California Tax Credits

Last year, the Animation Guild was part of a labor consortium pushing for tax credits for motion picture and visual effects work produced in the Golden State. Today, the results of California's 2014 law were announced.

Dax Shepard’s untitled movie based on the TV series CHiPs, Conjuring 2 and films from major studios including Paramount, Fox and Warner Bros are getting help from the Golden State. More than two weeks after the first application period for feature films ended, the California Film Commission revealed that 11 movies — seven studio pics and three indies — will be getting a piece of the expanded $330 million-a-year program that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last year.

“We’re fighting back and winning thanks to our newly expanded tax credit program,” said California Film Commission executive director Amy Lemisch in the announcement. “We were losing projects that were set here at home, and now we’re back to doubling for other locales. ...

The only animation work to find its way into the new tax subsidy law was live-action visual effects. Animated features and TV shows, as well as live-action sitcoms, were excluded from subsidies because much of that work has consistently remained in the state. Only high-budget features, long-form dramas, and VFX production that had earlier fled the state were awarded tax credits.

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Shakeup

It seems an executive head has rolled:

An internal restructuring has left Paramount’s Executive VIce President of production for animation Bob Bacon out of a job. He had been at the studio since 2011.

Sources said that all physical production, live action and animation, will now come under the auspices of Lee Rosenthal, and as a result, Bacon’s position is being eliminated. This news comes at a time when the studio’s highest grossing film of the year is an animated title: The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water which made $163M at the domestic B.O. and $311.6M worldwide. The other animated film put into production during Bacon’s reign has been Chris Wedge’s Monster Trucks, which in May was pushed back a second time to March 18, 2016. ...

Hm. Maybe Monster Trucks has more issues than Paramount/Viacom lets on. Or maybe Mr. Bacon's exit is the result of turf wars that Mr. Bacon lost. Hard to know in a situation like this, because the Top Dogs are generally closed mouthed.

Feature animation development is going on in various spaces on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. They have several features in different phases of work. Perhaps the development progress of these animated properties didn't please higher ups?

Whatever it was, Something happened.

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The Lion Guard

The Mouse has released a longer trailer.



It's got cute animation, and a nice "look" that mimics the original feature. There's some light criticism about TLG, saying the series is too "juvenile", but it's important to know how Diz Channel works.

The Channel knows its market. And before any television half-hour goes on the air, Diz Channel gives copious notes and focus groups the sucker. Then hands out more notes. Then focus groups the newer version, then creates still more notes and testing.

Get the idea?

By the time Disney Channel products get onto cable, Diz Co. has beaten, poked and prodded potential series to fare thee wells, and knows what it's got, and (pretty much) how each series will perform. Management leaves very little to chance. They want shows that will own enough young eyeballs to become global franchises. And they usually achieve shows that will get them there.

When you're a big conglomerate that's clawed its way to Number One, you like to protect your turf.

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The Old Mail Bag

The morning e-mail brings the following*:

Steve,

What is it you do exactly for the Union?

The more I speak to other members the more I ask myself this question. It's not a question in haste or anger etc but an honest one. I hear of lack of compassion and empathy for the struggling members and desire to "not get involved" with legit mistreatment of members due to political ties etc etc...

This is extremely hard to understand. Is it a faction to only collect money from members offering no real protection to matters you state are "the Unions" responsibility??. Dues should come with iron clad promises given us by the "union" and we as members need to make officers in charge responsible for promises unkept, no?...

How is it that you stay in your position with years of unhappiness from members about what the "Union" does not nor will not do to help members??...Sad to see that this establishment is just as topsy turvy as our state's and country's government!!!!...Plus, I see and hear some officers are using their positions to stay employed. Very maddening!!!...

Sorry to go off course a bit but I feel we need to address many , many more problems that are currently being overlooked because of personal agendas. ...

To which Steve replied*:

Thanks for the inquiries. I’ll try to answer them as best I can. My day to day, week to week work around here looks like this:

I go to three to five studios a week, doing walk-throughs, asking if anyone has problems, questions about the 401(k) Plan, Health Plan, Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan, etc. (We have three pension plans). That’s been Job #1 for the past twenty years. The other purpose of the walk throughs is to check on contract violations.

