Thursday, November 14, 2013

Below the Radar

The landscape beyond Madagascar, Toy story, and the rest of America's animated hits.

Proving there is a solid second-tier market for children's 3D animated movies beyond the Pixar/DreamWorks/Blue Sky axis, Germany's Studio 100 has closed multiple territory deals for its kids titles Maya The Bee and Blinky Bill. ...

“The sales illustrate the continuous popularity of well-known and much-loved brands and the rising demand for great family entertainment,” said Studio 100 Managing Director Patrick Elmendorff.

The ongoing theme around the globe is that the market for animation continues to grow. If you can create a halfway decent animated feature on a reasonable budget, you don't have to be a subsidiary of a big entertainment conglomerate, you don't have to be a talent from Cal Arts.

With some well-loved characters and a credible animation studio, you can (as Darryl Zanuck used to say) release your movie and then "Open your own mint." Just be sure you don't blow through $200 million in the process.

There is plenty of room, apparently, for animation producers not named Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar and Blue Sky Studios. Who would have thunk it?

1 comments:

Greg Manwaring said...

Oh, to be sure. A decent product sold to 100-200 countries adds up quick. The films being made over here are generally made for less than $10 million. The thing I notice most is that these Producers are pretty accepting that their films won't be shown in the U.S. - so they don't even attempt to compete. Also, most of the money to make these films is government money. There are various film funds in Germany alone to acquire most of the money for the lower budget films, and then they team up with production companies from the other european nations, who also use government money, until they have enough to cover the budget.

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