Ben Stassen

Stassen's career didn't start with animated features — it started with ride films. After founding nWave Pictures in 1994, he produced CGI ride-film content, including Devils Mine, which the TMDB biography describes as groundbreaking in that niche format (TMDB). Not a glamorous entry point, maybe, but it was technically demanding work that clearly sharpened his instincts for immersive, visceral filmmaking. By 1997 he'd shifted focus toward large-format productions designed for IMAX theaters — and he wasn't interested in the genre's default mode of mixing education with spectacle. Stassen's films, including Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun and Alien Adventure, were aimed squarely at entertainment (TMDB). That's a harder sell than it sounds in a venue where audiences half-expect a nature documentary. As IMAX theaters began supporting stereoscopic 3-D in the late 1990s, Stassen moved fast — directing Encounter in the Third Dimension and then Haunted Castle, the latter of which triggered an open conflict with IMAX Corporation itself. They warned exhibitors. They called the film degrading to the brand. The film got repackaged around that controversy and became a major success (TMDB). Hard to say if Stassen planned the PR fallout, but it worked. The logical next step — feature-length animation — came with Fly Me to the Moon, which hit North American screens on August 15, 2008, exclusively in 3-D across both standard multiplexes and IMAX venues (TMDB). It was among the earlier wide-release animated features committed entirely to the 3-D format, and it demonstrated that Stassen's production infrastructure at nWave could scale up from short-format spectacle to a full theatrical narrative. The film marked a real inflection point in his career arc, establishing him as a producer-director who could operate in the mainstream animated feature space — not just the specialty large-format world he'd built his reputation in.