One More French Feature

As I said yesterday, the conglomerates and effects houses are clawing their way into animation. But it's not just stateside multi-nationals:

High profile French animation artist Guillaume Ivernel is onboard to direct a 3D animated sci-fi thriller, "Soul Man," his follow-up to "Dragon Hunters."

Budgeted at an ambitious $45 million, the English-language "Soul Man" is backed by Denis Auboyer's CMC, one of Gaul's largest technical providers ...

This global surge of production reminds me of nothing so much as the animation boom from the mid-nineties. Except this time, the boom is on steroids, not totally centered in Southern California, and lots of companies beside Disney are being successful at it. Fifteen years ago, a lot of the newbie challengers crashed and burned. (Turner Feature Animation, Fox Feature Animation, Hanna Barbera's feature division, all of them came and went inside of forty-eight months.)

The difference now is c.g.i., 3-d and a talent pool that is a hell of a lot deeper than it was in 1994, despite the boom and bust cycles the business has since gone through. And now Europe is getting into the act in significant ways.