Surf's Up Once More

For those who don't recall, Surf's Up was Sony Pictures Animation's second animated feature, and a movie that, by and large, received glowing reviews. It opened at #4 at the box office in June 2007 and went on to gross $58,867,694 in North America, and $90,176,819 in the rest of the world. (The total take was $149,044,513).

Chris Buck and Ash Brannon helmed the original. Mr. Buck subsequently returned to Disney and co-directed Frozen. Mr. Brannon has since directed Rock Dog, scheduled for American release in early 2017.

Henry Yu the sequel Surf's Up 2: Wavemania, coming in early 2017. Today a short trailer for the feature dropped:



The first picture was produced in Culver City, California. The second was done by CG studio Rainmaker Entertainment, Inc. located in Vancouver, Canada. There are a lot of CG animation and visual effects facilities in Vancouver, due to large amounts of Free Money being handed out by the provincial government. (The Free Money is working.

Most of our fine entertainment conglomerates are in Vancouver and other Canadian provinces, vacuuming up cash as they do live-action productions, animated productions, and loads of visual effects. This is now the way the game is played: locate a generous subsidy, go and slurp it down.

Welcome to the brave new world of Free Enterprise.