Clay Kaytis

Clay Kaytis made his film directing debut for Rovio Animation and Sony Pictures with The Angry Birds Movie (2016). Based on the number-one app of all time, the film grossed $352M worldwide and was Sony's #1 film of 2016. He followed this with The Christmas Chronicles (2018), which was Kaytis' first live-action film. In its first week of release on Netflix, the Kurt Russell starring film was viewed over 20,000,000 times. Kaytis developed his talent as a film maker at Walt Disney Animation Studios, starting as an intern in the Talent Development Program in 1994. Kaytis animated on hand-drawn films including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, The Emperor's New Groove and Treasure Planet. In 2004, Kaytis transitioned to CG animation to animate on Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He was quickly promoted to Supervising Animator on Rhino, the hamster, in Bolt. For his work developing Rhino for the screen, Kaytis was awarded a U.S. Patent an