A tribute to the late Marty Murphy, who passed away August 26, will be held tomorrow (Friday, September 25) at 1 pm.
The tribute will take place at Pantomime Pictures, 12144 Riverside Drive in Valley Village (1 block west of Laurel Canyon).
The organizers say this will be a "pot luck" affair, and they ask guests to bring beer, wine or soft drinks. For further information, contact Jane Baer at (818) 989-1533.
Click here to read entire postWarren Buffett, who I'm told knows something about investing and businesses, talks about See's Candy, the House of Mouse, and building wide moats to increase market share.
(His observations on Disney begin at 3:46 ...)
Warren gave this talk in 1998 at the University of Florida.
One of the most telling parts of his answer comes right at the end of this segment, where Mr. Buffett says if a See's Candy clerk snarls at a customer, that creates a negative impression for See's in the customer's head, and the "protective moat" for See's candy business has just been narrowed.
And I flashed on Disney Animation during this period. The animation department had started on a downslope, turning out animated features that fewer and fewer people wanted to see. (The era of Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Lion King was behind it.)
The Disney moat was being narrowed ... while the new studio Pixar was widening its water barrier ... because of the quality of product each studio was turning out. This trend continued until Disney CEO Eisner departed the company when Disney stock flatlined and Roy Disney campaigned for Eisner's ouster; soon thereafter, Disney's new chief bought Pixar for $7.5 billion.
Funny how the quality of a handful of animated features can widen and narrow moats, propel (or sink) careers and create fortunes. Brand names, even well-known ones, are fragile things.
Click here to read entire postSince we got into this flick down below, there's this:
The new digital restoration of "Oz" is as close as one can get to the experience of seeing the classic in theaters 70 years ago ...
“In finding the 1939 nitrate Technicolor print, we got a different look for the film than we previously had,” says Ned Price, vice president of mastering at Warner Bros. Technicolor Operations.
“It had much more midrange colors,” says Price. “It was no so contrasty and you could see much more into the shadow detail. It was less primary color. It was more earth tones and the color didn’t pop as we had it made it previously. It was very colorful but not as colorful as the negative lead us to believe.”
... [F]or the first time, viewers can see more detail on Toto, the Wicked Witch’s hairy mole, the Tin Man’s rivet in the middle of his brow and Dorothy’s acne.
A looong time ago, I saw a nitrate print of Oz at the Nuart theater.
I had never seen it on a big, silver screen. And what hit me about the film when viewing it in a large format instead of on a 24 or 27 inch television?
"Hey. Those are painted flats back there! They shot this thing on a sound stage!"
The stage-bound reality of The Wizard of Oz comes through strongly when the image is a couple of stories high. Doesn't lessen the entertainment value of the film. You just become way more aware of how it was made, because it's all up there bigger than life.
So happy birthday, Dorothy. And your little pimples too.
Click here to read entire postToday was my Disney Animation Studio day, and I got a pretty good turnout for the 401(k) enrollment meeting. (Attitudes change when stock markets revive.)
Then I went upstairs and talked to various animation staffers, who told me:
"They called us all in and said, 'Now that the picture [The Princess and the Frog] is done, we're cutting your weekly pay some more.' ..."
"People around here aren't happy about it, but what do you do? This is a paycut on top of the one we already had with the 45-hour week thing. Everybody's just kind of numb and resigned. But the company's got to keep paying Bob Iger his $51 million, I guess ..."
I listened to the complaints and thought: "What's wrong with these people? Don't they know there's a recession on? They should be glad they have a freaking job ..."
I would go on, but I'm running out of management-type cliches. I'm sure that the top echelons of Disney Co. have tightened their belts as well. (Not. Except, of course, for Dick Cook ...)
What the above quotes refer to is newer pay cuts that were given to some of Disney Feature's staff a short time ago. (I didn't hear about it until today.) The atmosphere at DAS is not cheery, but everybody knows that the 2009 marketplace is not ablaze with profit-sharing and salary increases.
"Numb and resigned." That about covers it.
(Happily, Diz Co. is still making at least some money from animation ...)
Click here to read entire postI trucked around to three studios today, in my never-ending enrollment of TAG members to the TAG 401(k) Plan.
Over at Disney Toons Studio, they are hard at work on various feature-length sequels to the first Tinker Bell, released last year.
"The second Tinker Bell comes out next month, and I saw 30% of the 3rd Tink. The animators in India are getting better, the animation is less clunky. We're still doing some story changes on number three."
"Story work is going on with the fourth one, and there's story ideas getting kicked around for the next series [these are dvd features with a new set of characters that are so far unannounced -- Hulett]."
A week or so back, John Lasseter announced the fifth Tinker Bell will go into work, but Toons staff tells me there are going to be more features starring the winged sprite than that.
Meanwhile, the slow ramp-up for the next series of Toons' feature 'toons continues.
To review: Disney Toons and Disney Television Animation are separate Disney units reporting to different Disney divisions (Lasseter/Catmull call the shots at Toons; the Disney Channel runs Disney Television Animation.) At the Sonora building, Toons is humming up on the second floor, as busy as I've seen it.
On the first floor, lots of cubicles are empty as a few artists work on storybook for Jake and the Pirates, and a few more artists create art and boards for a new pilot. Inspector Oso, starting work on a new season, has crew trickling back to work, but there are big sections of the first floor workspace that remain quiet. (To be fair, Disney TV has other shows in the Frank Wells Building on the main lot.)
Diz TVA should be gaining artists over the next couple of months as new and returning shows go into full production.
The final stop of the day was over at Film Roman/Starz Media, where there is nothing new to report on the Marvel of Yellow Family shows being produced in the building.
Other than, artists are still working on all of them.
Click here to read entire postThe on-going tale of the visual effects crew that got stiffed by their employer continues with this letter from Dave Rand to a lawyer involved in the case:
Dear L:
First of all I am delighted that we will be able to speak of this following the settlement as it is my experience that this is usually not the case in these types of "negotiations" and from your letter I see you must have negotiated this for us..THANKYOU! I do not agree with the amount but that was a group decision as the law in Canada only guarantees $2,000 dollars per employee.
I completely understand your point of view as you are a lawyer and the law dictates your stance as it should. I'm not sure what you as in individual may think of this but I do believe if you had been in our shoes during the robbery, and had to explain it to your mortgage banker, and your wife and children right before Christmas, you may have formed some very strong opinions about the situation and the laws surrounding it as most of us did.
What happened to us was a crime, followed by a cover up. I believe, and have been told by the former management of Meteor, that the actions were premeditated. The employees were used because the current law allows it and it was the cheaper route. I do not agree with that law and because it is legal for me to speak about it I took advantage of the leverage provided by every opportunity to get the story attached, as I, and most of our group believed, it needed to be told. Discovery and Evergreen had no problem whatsoever using the law to their advantage as well.
They also were able to keep it out of the press in the US because The Discovery Channel, being part of Discovery Communications (worth over 6 billion at the time) have a very influential advertising budget. So we needed to fight them on every front possible. We needed this to be tried in the court of public opinion, the same public they rely on for their lively hood.
I have not met an artist or other employee today who does not know about our case, the usual comment is that they can not believe it even happened, and is still going on. Since our story was told, artists are more inclined to walk off the job, most recently with the Orphanage and Slash fx here in the states. The Animation Guild for all of North America has taken notice and are using our story to protect their members and future members from this abuse.
I believe this pressure actually helped our case as Discovery and Evergreen, like all crooks, would rather commit their crime under cover of night and not in broad daylight. Being a family network the word can not get out that they robbed families right before Christmas...so I had no problem facilitating the release of that fact in an honest and legal way.
As for some precedent regarding negotiations with talent and the press just google "writers strike negotiations and news coverage" there's 241,000 pages of links. I believe one day you'll see similar pages concerning fx artists as the single common thread that all top grossing films have for the last 17 yrs is stunning digital imagery.
I understand bankruptcy laws and their importance to the economy. I also understand those that abuse them, this was the latter. This was abuse. Had there been profits Discovery would have taken their cut for sure. We did not sign up to take part in their risk and believed their promise to pay. Meteor was always run like a family and that trust was abused also.
