WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko is an 11-minute animated short inspired by the John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 50-year-old classic song Happy Xmas (War Is Over). The film is written and directed by 20-year Pixar alum and Oscar®-nominee, Dave Mullins and Produced by Golden Globe®-Nominee, Brad Booker. Sean Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono serve as Executive Producers. Animation was produced by Peter Jackson’s Wētā FX using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. The score was composed by 15-time Oscar®-nominated, Thomas Newman.
The film has been created as a co-production of Lenono Music, ElectroLeague, Lightstorm Entertainment, WētāFX and Epic Games.
It won the 2024 Academy Award (Oscar) and the ANNIE Award for Best Animated Short. Special thanks to our collaborators – The Beatles, Elton John, Mark Ronson, Chess.com, Cumulus Media, WētāFX, Lightstorm Entertainment, Unreal Engine, War Child, UMR, UMe, UMG, Penguin Random House.
Set in an alternate WWI reality where a senseless war rages on, two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict play a game of chess. A heroic carrier pigeon delivers the soldiers’ chess moves over the battlefield as the fighting escalates. Neither soldier knows his opponent as the game and the war builds to its climatic final move. Whoever wins the game, one thing is for certain: there are no winners in war.
ElectroLeague is a real-time animation studio based in Los Angeles.
We specialize in developing a diverse slate of edgy, aged-up, animated content for films, series, games, emerging technologies, live experiential installations, and published books. Each of our intellectual properties are designed with a video game component in mind, ensuring that assets are built correctly the first time and used “in-engine” to create a universe that spans multiple platforms.
Iterate early. Iterate often.
At ElectroLeague, great storytelling is the foundation of everything we create. Our core philosophy emphasizes capturing scripts on a performance capture stage, bypassing traditional storyboarding for a more immediate and cost-effective workflow. This allows us to get our reels into editorial much earlier, providing more opportunities to iterate and elevate the story.
https://www.electroleague.com/