Recently at [redacted], I went through the studio late at night looking for artists doing uncompensated overtime and filed grievances when I found some. The same thing occurred last year at [redacted]. People were working without pay on a Saturday, and we got those artists paid for the work. We also got the crew on [redacted] dismissal pay that the studio was not paying.

I also spend a lot of time advising new artists about how to get into the business, talk to members about strategies for getting jobs and staying employed, that kind of thing. I started in the biz in 1976, when I was hired by Disney as a trainee in the feature story department. I’ve been serving on the Animation Guild’s executive board as Vice-President, board member and Business Representative since 1983.

Other things the Guild does? We review immigration visas, we do lots of 401(k) enrollment meetings. But a lot of what we do around here is education. We have a huge number of people taking storyboard, life drawing and animation classes here at the Guild. And Steve Kaplan, Guild organizer, has set up lots of subsidized classes for active members through CSATF, and we regularly send out job listings to members on our e-mail list. We also hold regular “new member lunches” to explain the pension and health plans, so that newbies know how to choose the best health coverage for themselves. We just wrapped up a new contract.

[A Guild member], who you might remember from [studio name redacted], was instrumental in getting big improvements (30%) in the contribution hours for freelance board artists and [improvements for] timing directors. We also got a 10% bump-up in the pension payouts, as well as 9+% pay increases over three years. (We started planning these negotiation[s] nine months before they were held. We had multiple craft meetings from January to May, negotiation committee meetings that started in September and ended when the contract talks ended on July 1st. By the way, we invited every member, active or not active, to participate on the committee, and thirty folks participated in the planning and/or the talks themselves.)

How do I stay in my position? I guess it’s because a lot of members know me and vote for me at election time, but you’d be correct that some members are unhappy with me at any given moment in time. So you know, I’ve run against an executive board member and a former Guild President and beat both of them by 20-30%. I’m elected by the entire active membership, got elected the first time in 1989 when I ran against the incumbent business representative and beat him by a wide margin. I’ve been running for this office, elected by the membership, for 25+ years but won’t be running again, as I’m retiring next year.

Lastly: I would disagree that serving as a union officer helps anybody get or keep a job. Several ex-presidents of the Animation Guild would tell you it’s hurt them in the business, but I don’t want to put words in their mouths so I’ll leave it at that. ...

I’ve said for years that members who want to make a difference in the running of the Guild can have a big impact by coming to General Membership Meetings and letting their voices be heard. They can run for office, they can volunteer for committees. It’s my observation that members get out of the organization what they put into it. You’re certainly free to attend membership meetings, even though your currently inactive.

Hope this helps answer some of your questions. Feel free to call me if you want more information.

Steve Hulett

* Individual names and studio names redacted, some text re-paragraphed for ease of reading, and one cut (...) in Hulett's response has been made. Kindly ignore Hulett's lackluster prose. He was banging out an e-mail and didn't revise much. (Obviously).
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Sito Speaks

Mr. Sito and Mr. Asner.

TAG President Emeritus Tom Sito was at D23 in Anaheim today. He relates:

A dream come true meeting the great Ed Asner! I said to him how much I admired his union work. I said like him, I was president of my union, for three terms.

Ed smiled at me and said "You sad son-of-a-bitch!" ...

I know precisely whereof Tom speaks. Twenty years ago, he fought for the Animation Guild's 401(k) Plan (and got it); was the first union rep in the IA to propose shared union health benefits for same-sex couples (the coverage eventually happened), and generally pushed and shoved for the betterment of animators, board artists, and everybody else the Guild represents.

But he didn't preside over a perfect world or workplace. And when, at the turn of the century, animation work left L.A. during one of the industry's multiple downturns, he took flak for it. As animator Charlie Downs (a founder of the Animation Guild and one of TAG's presidents) once said: "You serve in a union position, you have a target on your back, because anything bad that happens you get blamed for it."

"Sad son-of-a-bitch." Pretty much sums it up. But Tom goes on:

He [Ed Asner] told me he wants to run for the SAG board again. " I wanna shake things up." I'd vote for him immediately!