As for what you call the "lesson" I disagree completely, the only lesson from this is that when the paycheck stops, the work stops, that is the only leverage you have and the only time you'll have it, as further demonstrated by our case. Since Canada only legally obligates employer to $2,000, it's best to leave immediately.
The rest of the talent in the entertainment world went through this decades ago and it is the sole reason strong unions were formed...they don't care about insurances...their members walk when the money stops and the press does plenty of coverage both during the stirkes and during the negotiations.
In the wake of this and thanks to Eric's efforts a website went up that got us organized or we would have been forced to accept the first offer. We were all spread around the globe making it very difficult to bring the group together in time without this tool. Discovery, Evergreen, and the Insurance Company were using the law to continue to exploit us but they were only stopped by our organization.
In closing I'd like to personally thank you for all your efforts on our behalf. I need to once again make it clear I will not sign any type of release or gag order that dissallows me from speaking of this or the case in any way. I'd rather they keep all of my $12,000. To me it will be more satisfying to take part in making a change instead of going with the flow, to me it would be worth every penny.
Sincerely
Dave Rand
People go on working for companies that stop paying them for a variety of reasons:
A) Fear of ticking off the boss,
B) Desire to do quality, professional work, no matter how awful the circumstances,
C) Fear of being "blacklisted",
D) Desire to support the "Family"/"Team".
Companies, dear readers, are not above bullying, cajoling and manipulating employees, especially when they run out of cash and want to keep a project going.
Companies even, on occasion, start breaking laws and arm-twisting the people who work for them to "go along" with breaking laws too. (Things like hourly wage regulations, minimum wage laws, minor items like that.)
But here's what employees have to train themselves to do:
Refuse to work for a company that isn't paying. When there is no paycheck, get up from your desk, walk out, and don't look back.
AND REPORT THE BASTARDS TO THE NEAREST CITY, STATE OR FEDERAL AGENCY.
You might be in the business for love. But you're not in it for charity. You want to work for free, go work for yourself, not some dink operation which is making money off your sweat and skill.
Click here to read entire postApparently Jack Kirby's estate isn't going to take it anymore.
The heirs of Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, The Silver Surfer and Thor and have sent notices terminating copyright to publishers Marvel and Disney, as well as film studios that have made movies and TV shows based on characters he created or co-created, including Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures ...
Such claims, if found valid, would begin from 2014 and, as always, its worth noting that Marvel/Disney will still own the trademarks of the characters in comics, and the studios in movies.
As the L.A. Times and the Nikkster note:
The children of Kirby, who died in 1994, are being represented by Los Angeles law firm Toberoff & Associates, which has represented the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel in a similar claim against Warner Bros.
It's always seemed weird to me that companies are considered "people" who can hold copyrights, have rights of speech, rights of privacy, etc.. But then we live in an age where companies are all. Even if they don't hold the pencil or create the characters.
There's a reason the U.S. of A. is known as "our charming corporatist state." The guvmint is all about the care and feeding of our fine, transnational corporations.
Click here to read entire postA bunch of Warner Bros. Animation employees were asking for 401(k) forms when I was there today, so maybe the economy's coming back a little. (Two months ago, nobody was interested in putting money into a 401(k) Plan: "You crazy? I've got bills to pay off, I'm not gonna lose money in the stock market ...")
Moods have changed. But then so has WBA. It's busier than I've seen it in years ...
Besides the announced shows now in work (Laff Riot/Looney Tunes, Batman, Scooby Doo), and the super hero direct-to-video features, the studio is developing shorts with some of the old characters. I asked one of the Laff Riot creators about the shows he's working on, and he said:
"There are two shows back, and they're funny. They look good. I hope the writers keep it up, because the board artists are staying close to the scripts.
"The character designs vary. We started off with Darrell Van Citters's models, now we've got a lot of Clampett influence and we're moving toward Chuck Jones ..."
In other words, the character designs for Laff Riot are what you'd call eclectic.
But what's most gratifying about going through WBA these days is that all the cubicles and offices are pretty much filled. As one Warners artist observed: "We're bursting at the seams."
Click here to read entire post
So Family Guy didn't win the Emmy.
For the creators of Family Guy, the first animated series to be nominated for a best comedy series Emmy since The Flintstones in1961, the nomination will have to be enough.
NBC’s 30 Rock won the category for the third year in a row ...
Wow. You could knock me over with a feather.
I'm one guy that advocates and applauds "animated" categories at these increasingly irrelevant award ceremonies. Let's go ahead and "ghettoize" animation.
Because if you don't create a category for toonage, the creative community working in live action ... which now and forever dominates the television and motion picture academies ... will make damn share that animated features and television shows never win any awards beyond "best song" and "best score".
Whether you think Family Guy was legitimately the best comedy show or not, live-actioners would rather jam knitting needles in their eyes and shred their tongues than vote for an animated anything.
So special animated categories, bring them on. If animation people want one of them little gold statues, they better hope the academies have those special slots, because that's the only way they will ever get one.
Click here to read entire postThe Hong Kong/Sherman Oaks animation studio announces the global release of Astro Boy:
Imagi International Holdings ... with studios in both Hong Kong and the U.S., today announced that it had finalized the Astro Boy premiere dates for Tokyo, Hong Kong and the U.S. ...
... Japan, where Tezuka Osamu created the legendary Astro Boy character in the 50s, will be the host of the world premiere of Astro Boy on 5th October ... Hong Kong, will host its own premiere on 17th October ... Los Angeles will host its premiere on 19th October ...
This first release will be a big deal for Imagi, and it will be doing multiple roll outs through the month of October. The picture hits big, the company kicks into high gear with several other projects. Corporate chiefs say that Imagi will move ahead with newer product no matter how Astro Boy performs, but I tend to think that the film's success will be a huge shot in the arm.
Imagi is continuing story development on its next project. If Astro is successful, the Sherman Oaks studio space should fill up pretty quickly with newer employees ... or so I'm told.
Click here to read entire postThe Journal of Wall Street speculates where the House of Mouse goes from here:
Whoever takes over as head of Walt Disney Co.'s movie studio following the abrupt departure of Chairman Dick Cook last week will be tasked with making the struggling film division stand out among a growing number of corporate siblings ...
Disney Studios today is just one of several high-profile film labels owned by the Burbank, Calif., media giant ... In some ways the new units have eclipsed Disney Studios proper. Pixar has surpassed Disney as the preeminent animated-feature company ... "Up," grossing more than $415 million world-wide ... Disney's "G-Force" ... has taken in less than $170 million.
This is all quite silly, of course. "Disney's G-Force is in fact a Jerry Bruckheimer's G-Force since Jerry is the guy calling the shots. Just as "Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean" is in actual fact a Jerry Bruckheimer production.
And so on and so forth.
To shake your head and say: "What a shame, Disney is being eclipsed by Marvel and Pixar" or whatever, is to skip around the central point: Disney is a corporate brand. Period. And the corporate brand is whatever the Disney corporate overlords choose to make it. Pixar is now Disney and Disney is Pixar.
But Disney as a "creative force"? As some kind of philosophical statement about entertainment? Please. That ended when Walt breathed his last at the hospital across the street from the studio in December, 1966. Before that time, Walt Disney Productions had a point of view because Walt himself ran the place with a certain approach and style. But afterwards? Well, as Ward Kimball so piquantly phrased it:
"Walt's dead and you missed it."
Disney today is much the same as Time-Warner ... or Viacom ... or Sony. It's an entertainment conglomerate that's the sum of its moving parts, rapidly becoming a transnational corporation that has as much to do with Uncle Walt as Time-Warner has with Jack L. Warner.
Which is to say, very little. Time and history march on. Deal with it.
Click here to read entire postAs Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs lands at the top of the domestic charts, animation continues its tear in foreign lands.
Disney/Pixar's "Up" remained a solid draw with $8.4 million at 2,191 in 26 markets. As of Sept. 15, international cume had hit $182.7 million midway through its offshore run with launches still coming in Germany, Italy, Japan, Scandinavia and the U.K.
The Mouse House has opted for a staggered "Up" release in foreign markets to maximize admissions by targeting holiday periods, along with avoiding competing head-to-head with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs." It's become the top Disney toon in Latin America with $44.6 million as of Sept. 15, in Spain with $31.9 million and in China with $11.6 million.
