Toronto, Canada-based Tangent Animation has signed an exclusive deal with The Nut Job director Peter Lepeniotis to write and develop three animated feature films.

Lepeniotis’ 2014 animated feature film The Nut Job was adapted from his original animated short Surly Squirrel. The franchise also includes The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, which was released this summer. He recently finished directing Vanguard Animation’s Gnome Alone, which was released last week in the US. He also worked on the 1995 live-action/computer animated film Casper before working at Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Feature Animation as an animator for Toy Story 2 and Fantasia 2000.

Tangent Animation opened in 2014 and released its first feature, Ozzy, in 2016. It’s also currently producing a film project with Chinese multimedia company Baozou, which is slated for a 2018 release.