As reported round and about:
... Paramount Animation is ready to make their first movie. At a recent investor meeting Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was quoted as saying, “We will be releasing a SpongeBob movie at the end of 2014, which will serve to start off or be one of our films that starts off our new animation effort.” ...
When David Stainton was still PA's top-kick, the word that filtered back to us was that the new feature animation unit was taking feature pitches from various sources.
My guess is, the unit without Stainton is still doing that, but in the meantime, they've decided to let the world know they're going with a proven commodity until an original property gets a greenlight.
It's interesting that the studio is touting Sponge Bob as it's first feature, since a Sponge Bob feature preceded it. But hey. If they want to steal Nickelodeon's thunder, it's all one big happy conglomerate, innit?
Paramount has been in and out of the feature animation business for a loong time. Among the feature projects -- outside of the DreamWorks Animation slate -- that the studio has financed and released:
Gulliver's Travels (1939)
Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)
Charlotte's Web (1973)
Heidi's Song (1982))
Bebe's Kids (1992)
The Rugrats Movie (1998)
Rugrats in Paris (2000)
The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002)
Rugrats Go Wild (2003)
Besides Disney, Paramount has been the movie company that's had a hand in animated features for decades and decades. Until now, however, they have always had the films done by third-party suppliers. (This goes back to the Fleischer Studio in the 1930s.)
How much of the new feature product they will ultimately create themselves, remains to be seen. Certainly Stainton's resignation is a bump in the road.
Add On: And YouTube has now taken the short down. Hardly a surprise.
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10 comments:
"Bump in the road?"
Not to worry. We've fixed that "Pot Hole."
not to highjack this post but the big cheeses at Imageworks just told us peons in the ABQ, New Mexico studio that they are shutting us down....so much for outsourcing!
You forgot "Charlotte's Web" (1973)!
Bummer, sorry Anon 2:23. That sucks.
not to highjack this post but the big cheeses at Imageworks just told us peons in the ABQ, New Mexico studio that they are shutting us down....so much for outsourcing!
Well, you know. The tax credits went away, so it's on to Vancouver!
(Also hear rumors about restructurings in Culver City ... which I tend to doubt.)
I've added "Charlotte's Web" and "Heidi's Song" to Paramount's list of animated pics.
To add to the list, we also have the big-screen adaptations of South Park and Beavis & Butt-head. And if you want to count it (I doubt Ralph Bakshi does), Cool World is another animated Paramount production.
Cool World might have had a bunch of drawings in it, but it's HARDLY "animated."
Didn't word go out that all the animation at SPI(not feature animation) is also getting shuttled up to Vancouver as well? I though that one went around a month or so ago.
Talking about SPI here? If you have any info on that Ryan, I'd love to see it. skaplan@animationguild.org
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