Friday, November 10, 2006

What Do the Weinsteins Know That Others Don't?

Animation Magazine reports on how the Weinstein Company is snapping up foreign animated features left and right. Why would the Weinsteins do this, if there is this horrible glut of animation?...

Maybe because the Weinstein brothers know that there is gold in animation, particularly on the home video side. (Like, if you bring the animation in for a relatively inexpensive price, you can sell an awful lot of silver disks and open your own mint.)

As Animation Magazine notes, the Weinstein Co. is co-financing three direct-to-video cgi features entitled "Unstable Fables." The budgets for these films are in the $3-4 million range. Prana Animation in India is doing the animation, and the pre-production work (boards, designs, keys) is being created right here in Hollywood. (Non-union so far. But done here.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

excuse my ignorance, and assuming the $3-4 million animated films are going to be CG... What do you mean the pre-production "keys" are being done in Hollywood? Are you talking color keys, keyframes or some other keys?

Anonymous said...

What do the Weinsteins know that others don't? Not much, except if you've got the bucks you can make some nice money if you produce animation on the cheap.

Since I've been around this biz, producing "quick and dirty" always brings in easy money. That is -- if you've the money to invest. And, this is a good thing for animation -- if you happen to work in India.

I would imagine preproduction simply means, design, art direction and models.

Anonymous said...

Floyd has it right. But let's include scripts and production boards along with the others.

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