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The Morphing Chinese Animation Biz

As in America, Chinese companies are into mergers and acquisitions.

Guangdong Alpha Animation & Culture Company Ltd. announced last week that it is spending 904 million yuan ($141 million) to acquire U17.com, a top Chinese platform for original Internet comics.

The move represents an unorthodox move by the animation firm, which owns the rights to “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf,” one of China’s most-beloved cartoons.

U17.com owns a slate of adult comics, including one called “100,000 Bad Jokes.” The popular series is laced with adult comedy and witty wordplay and spoofs characters from classic Chinese and Western tales, such as Snow White and Superman. ...

The acquisition comes amid rising enthusiasm among investors for domestically-produced, family-friendly cartoons, sparked by the success of the recent animated feature “Monkey King: Hero is Back.” The film bested a record set by the second installment of DreamWorks Animation’s 2011 “Kung Fu Panda” to become the highest-grossing animated film in China. ...

The swallowing of entertainment companies by other entertainment companies happens in the Middle Kingdom, just as it does stateside: As News Corporation buys Blue Sky Studios, so Disney gobbles up Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilms.

Right now animation work is surging as animated features and television shows generate big profits for conglomerates, but veterans know too well how good times can become bad in the wink of an eye. Today a studio is hiring staff for new projects; tomorrow (when one of the projects tanks) that same studio is laying off employees.

Los Angeles has been blessed with a talent-heavy workforce that's in high demand, but there is always the threat of Free Money luring production to other states and countries (Sony ImageWorks, anyone?) So it's good to be aware that while boom times are good for the soul and pocketbook, they never last forever.

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World Box Office

Animation in all its forms, making money.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

Fantastic Four -- $16,200,000 -- ($102,061,218)

Minions -- $15,000,000 -- ($957,429,910)

Pixels -- $12,000,000 -- ($155,632,781)

Inside Out -- $11,400,000 -- $666,954,797

Monster Hunt -- $11,600,000 -- ($349,500,000)

Ant-Man -- $5,600,000 -- ($347,067,253)

Jurassic World -- $8,900,000 -- ($1,606,278,860)

Ted 2 -- $5,500,000 -- ($173,719,540)

Shaun the Sheep -- $400,000 -- ($70,117,271)

Seems as though stop motion animation doesn't perform as well as CG animation, but maybe I'm reading the data wrong.

The trades tell us:

... Universal/Illumination’s Minions added $15M and will this week pass Toy Story 3 to become the 4th highest-grossing film ever overseas. ... Inside Out's current frame added $11.4M to advance to $327.6M abroad and $666.96M worldwide. ...

Ted 2’s stuffed legs carried the bold bear to $5.5M in 46 territories for an international total of $92.6M this session. The worldwide total on the Universal comedy sequel is now $173.7M. ... Paramount’s The Little Prince has been enjoying a steady run in a competitive France where the cume is now $7.3M. In its 3rd frame, the Cannes Official Selection added $1.3M at 800 locations.

Paramount’s Terminator: Genisys grossed $722K from 49 international territories this frame. The international cume is now $234.7M. ...

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Your American Box Office

The young men from Compton dominate the B.O.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1). Straight Outta Compton (UNI), 2,757 theaters / $24.3M Fri.* / 3-day cume: $59.4M / Wk 1
*includes Thursday previews of $4.96M

2). Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (PAR), 3,700 theaters (-288) / $4.89M Fri. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $17M (-40%)/ Total Cume: $138.1/ Wk 3

3). Man From U.N.C.L.E (WB), 3,638 theaters / $4.8M Fri.**/ 3-day cume: $13.6M / Wk 1
**includes Thursday previews of $900K.

