Life at the SPA

Open Season, Sony Pictures Animation's first cgi animated feature, is pretty well completed.... ...and Sony Pictures Imageworks -- a different Sony Company -- did the production work. A SPA employee told me: "Sony Imageworks animated the feature pretty fast without a lot of retakes because SPI's deal with SPA was to do it for a price. And that meant that SPI tried to minimize redos. Otherwise SPI wouldn't make much money on the deal. But the picture looks good." The picture is also reputed to be quite entertaining. Surf's Up, an epic about surfing penquins, is the next feature on SPA's schedule. Hotel Transylvania, another feature, has recently been put into development and is percolating along. The project with a question mark next to it is Cloudy with Meatballs. The last story pass was, apparently, less than totally successful with SPA execs, and now the picture's story crew is working on other things as a new Meatballs script is being readied. Story people tell me they were...ahm...downhearted when the second pair of Meatballs directors were let go a few months back, as the directors were well- liked. Staffers speculate that Transylvania might end up being moved up in the rotation ahead of Meatballs. Time will tell.