"Up" has also generated a solid $36.7 million in France, 40% better than "Wall-E."
"District 9" took in $7.6 million at 1,765 in 19 markets for a foreign cume of $35.8 million, and Fox's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" pulled in $7 million more at 4,100. As of Sept. 15, the third "Ice Age" had hit $671.3 million -- the third-best international total of all time, trailing only "Titanic" at $1.24 billion and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" at $752 million.
In Italy "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" held on to the top spot in its third frame, pulling $4.6 million from 690 screens for a cool $34 million. That stellar take now makes "Ice Age" Italy's top draw of the year so far, ahead of "Angels and Demons." ...
The lesson here: animation is steadily gaining traction around the globe. Every large entertainment conglomerate has now tasted robust cash flow because of animated features (Sony, after a run of lacklustre returns, is now reversing its previous sad fortunes with Cloudy With Meatballs.)
Why is this happening? And why now? I think it's a happy confluence of technology and product. 3-D is taking off around the world, and animation has been the best positioned big screen attraction to harness the new format. (Like how many live-action three dee extravaganzas have you raced down to the AMC to goggle at recently? I thought so.) Then there are the stories and characters in animated features. Some certainly do have American subjects, but many (Wall-E, Kung-Fu Panda, Ice Age, Shrek) don't. And fuzzy animals generally have no national allegiance.
Beyond all that, plugging the voice of a major national star into the mouth of a Panda, green ogre or giraffe has more impact and resonance for audiences and movie companies than a French of German actor spouting dialogue for say, Brad Pitt or Clint Eastwood.
So what does the future hold? Probably more animated features. It might even reach the point where animation is taken seriously at the academy awards.
Add On: The L.A. Times thinks Cloudy's opening was so-so, while Entertainment Weekly found it "strong." TAG blog thinks it did fairly well considering Sony has no brand name for animation and released the feature at a relatively dead time of year.
The rest of the field came in at less than half of the flying food. The Sunday totals (with animation filling the 1st and 6th slots):
Click here to read entire post1. "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," $30.1 million.
2. "The Informant!" $10.5 million.
3. "I Can Do Bad All By Myself," $10 million.
4. "Love Happens," $8.5 million.
5. "Jennifer's Body," $6.8 million.
6. "9," $5.5 million.
7. "Inglourious Basterds," $3.6 million.
8. "All About Steve," $3.4 million.
9. "Sorority Row," $2.5 million.
10. "The Final Destination," $2.4 million.
Think c.g.i. animation is all the rage? Think again.
Laika, Phil Knight's Portland movie studio, laid off 63 in its computer animation department this morning after deciding to focus exclusively on an old-fashioned filmmaking technique called stop motion.
The studio originally planned to develop both stop motion and computer-animated films, but said today that it has recently concluded it would rather specialize in stop motion. For the foreseeable future, Laika said, it will only use computer animation on a limited basis, to augment stop motion ...
As Disney Animation Studio moves again toward hand-drawn toonage, Laika decides that the Henry Selick style of making animation is their best card to play.
Today's layoff, which reduces Laika's work force from 243 to 180, is the second round of cuts in its computer animation department. In December, it laid off 65 after scrapping a computer-generated feature called "Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure."
Now. If they can just have Henry direct all of their product, they'll be all set.
Click here to read entire post
Took the boys and girls in Culver City a while to do it, but better late than not at all:
The beloved children's book turned Sony Pictures Animation's movie Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs scored an easy No. 1 by attracting not just kids but also tweens, teens, and twentysomethings as well as parents to Friday's North American screenings at a record 1,828 3-D sites, including 127 Imax locations. That's why four-quadrant family films like this are such a favorite of Hollywood. All day and night, Sony kept upping its box office predictions as the money just kept rolling in ...
Sony, until now, has had less than stellar results with its animation division. Open Season was a moderate hit; Surf's Up was, despite a generally warm reception from the animation community, a flop. The division has changed executives, revamped strategies, subtracted and added staff.
But now, riding a wave of positive reviews, good market positioning, and the 3-D boom, it looks as though Sony has itself a hit. (Of course, it doesn't hurt that feature animation is red hot.)
Meanwhile, Jennifer Anniston and Megan Fox underperform, and Tyler Perry's core audience has viewed its fill and moved on. Not a good weekend for live-action.
Click here to read entire postAs a commenter noted below, after four decades at the Disney Co., Mr. Cook is shown the door.
... A person close to Cook said the movie chief "didn't see it coming." He was summoned into a meeting and was told the studio "wanted to go in a different direction," said the person. A Disney spokesperson denied the report.
But in a meeting Friday with colleagues, Cook described himself as "a square peg in a round hole," three people said.
The first evidence of discontent bubbled to the surface in a conference call with analysts in May, when Iger described the studio's performance as "disappointing" -- and placed the blame on Burbank's doorstep, criticizing the choice of films and the execution. Cook's departure comes nearly three weeks after Disney agreed to buy comic-book publisher Marvel Entertainment, producer of the "Spider-Man" and "Iron Man" movies, for $4 billion.
I know Dick Cook not at all. I met and shook hands with him in the lobby of the Frank Wells Building a while back; beyond that I have never laid eyes on him.
But it doesn't surprise me that he got blindsided and ushered out in the way he did; that's the way the game is played in Tinsel Town. You don't see eye to eye with the Top Dog, then pretty quickly somebody comes to your office with a stack of cardboard boxes ... and you are told curtly to "clean out your desk."
From what the media is saying, and what I've been hearing, Dick Cook and Robert Iger did not see eye to eye. A couple of years back a Disney Animation supervisor informed me that Mr. Cook had told him that the Disney purchase of Pixar was too rich, and shouldn't have been done.
If this is true (and obviously I'm dealing here with second-hand hearsay), then it's kind of obvious the Disney executive suite held differences of opinion. (And that Robet Iger knew about the differences.) It wouldn't surprise me if Mr. Cook was not thrilled with the Marvel pick up.
And so Dick "round peg in square hole" Cook is now exiting the Burbank lot. Under the circumstances it's hardly surprising. The Disney Film Group's performance was down, the two men didn't agree, so adios to the second in command.
Happy retirement, Dick. Thirty-eight years is a long ride. Especially in this day and age.
Click here to read entire postDespite smears and nasty attacks, John Wells is the new President of the WGA.
"I'm remarkably humbled by the membership returning me to the Presidency of the Guild. I look forward to working with the Board again and to working with David Young and his talented staff to meet the many challenges that lie ahead,”
This is good news for people who work in animation, because there is now somewhat less risk of a strike in 2011. Which means that the Motion Picture Industry pension and health funds stand less risk of taking another hit, and animation employees who would otherwise be laid off might not become collateral damage after all.
Why is this? Not because John Wells is a management "tool", or because he's less than a stalwart member of his guild, but because he's not a zealot.
And most of the Writers United group are zealots. They believe in the justness of their cause and the road on which people should be traveling to achieve that justice. From recent evidence, if you are somebody who believes in a somewhat different route to salvation, then you are misguided, impure, and ultimately "the enemy."
(This remind you at all of our current national discussion about the way the country should go?)
So I'm glad Mr. Wells got the nod from WGAw membership. He might still find it necessary to call for a strike two years hence, for the conglomerates are not pussycats, and there is a preponderance of Writers United adherents on the WGAw board of directors. And there will be plenty of internal pressure to march in that direction.
But there is now at least a chance that there will be no job action in 2011. If John Wells's opponent Mr. Davis had been elected, there would have been none.
Click here to read entire post
Here's hoping the boxoffice is as good as the 86% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
The Los Angeles Times's business section emphasizes the clouds ...
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which opens tomorrow, is likely to sell close to $30 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, according to people who have seen pre-release audience polling. That's just a little better than the first movie from the studio's Sony Pictures Animation division, Open Season, that opened to a so-so $23.6 million in late September of 2006. Given three years of inflation and the fact that 55% of its theaters will play the movie in 3-D, which typically adds a $2 to $3 surcharge to ticket prices, that means Cloudy will be essentially keeping pace with Open Season.Sony's second animated feature, 2007's Surf's Up, was a flop, grossing only $58.9 million domestically.
