Have you seen “Sausage Party,” the latest movie by comedy star Seth Rogen and friends? I have, and I think that it’s a great film for the same reason that a lot of Seth Rogen’s films are great: because they’re not afraid to offend everyone. I think that this is my favorite film of his, even topping the superb “This is The End.” I watched this movie at the theater and thought, “I’m going to tell all my friends to go and see this movie because it’s awesome.” 

At least I would have done that, until I did some research on the movie. I remember reading an article about the film that said its budget was insanely low, and I was wondering why. This is especially true for an animated film that looks as good as some of the work that Pixar has done, which the movie is trying very hard to imitate. I found out that the budget was around $19 million. $19 million is way too low for the kind of cast this movie has, and the way that it looks, so I tried to look even more into this. I then found an article published by The Washington Post.

The headline for this article, which I will be quoting a few times, reads, “The working conditions for some ‘Sausage Party’ animators were pretty terrible.” This may not be a great headline for what the author is trying to say, but it gets the point across: that a lot of the people hired to animate the movie Sausage Party got screwed.

A quote by an uncredited supervisor on the project said, “The production costs were kept low because the directors would demand people work overtime for free. If you wouldn’t work late for free, your work would be assigned to someone who would stay late or come in on the weekend. Some artists were even threatened with termination for not staying late to hit a deadline.”

Many animators also went uncredited in the film’s credits, including the anonymous supervisor mentioned previously.

Stephanie Merry writes, “According to one animator, over the course of his 20 years in the industry, ‘Sausage Party’ was the first time his name didn’t appear in credits. But that was hardly the only issue. According to another artist who was credited, ‘the emphasis (in the comments section) is mostly on the credits, but that was just the last straw. I don’t think people would have complained or put it out so much if it wasn’t for the credits.’”

When executives at Nitrogen animation were asked about the problem they said, “The allegations are completely unfounded and the claims are without merit. Our production adhered to all overtime laws and regulations, as well as our contractual obligations with our artists.”

There is a lot more that is written in The Washington Post article, so I urge you to read that if this topic sounds the slightest bit interesting to you. I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone after finding out about the way that the workers were treated. If you want to go and see a movie, see something else. I know I will.

Respond to Jacob at [email protected]