Michael Rose
Michael Rose is the joint CEO and co-founder of Magic Light Pictures, one of the UK’s leading entertainment companies which makes high-quality and imaginative content for audiences, families and children worldwide.
Magic Light is renowned for its BBC One Christmas animated specials based on the best-selling books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, which have won countless prestigious awards and been screened across the globe to huge popular and critical acclaim.
Recent Magic Light productions include BBC One Christmas animated specials: The Smeds and The Smoos, Superworm, Zog and the Flying Doctors; double BAFTA winner The Snail and the Whale; Emmy winning Zog; Oscar nominated and BAFTA winning Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes; Stick Man; Oscar nominated and BAFTA winning Room on the Broom. A second season of Magic Light’s first animated preschool property Pip and Posy has just launched (104 x 7’), a delightful series revolving around the world of play based on the books by Axel Scheffler. Currently in production is festive animated special Tabby McTat, another Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler collaboration, a story set on the streets of London about the warm and wonderful friendship between a musical cat and a talented busker called Fred, voiced by Jodie Whittaker, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísú and Rob Brydon.
Prior to forming Magic Light, Michael headed up the feature film division of UK studio Aardman Animations. He was executive producer of their animated features Chicken Run and the Oscar and BAFTA winning Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit. He also produced Nick Park’s 1995 Oscar winning Wallace and Gromit film, A Close Shave. Before joining Aardman in 1994, Michael was a buyer at Channel Four Television. He started his career programming art house cinemas in Plymouth and Bristol.