September is generally a slow month at the box office, particularly for family films, so an opening over $30 million would be something of an accomplishment for Sony. The studio's choice of a relatively weak date for a family movie, however, signifies its unwillingness to compete with higher-profile offerings like Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Monsters vs. Aliens and Up.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, based on the popular children's book, cost a hefty $100 million to produce, so even a $30-million debut isn't too strong a start. The studio is surely hoping Cloudy will follow the path of Open Season, which ultimately grossed $85.1 million domestically.
At the same time, Times reviewer Glenn Whipp sees sunshine and food:
For the big musical montage number in the wildly enjoyable Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the filmmakers chose Lesley Gore's giddy "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows", but they could just as well have taken a page from Oliver! and gone with "Food, Glorious Food."Transferring the popular children's book to the big screen, first-time writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller conjure up a veritable blizzard of ways of channeling chow, carrying it off with enough brio to send audiences into a food coma. Really, between the animated rainstorms of Flintstones-sized steaks and the creation of a translucent Jell-O palace, the movie's loopy use of food puts it in the hall of fame between Big Night and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory ...
Variety's Peter Debruge is at odds with the Times's dour b.o. forecast:
Tut tut, it looks like a hit for Sony Pictures Animation. Eye-popping and mouth-watering in one, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs spins a 30-page children's book into a 90-minute all-you-can-laugh buffet, expanding the premise of a town where it rains ketchup and hot dogs to disaster-movie proportions. With drooling tongues in cheek, tyro helmers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ... bring a fresh, irreverent sensibility to bigscreen computer animation, using 3D projection to maximize their sky-is-falling scenario. This box office and concession-stand draw should make exhibitors very happy.Click here to read entire post
Your end-of-week linkage.
The directors of Cloudy With Meatballs hold forth on their movie (which opens today):
We had actually come in on a meeting for a different project at Sony, and found out they had the rights to this book. It was our favorite kids book, both of us. We basically just grabbed them by the lapels and forced them to let us make this movie because we loved it so much ...
We kind of approached it like, what if this story were a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. How would a big Hollywood studio approach this thing. That's why, OK. If you're going to follow the disaster movie paradigm, they always have the scientist, they always have the reporter and the cop ...
(How did it work out? The New York Times reviews Cloudy ... and the Hollywood Reporter handicaps Sony's animated feature here. "An opening of $25 million-$30 million looks likely based on prerelease tracking surveys.")
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times provides an overview of Sony's hopes and strategies for its animation division:
... Seven years after launching its animation unit, Sony Pictures is still trying to find its footing in a fiercely competitive environment dominated by more established studios in family entertainment, notably Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar Animation Studios, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox.
It's a segment of the movie business in which Sony, with rare exceptions, has never been much of a player. But in recent years computer-animated movies have become gold mines for the studios because they frequently attract broad-based audiences both in the U.S. and overseas. Interest in the genre has been spurred further by the potential upside from 3-D screenings.
Fred Seibert showcases Dave Levy's new book on animation development.
Dave has researched the development process completely, much of it with his own blood and sweat on the floor, and shares his findings with us ... [H]e covers the pitch, legalities, money, pilots, creative notes. Importantly, he also goes into detail about the roller coasters of ups and downs of the entire process. Personally, I relate to this most of all, having been around the business of creative for over 35 years, most of it in abject failure, only selling my first animated show 25 years into the biz.
The ASIFA-Hollywood animation archive gives us Mel Blanc on Mel Blanc.
The Wilmington Star News is clued in to the fact that "Animation is spared the wrath of the worldwide film slump".
Apparently I'm going to have to rearrange my 2010 holiday calendar:
Pulling out "Smurfs" from the crowded December 17, 2010 schedule, Sony pushed back the movie for about seven months to the July 29, 2011 release. With the new date given, this 3-D movie will be available in theaters a week after Marvel Studios releases "The First Avenger: Captain America" on July 22, 2011. ...
We hit on this subject before, but National Public Radio does a nice audio story of Walt Disney's South American adventure .. and the documentary which recounts it.
One last blast of sunny optimism from Jeffrey K. While the rest of Tinsel Town frets about the Red Kiosks renting flicks for a dollar, Mr. Katzenberg is jaunty:
For DreamWorks, Mr. Katzenberg said Redbox displays a “sharply higher conversion rate from rental to purchase” than other rental companies (Blockbuster, Netflix). In other words, Redbox is actually serving as a sales agent for the studio’s animated titles: People are renting films like “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” for $1 and deciding they want to own them. DreamWorks can also rest easier about Redbox, Mr. Katzenberg said, because most consumers, even in a struggling economy, want to buy animated movies rather than rent them – the babysitting power is just too great.
He has a big test of these theories coming up: “Monsters vs. Aliens” arrives on DVD on Sept. 29.
Have yourself a fantabulous weekend.
Click here to read entire postJeffrey K. sells live-action 3-D.
YOU MENTIONED THE LACK OF LIVE-ACTION FILMS IN 3D. HAVE YOU TALKED TO PEOPLE AT THE OTHER STUDIOS ABOUT THAT?
Katzenberg: I talked till I was blue in the face last year and at the beginning of this year, and then I just felt the results will speak louder than anything I have to say. Hopefully, be more meaningful and more impactful on people that are in a place to make these decisions. You only have to see the results to realize what's going on. That's why I think Jim Cameron's "Avatar" will be the watershed moment; it will break the dam. It will show the live-action side of the business that it has the same value and opportunity we've seen with results on a worldwide basis for our product ...
I believe "Avatar" will be to 3-D what "The Wizard of Oz " was to color. It was a seminal moment. If you go back and look, not only did "The Wizard of Oz" use color, it used it in such an exciting and compelling way, that's where the floodgates opened.
I think that Jeffrey is doing a masterful job here pushing the cause of 3-D.
He's a little wrong in his comparison, however. The Wizard of Oz was certainly a swell color film. And it was a big presence in the national psyche when Mr. Katzenberg and I were growing up, because it was an annual event on television that drew huge ratings on those early, round-tube RCA color sets.
But it was a semi-flop when it came out in 1939. losing money for M-G-M. (Of course, years later during the television age, it became a dandy money-maker.)
So, "opening the floodgates" for color movies? Don't think so. That honor would no doubt go to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Gone With the Wind (1939) two films that had monster grosses in those long-ago times of three-strip Technicolor. (Of course, Snow White isn't much of an example for live-action color movies, is it?)
But for anybody who doesn't know the original box office history of The Wizard of Oz, it's a perfect film to tout when making a 3-D/color comparison. Because Wizard is now an icon. A wowser. A filmic touchstone.
It just isn't the movie that opened any floodgates.
(The actual floodgate opener, not to be too much of a nudge about it ...)
Click here to read entire postWe've had a number of deaths in the animation community these last few months. We thought it would be appropriate to note them here.
Animator BILL BROWNE passed away on January 23. Bill worked for many studios both on the East and West Coasts. Among others, he worked on the Tom & Jerry Kids as well as Hanna-Barbera’s feature animation unit on Once Upon a Forest.
Not only was he an animator but also an accomplished watercolorist. Bill’s nephew David is in the process of creating a website at artworkbybillbrowne.zoomshare.com, that will be updated over the next few months for everyone to enjoy Bill’s artwork. — Ivan Camilli
Painter, checker and supervisor ALLA MARSHALL, who worked for Hanna-Barbera and Filmation from 1966 until 1983, died on July 2 at the age of eighty-seven. From 1979 until her retirement she was Filmation’s ink-and-paint supervisor. She was the widow of animator John Marshall, who passed away in 2007.
SERGE MICHAELS, who worked as a background artist, writer and designer for Film Roman, Disney, Rich Animation, Frederator and Nickelodeon since 1989, died on September 10.
ANN NEALE, who worked as a cel painter, opaquer and paint lab technician for Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, Kroyer and Disney from 1977 until 2002, died on August 7 at the age of seventy-seven.
And now, a brief re-recitation of the obvious.
Politics is a permanent part of studio life.
Empire building. Back-biting. Maneuvering for position. I figured out a while ago that in the workplace, the higher the perceived rewards, the more vicious the infighting. (I saw it when I worked at the studios, I see it -- though at more of a distance -- when walking around now. And I've been disabused over the years that it was different in the Good Old Days.