4). Fantastic Four (FOX), 4,004 theaters (+9)/ $2.4M Fri. (-79%)/ 3-day cume: $7.9M (-69%)/ Total Cume: $41.8M /Wk 2

5). The Gift (STX), 2,503 theaters (0) / $1.92M Fri. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $6.15M (-48%)/ Total Cume: $23.2M /Wk 2

6). Ant-Man (DIS), 2,306 theaters (-604) / $1.5Fri. (-34%) / 3-day cume: $5.35M (-32%)/Total cume: $153.6M / Wk 5

7). Vacation (WB), 3,088 theaters (-342)/ $1.5M Fri. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $5.1M (-43%) / Total cume: $46.6M /Wk 3

8). Minions (UNI), 2,640 theaters (-483)/ $1.4M Fri. (-36%)/ 3-day cume: $4.8M (-35%)/Total Cume: $312.6M / Wk 6

9). Ricki And The Flash (SONY), 2,064 theaters (+461) / $1.3M Fri. (-42%) / 3-day cume: $4.4M (-33%)/Total cume: $14.4M / Wk 2

10). Trainwreck (UNI), 1,998 theaters (-527)/ $1.18M Fri. (-38%) / 3-day cume: $3.8M (-38%)/Total cume: $97.9M/ Wk 5

Minions, now cruising north of $300 million in domestic box office, is the only animated feature now in the Top Ten.

Inside Out, now above $338 million, was at #12 on Thursday but was pushed further down the List by the cluster of new arrivals.

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New Disneyland Land

Walt's Theme Parks are always in the process of becoming.

Disney has announced it is creating a 14-acre space dedicated to “Star Wars” in both its Orlando, Florida and Anaheim, California theme parks that will transport guests to an immersive new planet inhabited by humanoids, aliens and droids.

It will be the largest single-themed park expansion ever for Disney Parks, it was announced by Bob Iger, who promised a wholly unique experience. ....

And by the by: Look for $135 admission tickets, coming soon to a Magic Kingdom near you.

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The Anaheim Version

... of Comic-Con, presented by Diz Co.

Broadway sensation Lin-Manuel Miranda is working on Moana original music, Disney announced the hoped-to-be “definitive” take on Jack And The Beanstalk, Rashida Jones is co-writing Toy Story 4, Ed O’Neill is in Finding Dory, and Shakira is acting, writing and singing in Zootopia. ... Those are just some of the highlights from the start of D23, which kicked off this afternoon with a presentation focused on inbound Walt Disney Animation and Pixar projects. ...

Concrete details were dropped about Moana, Disney’s upcoming ode to Polynesian culture set 2,000 years ago, among them some absolutely touching test footage from the still-in-early-production film.

Dwayne Johnson, who voices the demigod Maui in the film, made an appearance onstage along with the film’s director and producer and, as usual, was both inspirational and awesome, explaining how Samoa is “in my blood” and that one of his earliest dreams was to be a part of the Disney animation family.
The big reveal, however, was the rock star team Disney assembled to create Moana‘s music. The soundtrack will come from Polynesian artist Opetaia Foa’i; The Lion King arranger Mark Mancina; and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mastermind behind the Broadway smash Hamilton. ...

The thing that strikes home when reading about upcoming projects from the Mouse is, the depth of talent inside every feature.

Diz Co. isn't fooling around with upcoming soundtracks. Disney knocked the ball out of the park when they engaged the composer/songwriters of Broadway's "Book of Mormon" for Frozen. The company is using the same gambit for Moana, which makes perfect sense. If a winning formula makes a billion, by all means use the formula again.

Add On: Our fine trade papers cover the D23 extravaganza here with the Lasseter Live Blog, here with new Disney Legends (Johny Depp, Johnny Depp, JOHNNY DEPP!), and here with Jack and the Beanstalk (the company's second animated interpretation of the tale.)

All the new movies coming at us will have to carry more of the company's profit-making machinery, because the Mouse's cable and broadcast networks (ESPN, Disney Channel, ABC) continue to be undercut by newer entertainment delivery systems.


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Translating Animated Images

So how do you take Peanuts, the comic strip and TV specials, and turn them into a CG animated feature?

To train the animators, the team [at Blue Sky Studios] created a three-week crash course on the style that they dubbed Van Pelt University (after character Lucy van Pelt). That started with drawing Charlie Brown — which proved much tougher than many expected — and watching and rewatching the classic animated specials, including A Charlie Brown Christmas (which marks its 50th anniversary in December). A style guide informed details, including eye- and nose-direction charts.

Food was used for references. For instance, a side view of a foot was the shape of a baguette, while the bottom of the foot had more of an egg shape. This vocabulary also informed production design, with clouds in the sky resembling popcorn.

