A Foreign Animated Feature

It's apparent that Frozen is going to clean up at the global box office, but what about animated features (of which there are many) nor created by Diz Co., DreamWorks, or Illumination Entertainment? For instance this candidate:

... French animation House of Magic is set to hit South Korean theaters earlier than other territories around the world. The family film by the makers of Sammy's [3-D] Adventures will open here on Dec. 24, a day before it hits French cinemas on Christmas Day.

nWaves Pictures has decided on the early release due to the local success of its previous films. Sammy's Adventures 2 brought in two million admissions, which is a considerable box office score for an animation or let alone family film in Korea ...

The report above is a wee bit off the mark. House of Magic was made by nWave Studios, which is, en actualement, situated in Brussels. But nWS is affiliated with Paris-based Studio Canal, so maybe that's where the confusion lies. Studio Canal has been around for twenty-six years as an international distributor and film producer, and used to own a chunk of Universal.

The company currently owns the third-largest film library in the world, so it's hardly surprising that it's moving into animated features.

In 2008, nWave Studios made its first full-length CG cartoon Fly Me to the Moon, which grossed $50 million across the globe. In 2011, nWave negotiated a co-production, co-financing and worldwide distribution deal for four new feature-length 3D animated movies with Studio Canal.

There's a number of foreign cartoon features that gross anywhere from $50-$100+ million in world markets. When the features have production budgets of $20 or $25 million, then they're making profits on the theatrical runs. And of course, the cartoons have long shelf lives afterwards on the t.v. and the little silver disks, providing steady cash flows.

If you can produce these features for the right price, there's serious coin to be made. And there's always the alluring possibility that a break-out hit will get made. (If Jeffrey Katzneberg and Chris Meledandri can do it, why not us?)