Joe Grant: Are studio politics different now? Not really. The people are different [than when I was at Disney in the thirties], the buildings are different, but the same stuff goes on.
Old Assistant Animator: Frank Thomas wasn't the mellow guy you knew when you were at Disney's. I was in his wing. I remember him coming back from meetings and drinking Maalox. He kept a bottle on his shelf ...
Uncompensated Overtime is Forever.
When I started this job, there were production managers pressuring artists to work free overtime.
Now, there are production managers pressuring artists to work free overtime. ("We need it Tuesday and we don't have any money in the budget for overtime.")
Most of the overtime comes from tight schedules and fear. The fast and efficient have less uncompensated o.t. (if any) because they know how to accelerate and beat the deadline; everyone else puts in extra hours on their own dime .
Some folks put in the extra hours because they have a love of craft and want to create at the highest level. For others it's more basic: a fear of $450 unemployment checks.
Nobody complains or files grievances; in this economy, nobody wants to rock the boat. But then, nobody wanted to rock the boat in the go-go nineties, either.
Unequal treatment of employees is a given.
The stars and key personnel of a studio get way more slack than the the people down in the trenches working production. They can come in late. Take long lunches. Cut out early. It's always been this way and always will. Mere mortals will just have to learn to deal with it.
Animatics are a waste of money. And considered essential.
Today a veteran teevee director told me (again):
"Animatics are there for the executives who can't read boards and don't want to learn. They've tried to get rid of exposure sheets and just go with animatics, but they always come back to exposure sheets. The thousands they spend on animatics never show up on the screen, but they'll never get rid of them. They're like management security blankets. You have to do 'inbetweens' so that the animatic keeps moving.
"They could spend the money better someplace else."
There are animation professionals who disagree with me on this, but I don't care. The things are black holes into which money is poured without a hell of a lot of results. I've seen a studio that puts animatics in color, uses music and sound effects, goes the whole nine yards making the thing as close to a produced cartoon as possible ... without it actually being a cartoon.
Ludicrous. And these clowns whine about wanting to save money. What they want is a video they can show to little kids in their always-popular focus groups.
When people begin making a lot of money, they tend to spend it.
Most animation artists have never made huge pay checks. Except in the middle 1990s. Then, through a confluence of happy events (blockbuster Disney animated features, new studios springing up like mushrooms after a spring rain to imitate Disney, and animation artists finding themselves in high demand) wages skyrocketed.
And many people made a fatal miscalculation:
Heey now. This is the way it was always supposed to be! And this is the way it will be forever!
Sadly, no.
But many animation employees began buying bigger houses and fancier cars and generally increasing the size of their lifestyles. And after a few years, when the supply of talent caught up with demand, and several of the studio closed their doors and Disney laid off staff, the big paychecks went back to being much smaller paychecks. And many were in deep financial trouble (although there were a few who rode the wave frugally and ended up financially independent).
What I learned from living through these fat times is it is always useful to live below your means. (It's why I drive a used Saturn Vue. I'm too old to dig out and start from scratch.)
When animation employees hit their mid-fifties, they also hit a wall called "less employment."
It doesn't happen to everyone, and it happens less in animation than it does in live action, but somewhere between their fifty-third and fifty-ninth birthdays, many will be enjoying way longer stretches of vacation.
I've thought about why this is. I don't believe it's simply ageism. It's also that most artists have a support network of people who are somewhat older; by the time 'toon employees reach fifty-five, the people in the network on which they relied are retired. (And yeah, there are the thirty-two-year-old animation producers who are uncomfortable with storyboard artists who remind them of their dads.)
Click here to read entire postWhen the media harps on it over and over, you pick up a trend:
“I think ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ heralded the official arrival of the notion ... that you could have long-term success with 3-D animation,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “Katzenberg was waiting for that movie to open, to determine ... whether or not it was a viable and profitable genre, versus something that might just be considered a fad.”
Disney/Pixar’s summer blockbuster “Up,” with its $291 million tally (the highest-grossing 3-D film of in the U.S.) reinforced the belief that 3-D is here to stay.
Here to stay? You think?
Sure, as long as the box office holds up, it's going to be dimensional 'toons as far as the polarized glasses can see. And it's holding up.
The four highest grossing 3-D animated pictures of all time at the domestic box office are all animated and have been released in the past year, signaling 3-D animation may be ready to overtake superhero movies as Hollywood’s newest home-run hitter.
At some point, the fad might fade out, but it won't be anytime soon. (God knows if live-action 3-D catches on in a major way.)
For me, the best part of the Three Dee revolution is that the frenetic cutting and hyperactive camera work of recent action blockbusters will be history. Otherwise, air sickness bags will be required at every AMC.
Click here to read entire postOne of the pillars of Laugh In (and you'd have to be of a certain age to know how influential the show was in its prime) has died:
Henry Gibson, the veteran character actor who came to fame in the late 1960s as the flower-holding poet on TV’s landmark satirical comedy show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” has died. He was 73.
Gibson died late Monday night after a short battle with cancer at his home in Malibu, said his son Jon.
Gibson, who more recently played a recurring role as cantankerous Judge Clark Brown on “Boston Legal,” was part of the original ensemble cast of “Laugh In,” which ran on NBC from 1968 to 1973 ... He also was the voice of Wilbur the Pig in the animated “Charlotte’s Web.” ...
What's interesting to me is that Gibson was an integral part of a teevee comedy hour that had huge reach and impact for two or three years.
But the parade has moved on ... and now it's mostly forgotten. Teenagers today, their noses pressed against ipods and computer screens, have no idea that once upon a time a hit network television show would command fifty or sixty million pairs of eyeballs.
Now it's big news that Jay Leno gets 18 million viewers on his maiden outing. In ye olden times, this would mean your prime-time show was a disaster and subject to rapid cancellation.
My how things have changed.
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We've put up the first show in TAG's gallery -- Christmas card designs spanning four decades by this long-time Disney background artist.
Why Christmas card art? Because it's colorful and varied, because it's done in a variety of media ...
... and because one of the staffers had a lot or original artwork, the reproductions of which now become part of the Animation Guild's permanent collection.
If you're in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by and view it.
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Not about production, but the film festival.
While the Toronto International Film Festival hasn't historically been a hub for animation fans, industry or gossip ... this year, three features and shorts offer a cross-section of styles and stories, and a well rounded perspective of the genre's roots, art and audience ...
A Town Called Panic (part of the Midnight Madness program) is a raw, surreal Belgian stop-motion tale featuring characters that look like cheap toy figures. It follows Horse, Cowboy and Indian's quest to nab pointy-headed sea creatures who stole their house ...
My Dog Tulip (Discovery) is veteran animation artist Paul Fierlinger's funny and touching hand-drawn (with the latest paperless computer software) adaptation of J.R. Ackerley's beloved book about his 14-year relationship with an adopted Alsatian ....
Waking Sleeping Beauty (Real to Reel), a juicy insider look at the dramatic, game-changing renaissance and executive tussles of Disney's floundering animation studio in the 1980s - not strictly a cartoon but a key work in understanding the current boom. ... "The bittersweet ending of Waking Sleeping Beauty is that we started repeating ourselves and audiences will tire of that," says [animation producer Don] Hahn
Notice how there's animated shorts and features ricocheting around that you've never heard of? Animation is on a roll across the world, local stuff, international stuff, television and theatrical stuff, all of different lengths and price ranges. The medium keeps getting bigger because the uses of animation keep getting bigger. Commercials and visual effects and video games and television graphics.
Beyond that, the big driver is money, and the tall piles of it that animation now makes. Increasingly, Hollywood focuses on cartoons as profit centers. That's why there's more toonage in production around the world than ever before.
If it were otherwise, it would be 1972 all over again, and animation would be small, colorful side show to which the Big Boys paid minimal attention.
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Seems like only fourteen months ago, but you might remember this charming story:
According to David Rand, special effects artists who worked for Meteor Studios, a company established by Discovery Communications of Virginia (owners of the Discovery Channel) and Evergreen Films of Pacific Palisades. During October, November and December of 2007, artists worked without pay; some put in 100-hour weeks and stayed loyal to the project with the promise of pay as soon as the accounting glitch was fixed. Most of the artists who applied their talents to the creation of the film have families, and half are American freelance artists like Rand, whose hope for a bright Christmas was extinguished when all artists were laid off without pay in December upon delivery of the film ...