"It had to feel like you were looking at the strip, with the spontaneity [of drawing]," said art director Nash Dunnigan of the production design. “We also achieved a nice level of simplicity, so nothing overpowered the characters.” ...

I've heard varied reactions about the success of the CG images of Charlie Brown and his posse. The proof will be how the movie-going public responds to the movie when it rolls out this Fall.

If the Charlie Brown Movie is a hit, little else will matter.


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Original Force -- The Press Release

Ordinarily, news organizations (and blogs) get press releases and news clips on a regular basis, rewrite same, then add their own take on the subject.

The "Original Force" News Release hit earlier today, and various media organizations have been picking it up. But since I was out and about through the middle of the day, and I'm not glued well enough to my smart phone, I did pretty much nada.

And because I'm not in an energetic mood, and it is later than I like, here is the "OF" Press Release, top to bottom, with zero editorial comment. ...

CULVER CITY, Calif., Aug. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Original Force, one of China's most prominent and successful digital animation studios, has launched a new motion picture division and initiated production on three animated feature films, it was announced today by Harley Zhao, President and founder of Original Force. To support the company's expansion into Hollywood, Original Force has opened a production office in Los Angeles and recruited two of the industry's most respected animation production veterans, Sandra Rabins and Penney Finkelman Cox, who are distinguished for having built start-up operations at DreamWorks Animation and Sony Pictures Animation.

Finkelman Cox and Rabins serve as co-presidents of Original Force Animation and are partners with Zhao on the newly launched animated feature division. The company seeks to produce at least one major CG feature film approximately every 18 months.

One of the most accomplished and successful executive teams in the industry, Rabins and Finkelman Cox have overseen such beloved animated films as Shrek, Prince Of Egypt, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Open Season, and Surf's Up, among others. At Original Force, they have already tapped a team of veteran artists, writers and filmmakers for their inaugural slate, among them Christopher Jenkins, producer of the recent DreamWorks Animation hit Home, John Eng (Rugrats Go Wild), and Bob Bendetson ("The Simpsons").

Marketing expert Peter Adee, who formerly was president of marketing at Universal Pictures and MGM, is consulting with Original Force on the launch of their initial titles.

Established in 1999, Original Force has become a CGI leader creating high-quality state-of-the-art animation for a wide range of global television and gaming clients including Disney, DreamWorks Television, Sony, Tencent, Activision, and Electronic Arts, among many of the world's leading entertainment brands.

"There is no one more talented, skilled or experienced in leading animated films than Sandy and Penney," said Zhao. "Each has had an extraordinary career and their track record co-running DreamWorks Animation and Sony Pictures Animation has given them a completely unique perspective on building a contemporary animation studio from the ground up. They have a love and respect for great stories and relatable characters that is incredibly infectious and which drives our production philosophy. Original Force is proud to have two partners with such impeccable credentials guiding our film team."

"When Harley approached us with this unique opportunity, he told us he wanted to build a new creative home for the world's best storytellers, writers, directors, animators, digital artists and designers," said Finkelman Cox. "Original Force Animation is a true global operation with a world perspective and whether you are an established filmmaker or an emerging artist with a distinctive and fresh new voice, we want you to think of our company as a new destination where your best work can be nurtured and flourish."

"Harley has organically grown his business from a small start-up of four to a thriving world-class animation services and production facility that is operating in five cities with a talented team that is nearly 1,000 strong," said Rabins. "After years of successfully working as a studio-for-hire, Original Force is creating its own content and global IP and we believe we have an inaugural slate that will resonate all over the world."

Original Force is currently in production on Duck Duck Goose, the story of the most unlikely family ever. The film is directed by Christopher Jenkins (Home) from a screenplay by Christopher Jenkins and Rob Muir. Jenkins previously collaborated with Rabins and Finkelman Cox on the acclaimed motion picture Surf's Up when the duo launched Sony Pictures Animation. Finkelman Cox and Rabins are producing the feature along with Viola Chen.

