Thursday, September 03, 2009

Overseas Box Office Steamroller

Animated product continues to rake in the big bucks across the oceans:

Studios say the increase at the foreign B.O. is especially noteworthy considering that exchange rates no longer favor American companies, as they did before last fall's economic collapse.

Heading into the season, no one in Hollywood would have guessed that 20th Century Fox's 3-D toon "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" would finish the summer No. 1 at the international B.O., cuming some $640 million through Aug. 31 and even besting "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" ($613 million).

... The 3-D headlines didn't stop with "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," however. Disney/Pixar's 3-D toon "Up," which still has a substantial number of territories in which to open, has grossed an impressive $156.6 million to date. Disney's 3-D toon "G-Force," the studio's mid-range summer entry, has cumed a healthy $67 million overseas ...

Then there is Transformers 2, another (partially animated) cartoon that cleaned up around the world. (The woods seem to be full of them.)

My take-away from animation's continuing rampage across theatrical marketplaces is that the girls and boys who front the money to create it will be making more features which are chockablock with funny animals and quirky human beings.

Naturally enough, they'll be hiring people who know how to do it. And the odds are good that a major portion of that work will be done stateside, since (so far) foreign-produced features haven't made the bushel baskets of cash multi-national conglomerates desire.

Guess we'll see how close to future reality I turn out to be.

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