Now it appears that all the effects artists who worked on Journey to the Center of the Earth might actually get some money. Because a couple of days we got this from Mr. Rand:
... Discovery's latest offer of 70% of the pay (approximately $1 million ) owed over 100 employees from Discovery's Meteor Studios for their work on Journey to the Center of the Earth two years ago. Because of the coverage this received in the press, Canada had pushed it to a top priority with the Les Normes (Labor Dept) ...
Apparently c.g. artists in Canada (at least some of them) are looking for some union representation. Not hard to see why ...
Click here to read entire postThings are humming at DreamWorks Animation; apparently market analysts agree.
... [W]e came away from the preview impressed with DreamWorks' upcoming content," [analyst Ralph Schackert] said, singling out "Shrek Forever After," the fourth in the Shrek franchise.
Schackart also pointed to the company's aggressive push into 3-D films. DreamWorks has decided to release all of its new titles in the new format, which Schackart said boosts development costs by 10 percent but has the potential to grow box office gross returns by 30 percent as more 3-D screens become available ...
As it happens, I talked to one of the layout artists on Shrek #4, who told me:
"We've had a good time on the show. The story's good, and we've been designing the 3-D the way we designed the color on the others, to punch each sequence, make it flow and make it better.
We've always designed the color, and how it works through a sequence, and it's the same with 3-D. We figure out where best to use it, have some scenes pretty subdued and flat, then push the 3-D in key scenes. ... Captain 3-D is a big help with what we're doing. We're lucky to have him ..."
I had a long discussion with a group of artists about work going overseas to Mumbai, about the prospects of foreign-made features in the world marketplace. ("Doesn't do any good to make an animated movie for half the price if it does a quarter the business ...")
I said that I haven't seen too many blockbuster feature cartoons made on other continents (Happy Feet being one exception) but of course it can happen. I told them that, in my experience, studio execs are not naturally big risk takers, that they know they can get fired for "acting out of the box," and subsequently failing, but seldom (if ever) will get the axe if they achieve lousy results after going the safe, obvious route. Which explains why there haven't been more big, high-end blockbusters produced overseas. In the current climate, it's too outside the box.
I encountered people with a bunch of different questions, such as why the new contract (recently ratified) ended up where it did, and what some of the new DreamWorks clauses in the Memorandum of Agreement mean; hopefully I supplied a few semi-clarifying answers.
Add On: DWA has just put out a teaser for How to Train Your Dragon, the first DreamWorks Animation feature release for 2010. One Dragon artist said to me this afternoon that they're working lots of hours on the 'toon now, but work occasionally slows down as story gets polished. (Which is pretty much the case for every animated feature produced in Hollywood since Snow White.)
Click here to read entire postLast June, we installed Vanguard Target Funds onto the TAG 401(k) Plan platform; it turned out to be a good move.
Morningstar Inc. last week launched ratings and research reports for 20 of the largest target date mutual funds — and identified The Vanguard Group Inc. as the best target date provider for investors, based on such criteria as management, fees and performance ...
Morningstar assigns one of five ratings for each component: top, above average, average, below average or bottom.
Based on the five component ratings, each target date fund group earns an overall rating using the same grade scale.
The Vanguard Target Retirement funds employ best practices with low fees, a high level of transparency and prudent, investor-oriented management, according to Morningstar's research.
Vanguard's high-quality orientation was an important factor last year, when its target date funds performed relatively well despite holding a stock allocation similar to many of its peers, Morningstar said. The company's long-tenured managers also bolster the funds' appeal ...
It's always pleasant when something you push for and push for finally gets done ... and then pays off.
Not that the Target Funds didn't (and don't) take hits. When every equity market goes down, quality funds also go down. But the point is that Vanguard's low costs really come into play for investors. If your fund is taking 1-1 1/2% off the top, twenty years further on you'll have lost a tidy little bundle.
Vanguard's low fees (.19%) are a big plus, but there are still 401(k) participants' understandable fears about investing in stocks:
... [T]he classic 60-40 split between stocks and bonds—the formula that many balanced funds use to allocate investments—ignores alternative asset classes that can deliver returns with different levels of risk.
"The whole 60-40 idea is almost like Betamax videotapes—it's now passé," says Andrew Silverberg, co-manager of Alger Balanced Fund. "It gained popularity while we were still in a bull market." ...
Gibson Smith, co-chief investment officer at Janus Capital Group and co-manager of Janus Balanced Fund, doesn't stick with the 60-40 formula either. "We're not just about driving returns, but also preserving capital," he says.
Late last year, Janus Balanced held 60% bonds and 40% stocks. While a 60-40 split between stocks and bonds is the nominal default of the fund, "we like having the flexibility" of ignoring that standard based on risk-reward profiles, says Mr. Smith. As of July 31, the fund was 55% in stocks and 45% in bonds ...
Bond investors are ... ahead of stock investors over the past five and 10 years—challenging the view that stocks beat bonds over longer periods. Over the past five years, the S&P 500 returned an average 0.1% a year, while the Barclays bond index returned an average 5%. Over the decade, the stock measure fell an average 3.7% a year, while the bond gauge returned an average 6.3%.
For many, the issue is where you are in your career. If you're a twenty or thirty-something animation artist, a big drop in the old stock portfolio is a bummer but not the end of the world. If you're sixty-two, however, losing half your painfully acquired capital in a couple of weeks can be gut wrenching (The sixty-two year-old -- unless he's Joe Grant -- doesn't have the years left to rebuild the money stash.)
I think the "proper" allocations of stocks and bonds depends on your stomach for risk, also your age. If you're somebody who can't sleep or hold down solid food when stocks all of a sudden drop 40%, then maybe you should weight your investments toward bonds (and intermediate or short-term bonds at that.)
There is no perfect allocation, because investment returns always vary and present a constantly moving target. I'm a big believer in having some exposure to stocks; over time they lower your risk and goose returns. (Even Vanguard Target Income has a 30% exposure to domestic and foreign equities.)
But ultimately the choice is yours. You want to keep everything in Bank Certificates of Deposit, you go right ahead and do that.
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Comic-Con has inspired the Big Mouse.
... [Disney's D23 convention] can easily be considered a success in its first year, having sold more than 20,000 tickets to mostly die-hard fans who wanted first looks at toons like "The Princess and the Frog," "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," "Rapunzel," "A Christmas Carol," "Alice in Wonderland," "Tron Legacy" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
Disney also used the confab to unveil Double Dare You as a toon production label with Guillermo del Toro to produce scarier animated pics; "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" as the title of the fourth swashbuckler in the franchise, to bow in 2011; "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made" for the return of the Muppets on the bigscreen; and a 3-D revamp of the "Star Tours" ride.
When I was a lad, Disney was far and away the studio who knew how to reinforce its brand on multiple platforms and multiple venues.
Crafty, far-seeing Walt was the first big-time Hollywood producer to jump with both feet into television, taking the plunge in 1950, when other studios were trying to ignore the upstart medium.
Disney advertised its films and television shows at its theme parks, touted the parks on its network shows. Every other major player was slow to catch up.
Disney fell behind the curve in the seventies and early eighties, but now its once again getting aggressive with all the new delivery systems, platforms, and big-time conventions. With D23, there were only a few minor flies in the rich, moist ointment:
The convention center’s main floor appeared to lack some of the magic Disney is known for. There was an absence of costumed characters roaming around taking photos with attendees. Booths seemed small and cramped versus the large, inviting displays on hand at Comic-Con ... [T]he overall ticket price ... may also have kept attendance levels lower than hoped. Single day adult tix went for $37, while four-day passes were available for $111 and $81 for children. Two days would have covered a four-day pass to Comic-Con, where every studio is pushing their wares.
The House of Mouse will no doubt iron out the kinks as it goes along. It almost always does.
(Reuters take on the Disney extravaganza is here.)
Click here to read entire post... and there is much back-slapping down on Pico.
... In its 10th weekend of release, the toon has replaced "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" to become the fourth-highest international grosser of all time. And "Dawn" then topped "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on Sept. 8 for the No. 3 slot, going past $658.9 million to $660.4 million.
