the studio plans to find a new HQ beyond Fox Studios.

iTnews therefore advises bracing for more breathless speculation about tech precincts inhabited by a gaggle of cool vendors.