After he's grounded by an injury, a high-flying bachelor is saddled with two wide-eyed orphans as they come face-to-face with the dangers and beauty of the outside world in the funny and touching animated feature, Duck Duck Goose. Our free-wheeling hero, Peng, rejects the community of his tight-knit flock of geese in an attempt to live life on his own terms. But after he narrowly rescues two young ducklings, Chi and Chao, from an eccentric but deadly cat named Banzou, the two latch onto the Goose like a parent; and with a paralyzing winter on the horizon and the departure of both their flocks, Peng agrees to look after the ducklings out of fear his injury might be discovered by Banzou, and other predators who would prey on a goose who cannot fly. The makeshift trio embarks on a beautiful and dangerous journey through mountains and lakes, bamboo forests, marble caves and deep river valleys to reach their respective flocks. On the way, Peng must learn to care for the two ducklings despite his independent attitude, all the while evading the hungry and relentless Pallas Cat, who'll stop at nothing to claim the ducklings he feels entitled to. Peng's biggest challenge is learning to shed his selfish ways and become the responsible "parent" no one ever thought he could be, including himself.

Original Force is also in the early stages of pre-production on OldZilla, written and directed by Bob Bendetson ("The Simpsons"), and co-written with Art Everett ("Married… With Children"). King Saurus, the self-proclaimed "Lord of the Stomp," is unwilling to admit Father Time is nipping at his heels. He wears a scale toupee and spends his days watching newsreel footage of his past destructions. Finally, he leaves his cave and moves into Fading Fast (a senior community in the Bermuda Triangle built exclusively for the "vintage" Chinese monster). The place is run by Miss Petfarkin, a monster who's obsessed with order and rules. King Saurus is stunned by the listlessness of his fellow behemoths and attempts to liven things up. He ultimately convinces Icarose and Birdy, an old married monster couple, to travel with him to Atlantic City to interrupt the grand opening of Rump Mart, the mega-store of mega-stores. This one last attempt at terrorizing ends up biting these senior citizen behemoths in the butt when Ronald Rump, the tyrannical owner of Rump Mart, brings in King Saurus' old nemesis, the elderly Chinese monster hunter, Dai Anu. Anu, along with his daughter and granddaughter, arrives in America in order to battle and finally defeat the Lord of the Stomp. The film is produced by Finkelman Cox and Rabins.

Original Force has an active development slate that includes Where The Mountain Meets The Moon, based on the Newberry Honor Book by Grace Lin, and Riding Giants, to be adapted by Greg Johnson from his original manuscript.

Another Original Force Animation project in early production is QQ Speed, a co-production with Tencent Holding Limited, that is based on the most popular online racing game in China. QQ Speed, is a thrilling action-adventure. John Eng (Rugrats Go Wild) is developing and is directing the motion picture. In the film, a brother-and-sister racing team risks everything to protect their late father's legacy. After legendary racer John Speedman dies during the high-stakes Super Speed Cup 500 race, his son Matt raises his younger sister, Orange, and keeps the doors of famous Speedman garage open. Fourteen years later, Orange has grown into a willful 19-year-old with her father's passion for fast cars. With the business in trouble, foreclosure seems inevitable until Orange decides to enter the Super Speed Cup 500 and vie for enough cash that would solve their financial woes. At the wheel of her father's prototype car, Orange is guided by an experimental computer that speaks with John's voice, personality and racing experience, giving the young woman her first chance to bond with the father she barely knew. But in order to win, she will have to defeat not just the other drivers, but her father's old rival, Munikula and his son Tristan. QQ Speed is a co-production of Original Force and Tencent, maker of the "QQ Speed" video game.

Ratchet And Clank is a feature film that is a co-production with CNHK, Rainmaker and Blockade. Ratchet and his robot pal Clank, the stars of the popular Sony PlayStation® sci-fi/adventure game, go back to their roots in this fun and action-filled origin story about the two unlikeliest heroes in the Solana Galaxy. When the pair discovers a nefarious plot to destroy every planet in the galaxy, they enlist a team of colorful warriors known as The Galactic Rangers to stop the evil Chairman Drek from carrying out his deadly plot. Along the way, they learn the value of true friendship, what it really means to be a hero and the importance of knowing yourself. Ratchet and Clank features the voice talents of Bella Thorne, Sylvester Stallone, Rosario Dawson, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye and Jim Ward.