"Ice Age 3" won't approach the two leaders on the foreign grosses list -- "Titanic" at $1.24 billion and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" at $742 million. But it will probably put some further distance between it and the first Harry Potter film in coming weeks.
The third installment of the "Ice Age" franchise has topped the second -- "Ice Age: The Meltdown" by more than $200 million ...
And Two, of course, handily topped the original.
As The Wise Old Exec said to me last week: "Fox has kept their production costs way below Pixar and DreamWorks," which means more profits for Rupert and Co.
The happy side effect for animation workers is that animation, year after year, has proven to be a strong profit center for the entertainment congloms, which means our corporate masters will be eager to engage animators, tech directors, designers and other animation staff in the pursuit of more riches. As an industry kahuna said to me last week:
"You're kind of in the sweet spot, Hulett. You represent people in a part of the industry that is doing well. Some of your other union brothers and sisters can't say that right now ..."
I count my blessings, such as they are.
Click here to read entire postAnimation returns to the Top Ten! 9 has 2nd best per-screen average of a Friday!
1) Tyler Perry's I can Do Bad All By Myself -- $8.6 million
2) 9 -- $3.3 million
3) Sorority Row -- $1.9 million
4) Inglourious Basterds -- $1.9 million
5) All About Steve -- $1.8 million
Not a great Friday (or probably weekend) by any means, but school's in again, the roving bands of teenagers have departed the multiplexes, and the conglomerates will have to tread water until the next lengthy holiday weekend..
Tyler Perry, proving once again that he’s become one of the most reliable brand names in the film industry, saw his latest, self-titled movie, “Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself” rise to the top of Friday’s boxoffice heap in North America ...
Focus ... found a receptive audience for its stop-motion animated “9.” The PG-13, dystopian animated fable from director Shane Acker with a voice cast that includes Elijah Wood, took in $3.3 million on Friday in 1,661 theaters.
The film, which carries the imprimateurs producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, opened Wednesday to the tune of $3.1 million. So its Friday take brings its domestic gross to date to about $7.7 million ...
Add On: The weekend finals end as expected, with Tyler Perry taking the top position and $24 million, while 9 places second with a $6,536 per screen average and $15,264,000 in total revenues since last Wednesday.
... "I Can Do Bad All by Myself," [dominated] an otherwise mild sesh with $24 million at 2,255 playdates.
That was more than double the next best performer during the first fall frame as Focus' launch of its offbeat animated sci-fier "9" drew $10.9 million at 1,656. TWC's fourth frame of "Inglourious Basterds," Warner's third weekend of "The Final Destination" and Fox's soph sesh of "All About Steve" took the next three slots ...
There's a lot of animation slated for release over the next five months. My expectation is it will more than hold its own with the live-action competition.
Click here to read entire postThe artistic staff departed months ago. Come tomorrow night, the last new series episodes make their final goodbyes:
The double episode that ends the show's 13-year run just calmly serves up another slice of life in Arlen, Tex. Even the acknowledgement of its own departure is handled matter-of-factly, with Hank Hill figuratively passing the family torch to his son, Bobby.
"King of the Hill" has always been funny because it never tried to be funny. The casual viewer often might have thought not much was happening, period.
But just when you decided that Hank, his wife, Peggy, and their pals were all white-bread Middle American clueless, they'd say something that showed there was genuine perception and insight bubbling around in there. Kind of like in America itself ...
The crew that made the show had a quiet, "can do" spirit, and happily worked on the series for years. It's a shame the party has ended, and a shame that all the folks that kept King of the Hill humming are scattered to other jobs. ... "Good ain't forever and bad ain't for good ..."
(Entertainment Weekly catalogues its fifteen favorite KOTH episodes.)
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Left: Our own JOHN SPAREY, whose caricatures and artwork have adorned this very blog, attended the meeting. John is a resident of the Frances Goldwyn Lodge at the MPTF campus in Woodland Hills (which is not affected by the announced closures.)
Thursday night, September 10, Guild members met to hear both sides of the argument regarding the announced closing of the Motion Picture and Television Fund's hospital and long term care facility (skilled nursing) in Woodland Hills.
There were two presentations made, one from Ken Scherer and Mark Fleischer of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which operate the Wasserman Campus and seven MPTF clinics which are an integral part of TAG members' Motion Picture Industry Health Plan.Since January, there's been a dispute between the Fund and family and friends of MPTF long term care residents ("Saving the Lives of Our Own") who will soon be relocated from the Woodland Hills campus to other long-term care facilities in the area.
Friends and family don't believe the closure of long-term care is warranted or necessary. The MPTF board maintains that long term care is a huge drain on MPTF cash reserves because it runs large annual deficits, and has to be closed so that the Fund won't run out of money.
Mr. Scherer and Mr. Fleischer told meeting attendees the following:
* The long-term care facility has lost $10 million per year, which next year will rise to $12 million ($1 million per month).
* The on-site hospital has been under-utilized for some years; the ICU, with 7 beds, had an average occupancy of one patient and was running a deficit of $1 million per year.
* Long-term care patients are not being abandoned but have been asked to move to one of 22 long-term care facilities that the Fund has vetted.
* Long-term care patients have not died because of trauma caused by changes at the facility of the prospect of a move. Residents have died at the same rate in 2009 as in 2007 or 2008, before any announcement of closure was made.
* More than 200 assisted care and independent residents will continue to live at the Wasserman campus in Woodland Hills, and their situations will not change.
* No MPTF funds were lost to Bernie Madoff, since no money was invested with him. However, the Fund's investment portfolio suffered losses in late 2008 and early 2009 when the markets dropped 50%.
At the end of the presentation, Scherer and Fleischer took a half-hour of questions, after which representatives from "Saving the Lives of Our Own" (Nancy Biederman, Daniel Quinn, John Sparey, and Richard Stellar), made a presentation:
* For every occupied bed in Long Term Care, the MPTF receives $130,065 annually.
* Top management at MPTF (four people) received $2,002,465.00 in salaries, benefits and expenses in 2007.
* Transfer trauma: Within the first sixty days of the announcement of closure, 12 residents died at the MPTF facility; five more died within days or weeks of transfer.
*CEO David Tillman has said that "No amount of donations or fund-raising would change the MPTF's decision to close the long-term care facility."
* Some residents were moved to other levels of care at the home and are now frightened about admitting that they have an injury or illness, for fear that they will be moved off the property.
* Long term care and rehab admissions no longer exist on campus.
Above: President Koch listens as Mark Fleischer (MPTF Board Member, as well as grandson of Max and son of Richard Fleischer) and Ken Scherer of the Motion Picture and Television Fund defend the decision to close the facilities.
The two sides agree on various points: That the initial announcement of closing was badly handled. That the campus hospital is losing money. That there is an ongoing deficit. ("Saving Our Own" maintains this is from mismanagement.)
Some of the things disagreed on: that there are "luxury condos" going to be built where the hospital and long term care facility now stand, that residents have died because of stress and trauma (Mark Fleischer stated that his mother was a Long Term Care resident at the time he voted as a board member to close the unit. "It was a painful decision and we tried to avoid it, but the whole campus and Fund are at risk if we don't stop the millions in deficits.")
Above: Richard Stellar and Nancy Biederman of Saving The Lives Of Our Own, a group dedicated to preventing the closure of the MPTF facilities.
My take away from all that I heard Thursday night was that initial communication about the closure was fumbled, that the "Save Our Own" group is sincerely motivated and stressed out about what's happening to their loved ones, but that the Woodland Hills retirement campus and the Motion Picture and Television Fund have big financial problems stemming from the MPTF's portfolio investments heading south and the drop in fund-raising (because many people's investment portfolios have also gone south.)
Nobody appears to dispute that there are money problems (i.e., flows of red ink) although "Saving Our Own" believes the problems our surmountable without closing Long Term Care.
Whichever side you believe to be right, we urge you to follow the links, investigate what's going on, and make up your own mind.
Click here to read entire postToday was my Disney Afternoon.
I spent two and a half hours at Disney Animation Studios vaunted hat building, helping out with the ratification vote for the Disney-IATSE TSL/TTL agreements ...
And what, you might ask, are the TSL/TTL agreements?
