Wednesday, February 17, 2010

March of New TeeVee Animation

The last few months, various conglomerates and law firms have phoned in to ask about contracts for new animated shows. (Had one today, in fact.)

Funny how companies have figured out that animation is cost effective and, as an added bonus, has a dandy commercial shelf life. And that adults like it too. The media is apparently picking up on the trend:

HBO launches The Ricky Gervais Show and the second season of The Life & Times of Tim on Friday (9 and 9:30 p.m. ET/PT), and FX recently introduced Archer (tonight, 10 ET/PT). They join Comedy Central's South Park, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block and Fox's Sunday lineup with offerings aimed more at grown-ups. ...

Casey Bloys, who oversees comedy at HBO, says the pay-cable network isn't specifically trying to launch animation. "What we're looking for are interesting shows. (The creators') point of view was the most important thing." ...

On the business side, animation is easy to dub for international audiences and it performs well in DVD sales, says Modi Wiczyk of Media Rights Capital, which produces Tim and Gervais. Quality animation can now be made "at a basic-cable price," too, Landgraf says.

The animation field is growing, Wiczyk says. "Twenty to 30 years ago, there wasn't a huge bench of people who wanted to make animated comedies. Now, this genre is attracting such bright talent."...

Thirty years ago, there weren't a jillion cable networks. We had three big broadcast companies, and we had low-rent syndicated shows appearing on the independent teevee channels sprinkled across the air waves. That, boys and girls, was pretty much it. Now, however, there's a lot more time to fill, and it can't all be talk and reality shows.

So animation is getting a close look by the multi-nationals because it travels well and makes money. And on our end, we're getting inquiries from various entities about new contracts. But we're telling the smart operators who ask about covering "just the writers" some sad news:

"Sorry, TAG isn't serving as a prophylactic against the Writers Guild of America (west). You want to cover your six writers to the exclusion of directors, storyboard artists, designers and animators, you can't do it with a contract from the Animation Guild, because we won't sign that kind of a deal."

It's pretty much all or nothing, the way we see it. In the next few weeks, we hope to have some newer studios signed to contracts, but the congloms' latest subsidiaries and subcontractors are going to have to decide if they want to cover the whole animated enchilada. Because covering a small slice of it just isn't going to work.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be nice to see an animated drama mini-series on HBO. Not that it couldn't have humour, but a well written, beautifully designed and animated show--even if on a tight budget--that was more than just a half hour comedy would be great.

Anonymous said...

"You want to cover your six writers to the exclusion of directors, storyboard artists, designers and animators, you can't do it with a contract from the Animation Guild, because we won't sign that kind of a deal."

wga would gladly take that deal. sad but true.

Steve Hulett said...

Everybody marches to their own drum.

My 2 Cents said...

Unfortunately, those requests you are getting reflects the current industry "conventional wisdom" regarding "adult" animation; writing and concept are everything. These shows are basically illustrated scripts. That's the downside to the success of The Simpsons and the other Fox style prime-time shows. I can't tell you how many times as a board artist working on one of these shows I was cautioned not to make the poses too "cartoony." It might spoil the formula; more animation is "childish"- less animation is more "adult." It's nonsense, of course. Name a quality, adult oriented show that failed BECAUSE it was too "animated." I can't either.

Steve, the next time one of these smart-asses asks you if you want to set up an animation contract without union artists, ask them if they are doing any live action series without SAG actors.

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to throw in a congrats to the folks down at Wildbrain that are doing "The Ricky Gervais Show". Well done taking a simple concept and taking it to the limit. I mean, how often do you get to animate a monkey snorting coke off a hooker's ass in this business?

...

Now that Ralph Bakshi's retired, I mean.

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