From Ride to Screen - a Conversation with nWave Pictures Co-Founder Ben Stassen

Following the release of his book "Ben Stassen - A Belgian Pixar" (in French), I spoke with the director / producer / entertainer in an old yet cozy Belgian bar, nestled in the heart of Brussels.

Ben Stassen’s journey started in Aubel decades ago, a small uneventful Belgian village where he grew up, without any will to go into the cinema industry.

It’s only when he started studying at KUL University in Flanders that he had the opportunity to first get his hands on audiovisual material.

“My Dutch wasn’t great at that time, and so I asked the teachers if I could do my assignments in video format, instead of writing. They agreed, and I was granted access to the university’s video laboratory, with a lot of material and possibilities. I got quite the liking for it, and so after my bachelor I applied for a Master in Audiovisual Arts at USC Cinematic Arts, and managed to get in. This is where my career in cinema started.”

After graduating from USC, Stassen traveled the world, filming tourist magazine and films, then live-action feature films with Croatian director Krsto Papić, before coming back to Belgium where he met Jean-Pierre Dauzin, founder of Little Big One VFX studio.

With him, Stassen produced his first animated film, Devil’s Mine Ride, a revolution in the world of ride and attraction films, which was at the time dominated by Disney’s Star Tours and Universal’s Back to the Future : the Ride. Produced with a small budget, and sold for a smaller price to theme parks, the film was a hit, and launched Stassen’s career in animation.

For Little Big One, a studio already facing bankruptcy, it was too late. But from its ashes, Ben Stassen and his colleagues Caroline Van Ishegem and Eric Dillens founded nWave and continued developing Ride films that achieved global success.

“At that time, nWave pictures was a studio with little public awareness but a big reputation among professionals. We calculated that each day, there were roughly 250,000 people seeing one of our films. Which was huge. And that led us to new steps in our development, including IMAX.”

Ben Stassen, despite being a Belgian filmmaker and producer, always kept his American way of thinking. Which meant always thinking ahead, keeping up with trends and anticipating the market changes. And, also, relying of sheer luck powered by a sense of adventure and boldness.

It’s probably because of this that he and his co-founders decided to fully fund their own first animated feature film, Fly Me to the Moon, entirely in 3D.

At that, digital 3D was in its early stages, confined to dedicated theaters and more common in the Attraction films. But for nWave, a studio already expert in the use of this technology, going to 3D was a big yet achievable challenge.

“It’s one of the only films we actually managed to finish way before its release. The production was done in September, and it didn’t come out until February the following year. But it was also a strategic decision, as there weren’t enough 3D-equipped theaters at that time. Luckily for us, Disney had announced Avatar for December 2009, and theaters were ramping up their projectors to match the needs of the film. In February, when we opened Fly Me to The Moon, there were 2,000 screens that could show our film around the world. By December, the number had tripled. And we were already working on our next film, A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures, which was the talk of the town in the Berlinale market that year.”

From then on, nWave expanded its production and went on to become one of Belgium’s - and Europe’s - biggest animation studios, with titles such as The House of Magic, The Queen’s Corgi or Robinson Crusoe. Films driven to a family audience, which did not always please the press but always met their target.

My first personal encounter with nWave was Robinson Crusoe, which opened Anima Festival in Brussels in 2016. And although the projection started a bit late because of technical issues - one does not simply install a 3D projection setting in a 80-year-old concert hall - and I clearly wasn’t the target audience, I did manage to enjoy the film. And Sammy’s Adventures are an all-time classic for my kids.

The same can be said about Bigfoot Family, the acclaimed sequel of The Song of Bigfoot. Bigfoot Family, which was released globally on Netflix during Covid, quickly became the biggest European animated success on the platform, bringing worldwide attention to nWave studios. A deal that, as the theme parks were closed, saved nWave with yet another mix between luck and clairvoyance from Stassen and his team.

Chickenhare, Stassen’s last film before he sold his nWave shares in 2022 and left the cinema business, was also well-received by global markets and is personally one of my favorites, with its quirky characters, colorful references and grand settings along with a great adventure.

Reflecting on his career and producing that kind of animation in Belgium, Stassen underlined that “even though we sometimes received funding from Flanders or Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, the budget for our films - which rounds up to 15-20 million euros - is far too much to rely on those fundings. They’re a nice way for the institution to show their support, but we can’t build our projects around them. What really helped us was the Belgian Tax Shelter, a mechanism we have been using on each of our productions to its full extense. We are also grateful to Wallimage and Screen.brussels, who helped us along the way, and to our distribution partner Belga in Belgium, who has been with us for a long time.”

What will the future bring to nWave? As Stassen now divides his life between sailing the high seas and managing his vineyard in Aubel, he shared his concerns with me about the future of animation in Belgium for his beloved studio.

“With streamers revenue dropping and budget being cut short, nWave’s adaptability will be challenged in the future. I hope the new owners will retain the model we built, with diverse sources of income and a flexibility that allowed us to navigate the shallow waters of European animation. There are a lot of great talents working at nWave, and I’m hoping they will be able to continue what we created.”

Upcoming projects for nWave include Chickenhare 2, and an intruiging Jean-Paul Gaultier collaboration scheduled for 2027.

In the meantime, French readers can delve into the adventures of Ben Stassen by discovering his book, put down into words by animation journalist Frederic Vancasserie, and published by Altura Editions.

As of me, I think I might go back to memory lane and travel the oceans with Sammy yet again, delighting my inner child with another of Belgium’s animated gems.

Have a great animated weekend.

Kevin