They are "The Secret Lab/The Traveling Lab" union contracts that were first negotiated by Disney and the IA at the end of 1999. Initially, these agreements covered visual effects.
(That's where the name "The Secret Lab" comes from. It was the handle for Diz's internal visual effects unit after Disney purchased the visual effects house Dream Quest and merged it with the animated feature unit. The division did viz effx for a number of films before the Big Mouse discovered -- as other large film companies had found out before it -- that there's no significant money doing visual effects for live-action films, and studio overhead makes effects on studio lots non-competitive with Mom and Pop sub-contractors.)
Today, the Secret Lab contract -- which is patterned on TAG's contract -- covers most animation employees at DAS. And from three to five p.m., those employees trundled downstairs to the big conference room to vote on the new deal (which had similar bump-ups to the TAG contract: 3.5% annual wage/pension-health fund contributions), after which the ballots were counted. The final percentages:
Yes -- 87%
No -- 13%
So we're good to go for another three years. And then we do it again.
Click here to read entire postOkay, not exactly the middle, but we're getting there. And I needed a title, so sue me.
Frederator and Sony Pictures Animation have forged a bond:
Sony Pictures Animation has set a multi-year deal with Fred Seibert and his Frederator Studios to develop animated feature films, it was announced today by Bob Osher, president of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, and Hannah Minghella, president of production for Sony Pictures Animation. Seibert, a prolific animation producer, promises to be a rich source of original ideas as Sony Pictures Animation continues to advance its development slate ....
It's always nice to have new synergy in Animationland ...
One more "Best" list, this from MSNBC (like, what do they know?).
Will Shane Acker’s “9,” in theaters today, someday take a place among the all-time classics—including “Coraline,” “Up,” and “The Lion King”—we’re counting down here?
20. ‘Ghost in the Shell’ (1995)
How much soul remains when most of the human body has been replaced by machine? That’s the philosophical question at the cyborg-y center of director Mamoru Oshii’s anime classic — and it’s surrounded by some blistering action.
John Lasseter dazzles the Brits with previews of upcoming Disney and Pixar projects.
Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond and a Shakespearean actor to boot, will voice a worthy thespian hedgehog named Mr. Pricklepants in Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 3."
Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation Studios chief creative officer John Lasseter on Thursday showed a five-second clip of the newly created character as part of a two-hour presentation at Odeon Leicester Square. The footage was greeted with hoots of laughter.
... and Empire has this about The Bear and the Bow:
Pixar's The Bear and the Bow [is the studio's] first real attempt at a leading female character (and a female director in Brenda Chapman), and focuses on Merida (Reese Witherspoon), a princess in 10th century Scotland. She's something of a wild girl who's most at home in the Highlands rather than in the family castle, and is somewhat alienated from her family: King Fergus (Billy Connolly), Queen Eleanor (Emma Thompson) and her much younger triplet brothers. We don't know many details of the plot, except that it's less about finding a prince and more about Merida's relationship with her mother (Yay!), but we do know that there will be a baddie, who's a witch (she prefers "Wise Woman") and is voiced by Julie Walters.
So maybe DreamWorks Animation gets eated and maybe it doesn't, but analyst David Miller says some suitors don't have the cash to do it:
Miller said of the possible buyers, CBS Corp. does not have complimentary assets, News Corp. already owns animation studio Blue Sky, and Viacom Inc. doesn't have the cash.
Time Warner Inc., with $7 billion in cash, could buy the company, he said, but it would cost more than $3 billion if Marvel's valuation were applied to DreamWorks. Also, $2 billion of Time Warner's cash is already earmarked for debt service before the end of the year.
Anime bops into Disney XD:
Disney has struck a deal with Viz Media to bring the anime series "Naruto Shippuden" to the Disney XD network beginning next month.
"Shippuden" is the sequel to the popular Japanese import and picks up with the ninja lead characters now in their teens. The original "Naruto" series has been airing on Cartoon Network since 2005.
Have a rejuvenating weekend.
Click here to read entire postNot from me, but a TAG member.
At one of our fine, signator studios this week, an artist I've known for years flagged me in the hall and complained about the following:
"I ragged on some people here about working unpaid overtime. It's been going on, and I told them 'You're f*cking me, you're pulling down every person who works here and it's got to stop.
"There are cleanup artists who come in for a few weeks at a time and then get laid off again. And they all do free o.t. They figure it will help them get rehired the next time ..."
I told the guy that what is happening at his studio has happened -- at one time or another -- at every studio I've ever visited. A zealous production manager says, "We gotta ship this act tomorrow! We need you to help out! (And by the way, we don't have any money in the budget for overtime) ...".
And so everyone hops to.
I offered to swing by the studio late at night and catch people at their desks. "But the problem with that," I said, "is if they lie to me about what they're doing there, tell me 'I'm making up time,' or 'I'm being paid,' that's the end of it. And most people lie."
There followed a general bitch-fest about the unemployment in the teevee animation business, the overall economy, and the jolly corporatist state in which we live. I moved on to talk to the shop steward who reported that no, he hadn't heard of anyone working unpaid overtime.
"But then, they wouldn't tell me. They know I'm shop steward. And when I come around and ask if they have problems, they always say everything's fine. Figures."
Over the years I've known plenty of artists who've bucked peer and management pressure to do layout, background, storyboard or cleanup work for free, and lived to tell the tale. None of them were blackballed. But in this era of economic anxiety, there's plenty of nervousness, and lots of employees are caving in.
I totally get employees' compulsions to "do whatever it takes" to extend their jobs. Times, after all, are rugged. I also get why studios are tempted to exploit the situation. If there's free money lying on the ground (which is what free work amounts to) why not pick it up?
Click here to read entire postA bit of restructering goes on at the Time-Warner empire.
... Warners Bros. is creating a new company called DC Entertainment.
Diane Nelson will head the division as its president; Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics since 2002, will become a writer, contributing editor and consultant for DC. The restructuring was announced Wednesday by Warners chairman and CEO Barry Meyer and president and COO Alan Horn.
"What we've done with Harry Potter -- working together across Warners and even Time Warner to develop a focus and a strategic point of view -- is a good model for what we want to do with DC Comics," [Nelson] said. "It will be a reciprocal relationship, working closely with the executives there and with the executives within each of our divisions to incubate and build new brands. It's a great opportunity to bring more coordination and to focus and integrate DC with Warners more effectively."
A Warners employee told me today that Levitz is shifting to "consultant" because the conglomerate doesn't want the killjoy who's headed DC comix to tell the Big Guys what they should do and not do when they morph comic books into Big Screen entertainment.
If they want Superman to wear a green cape, they don't want someobdy telling them "Unh unh."
That's the story, anyway. Either way, between Disney Co.'s new acquisition and Warner's new division, we will be up to our armpits in super heroes and caped crusaders over the next several years.
They will, no doubt, impact animation in some major ways.
Click here to read entire postThe American Arbitration Association tallied up the ratification ballots for the new TAG 839 Collective Bargaining Agreement, and we have a new three-year deal.
With slightly fewer counted ballots than in 2006, the 2009 percentages are:
Yes -- 91.3%
No -- 8.5%
blank - .2%
The percentages from the 2006 ratification vote were:
Yes -- 93.4%
No -- 5.7%
blank -- .8%
We live in unhappy times, so the differences from 2006 are not super surprising.
Click here to read entire postI trucked over to the Imagi studios at the Sherman Oaks Galleria for the first time in weeks and weeks. The place is quiet, with only a few artists on the premises, but a staffer gave me the low-down about what's happening with Imagi ...
"The studio's had management changes, but the decision is in to go ahead with Gatchaman, and production will start ramping up near the end of the year. The producers for it are set, but Imagi is still interviewing candidates for director.
"The studio is kind of empty right now, but that will change as we get into the next show. There will probably be another Astro Boy. There's been a lot of good feedback on the trailer, and Imagi is going to hold a launch party when the picture is near release in October.
"We had a rough patch at the start of the year, and it's been a challenge to get past, that but the new management wants to move forward and do a picture every eighteen months. That's the plan ..."
If Astro Boy performs, I think the studio plunges into development with a sizable slate of films. And if the picture doesn't do much? ... Welll ...
Click here to read entire post
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