Phil Tippett closes his Berkeley studio after nearly 40 years

Phil Tippett closed the Berkeley, California facility of Tippett Studio in late August 2026, holding a three-day liquidation auction (August 28-30) of stop-motion models, cameras and effects gear -- including Holochess models from Star Wars and an AT-AT model from The Empire Strikes Back. The closure follows a 2024 acquisition of the studio by the Indian VFX company PhantomFX and a subsequent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Tippett told CBS News he is not retiring: "I will die with my sword in my hand... We had almost a 40-year run. It was a good run." He described selling off decades of accumulated work as one of "a lot of painful decisions," while keeping his Oscars.

Tippett Studio's Toronto office remains active and, per the company, is in production on a large feature film; the Berkeley closure ends the studio's physical footprint rather than the studio itself. Founded by Tippett after his creature and go-motion work on the original Star Wars trilogy, RoboCop, Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers, the studio's most personal production was Mad God (2021), Tippett's own stop-motion feature, three decades in the making and self-financed for much of that time.