Your End-of-Week Reading List

More links of animation as we hit the weekend.

There will be less green (apparently) for the ogre and his parent studio.

Lew Coleman, chief financial officer for DreamWorks Animation, said at an investor conference in Chicago on Thursday that the company's second-quarter earnings per share likely will be "meaningfully below" a year earlier because of the domestic box office performance of "Shrek Forever After" and lower home video sales ...

Goldman Sachs ... downgrad[ed] its rating on DreamWorks Animation's shares to "neutral" from "buy." Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung ... lowered her estimate for "Shrek" domestic box office sales to $250 million from $325 million.

$250 millon. Sounds like 4X opening weekend earnings to us ...

And speaking of box office grosses and accompanying factoids:

Half of Pixar's movies have made five times as much at the box office as they cost to produce ...

Variety summarizes the recently-wrapped Annecy festivities:

... [T]he biggest queues in Annecy's Work in Progress strand were for "The Suicide Shop," presented by French helmer Patrice Leconte.

An animated musical feature, employing 2D cutout animation, "Shop" looked like a moving children's pop-up book -- a quaint effect suited to a comedy set in a city of suicides.

Pixar drew attention for its world preem of 3D short "Day and Night," featuring two pudgy fellows, Day and Night, who argue their respective virtues. Helmed by Teddy Newton ... it went over gangbusters at a Pixar presentation ....

India's Business Standard reports on a variety of animation projects happening on the the sub-continent.

... Crest Animation Studios, a public-listed animation company in India in association with Lionsgate has completed Alpha and Omega — Asia’s first 3D stereoscopic (which enhances the illusion of depth) movie to go to Hollywood. It is set to release in over 3,000 screens worldwide later this year.

Noah Fogelson, chief operating officer, Crest Animation Productions, Burbank, California, says: “Alpha was produced by Crest in both our US and Indian facilities, with pre-production (development, story boarding, animatics, voice recording, designs) and post-production done in Los Angeles and the animation (models, rigs, animation, colour, lighting, texturing, rendering, compositing, etc) done at our Mumbai facility ..."

Everybody around here has been focused on the Tangled trailer, but forget that. There's another trailer out there to excite us.

... Now it is just in time for the next generation to learn the Smurf's language and characteristics, it is being brought to us in 3D in a featured [sic] film. The teaser trailer has been released giving us a taste of what's coming. All our favourites will return even old Gargamel their idiotic evil enemy is there. ...

John Lasseter clarifies that icky "sequel" conundrum:

Heat Vision: How did you come to do a “Toy Story 3”?

Lasseter: I’ve wanted to do a “Toy Story 3” since 1999. But there was a pretty well-known thing where our deal with Disney at that time said we have five pictures to do for Disney -- but sequels did not count. So it was one of those things where we said let’s do original movies so we can get these five done. But I always wanted to do “Toy Story 3.”

So thank goodness that four years ago Disney bought Pixar and merged the companies together. And we got control of all of our characters back. (Disney chief) Bob Iger said, “We want to do sequels, but we want to do it with you.” And we were adamant ... the reason why Pixar does a sequel is we've found a great story. That's the only reason why we'll do a sequel. Not just to make money ...

(You see? If it weren't for that "sequels don't count as one of its five required movies" clause in the contract Pixar execs signed, you would have seen this Toy Story 3 feature way sooner ...)

The L.A. Times' Richard Verrier writes about the Pres Aid art auction (pictured above) upcoming at the TAG building on Sunday:

On Sunday, more than 160 pieces of artwork donated by some of the best-known animators in the industry will be up for sale in a charity auction held at the Animation Guild building at 1105 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank.

The pieces include original drawings, sketches and paintings from such animators as Glen Keane ("Pocahontas"), Nick Park ("Wallace and Gromit"), Andreas Deja ("Aladdin") and Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney’s famed “Nine Old Men.” ...

Have a joyous Friday night and Sunday. (Hopefully we'll see you on Dad's Day, at the auction.)