Digital D in Florida

John Textor goes for a more upbeat impression in yesterday's CNN interview:

"We like to think that if a film maker can dream it, we can put it on screen," said Chief Executive Officer John Textor. "There is no scenario that's too big for us to imagine or too complicated for us to deliver."

And there is no cliche too overused when you're striving to put your best foot forward. Especially after the deep hole you dug with an earlier performance.

"Free labor is much better than cheap labor."

Free labor or not, Digital Domain Media Group has its work cut out for it, diving into the deep end of the pool with feature animation. A handful of studios have been successful, and a lot more have crashed and burned trying to replicate the successes of John Lasseter, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Chris Meledandri. DD Florida's elephant feature might just be the ticket to the animation big time, but since the era of elephant features begin and end with Dumbo, and since Dumbo II and Tusker both ended up still-born twice (a neat trick when you consider the amount of time and effort that was put into them), Digital Domain's elephant movie has its work cut out for it. (You don't have a good story crew, you'll have challenging mountains to climb.)

So here's to DD's success with the pachyderm. And its lack of success using college interns for production.