ABOUT PENNEY FINKELMAN COX, CO-PRESIDENT
A multifaceted producer with more than a dozen credits in both live-action and animated features, Penney Finkelman Cox draws upon her extensive background in creative and physical production and her years of experience in the executive ranks to develop and produce high-profile entertainment projects.

In May 2002, Finkelman Cox, along with longtime producing partner Sandra Rabins, started Sony Pictures Animation for Sony Pictures Entertainment. As executive vice-president, she shepherded the development and production of the new division's projects, including its first two features, 2006's Open Season and 2007's Academy Award®-nominated Surf's Up, as well as later hits Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania. She and Rabins also brought the animated series "The Boondocks" to Sony and Cartoon Network, and developed Open Season 2 for DVD.

Finkelman Cox began her animation career at DreamWorks SKG as both a producer and an executive, starting the animation division with Rabins in 1994 and producing The Prince of Egypt, which won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song. Finkelman Cox served as executive producer on the Academy Award-winning blockbuster Shrek and on DreamWorks' first computer-generated film, 1998's Antz. In addition, she worked with Aardman Animations on its first stop-motion feature, 2000's Chicken Run, and was executive producer on Joseph: King of Dreams, DreamWorks' first direct-to-video animated release, also in 2000.

Finkelman Cox came to animation with a background in live-action features, having produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael and 'Til There Was You. She served as the executive producer for James L. Brooks' I'll Do Anything, and co-produced Brook's Academy Award® winning Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News.

Under her and Rabins' production company, Patchwork Productions, Finkelman Cox has also developed a slate of features that includes the 2006 cult sensation Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Other projects currently in development are At Large, to be directed by Ritchie Mehta, Naked Shakespeare, to be directed by Jon Amiel for Voltage Pictures, and Enchantment, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card.

A graduate of Barnard College, Finkelman Cox began her career as a press assistant for the Joffrey Ballet and went on to manage a number of nonprofit dance, theater and music companies. She began focusing on film when she was accepted to the Directors Guild of America Assistant Director Training Program in New York.

Finkelman Cox is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation (ASIFA). She's also a professor at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where she teaches classes in film producing. She is also on the Board of Directors of Dance Camera West, an organization devoted to dance in media.

ABOUT SANDRA RABINS, CO-PRESIDENT
Sandra Rabins is one of the most respected live-action and animation film executives in the entertainment industry. Along with producing partner and fellow Original Force Co-President Penney Finkelman Cox, Rabins creates, markets and distributes top-tier original content in animation and family entertainment for worldwide markets.

In 2010 Rabins joined DreamWorks Animation Television as co-executive producer for "Dragons: Riders of Berk," a series on Cartoon Network for which she has produced 21 aired episodes. Rabins had previously helped build the studio's animation division from scratch and was instrumental in the purchase of PDI, helping to build it into a digital-effects giant. She produced DreamWorks' first traditionally animated feature The Prince of Egypt, as well as its first computer-generated film, 1998's Antz. In addition, Rabins served as executive producer on the Academy Award®-winning box office hit, Shrek.

From 2002 to 2009 Rabins was senior executive vice president for Sony Pictures Animation, a new animation division of Sony Studios that she launched with partner Penney Finkelman Cox. During her tenure she developed and produced the hit comedies Open Season in 2006, 2007's Academy Award®-nominated Surf's Up and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, as well as acquiring and developing the hit Hotel Transylvania.

From 1990 to 1993 Rabins was senior vice president of Production and Finance for Buena Vista Pictures, where she worked on more than 60 films, including The Joy Luck Club and Blank Check. She was also an independent executive producer on the 1995 summer hit Dangerous Minds, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, for Walt Disney Pictures.

A Hollywood native, Rabins began her career at Paramount Pictures. In 1985 she moved to Walt Disney Studios, where she was responsible for establishing the production entities to create and animate Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. She was also instrumental in helping Pixar establish itself as a digital film entity to create Toy Story, and oversaw traditional animation as well as Theme Park Films.

