The Race Track Gets MORE Crowded

Yet another animated movie rolls down the straight-away.

Seth Green, Dakota Fanning 3D Animated Movie ‘Yellowbird’ Acquired by Wrekin Hill

In a seven-figure deal, Wrekin Hill Entertainment has acquired all North American rights to Christian De Vita’s 3D animated feature “Yellowbird” from TeamTO and Haut & Court, the company announced Monday.

Based on fantastic artwork by Benjamin Renner (“Ernest and Celestine”), “Yellowbird” features the voices of Seth Green, Dakota Fanning, Danny Glover, Elliott Gould, Jim Rash and Christine Baranski.

Antoine Barraud and Guilhem Lesaffre wrote the currently-in-production movie with Cory Edwards (“Hoodwinked”), and Wrekin Hill will release the film in theaters this fall. ...

Producing animated features continues to be a growth industry. There's your theatrical release, your distribution via little silver disks, streaming, tv syndication and merchandise tie-ins. We must never forget the endless possibilities of games and plastic action figures and stuffed toys, not to mention phone apps and video games.

You make a long-form cartoon that clicks at the box office, and the cash streams are plentiful. But it ain't like the profitability thingie is a secret ...

... It was a close contest but sci-fi/fantasy films came in second in the research firm’s analysis of different films’ financial performance in the decade from 2002 through 2011. ... Judged just by genre, average revenues for the decade’s 101 animated films ran 108.4% ahead of costs. DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek 2 led the category with a 462% margin. ...

That was as of 2012. It's only gotten more lucrative since.