Rabins and Finkelman Cox have an independent production entity, Patchwork Productions, which executive produced the 2006 horror cult hit, Snakes on a Plane. Patchwork Productions is currently developing projects with studios in Japan and China, and will release its first movie in 2016.

Rabins served as Production Consultant on Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, releasing in 2015. In 2014, Rabins produced the award winning short Last Days of Ivory with Kathryn Bigelow directing, created to grow awareness of the killing of elephants for ivory.

Rabins is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation (ASIFA).

ABOUT HARLEY ZHAO
Harley Zhao is the president and CEO of Original Force, which he founded in Nanjing, China, in 1999. From its humble yet ambitious beginnings when Zhao had a staff of four and did much of the art himself, Original Force has expanded to a global operation with offices in Los Angeles, Nanjing, Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai.

Zhao's concept for Original Force was borne out of his powerful desire to make movies from a young age. He taught himself animation while still in college at Southeast University. After graduating in 1996, he spent several years in IT at the Agriculture Bank of China. But his strong creative impulses led him to strike out on his own. After starting Original Force, he surveyed the animation landscape in China and discovered there was a limited market for animated film production. So he focused the studio on producing high-quality 3D art and animation for game developers and publishers, eventually leading Original Force to become one of the foremost animation outsourcing companies, producing work for Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Activision, Sony, Rockstar Games, Disney and many others.

Original Force made its first foray into Hollywood as the lead animation studio for DreamWorks Animation's "Dragons: Riders of Berk," a television spinoff of its 2011 Academy Award®-nominated feature How to Train Your Dragon, which premiered in 2012 on Cartoon Network.

More recently Zhao has refocused the company's efforts on developing and producing original feature films for worldwide audiences. In addition, Original Force has partnered with studios in the U.S. and China, including Sony, DreamWorks and Tencent.

ABOUT ORIGINAL FORCE
Original Force is dedicated to telling compelling, visually stunning stories through digital animation. The studio recently opened a facility in Los Angeles led by Hollywood production veterans Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins, who have overseen such animated motion pictures as Shrek, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Surf's Up and The Prince of Egypt. Under their auspices, Original Force is developing and producing feature films both on its own and in partnership with major content providers in the U.S. and China. The studio is actively building relationships with visionary filmmakers and artists and exploring innovative approaches to creating animated entertainment with broad, global appeal.

Founded in 1999 by President and CEO Harley Zhao, Original Force has established itself as one of the preeminent animation houses in the video game arena, providing top-quality content services to global clients including Microsoft, Activision, Electronic Arts, Sony, Disney, Rockstar Games and Tencent. Its art team has created in-game animation and effects for dozens of top-selling titles including "Grand Theft Auto V," "Need for Speed: The Run," "League of Legends" and "The Sims 3."

With nearly 1,000 employees across its Los Angeles, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Chengdu offices, Original Force prides itself as a major animation studio with production facilities in both the U.S. and China. The company made its first foray into Hollywood when it was chosen by DreamWorks Animation to serve as the lead animation shop for "Dragons: Riders of Berk," the television spinoff of the studio's 2011 Oscar®-nominated feature How to Train Your Dragon. The series premiered on Cartoon Network in 2012 and netted a 2013 Annie Award for Original Force director John Eng.

Chinese digital-entertainment giant Tencent is a strategic investor in Original Force. A $200-billion global conglomerate whose subsidiaries include Internet, mobile, instant-messaging and music-distribution companies, Tencent also owns significant stakes in such successful U.S. game makers as Activision Blizzard ("Call of Duty®"), Riot Games ("League of Legends"), Epic Games ("Gears of War"). Tencent is developing a feature film with Original Force Animation based on their game "QQ Speed."

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RIP Richard Manginsay

Richard Manginsay, a veteran of The Simpsons died today after a long battle with cancer. Guild board member and fellow Simpsonite K.C. Johnson wrote this:

It's going to be a rough day at The Simpsons, as our friend and colleague Ricky Manginsay went to heaven before the sun rose. A fellow animator -- father, son, husband; assistant director; talented, amazing artist; the kindest, most giving, loving soul -- his loss will be deeply felt by everyone who knew him. ...

Born and educated in the Philippines, Ricky Manginsay enjoyed a long career in the U.S. animation industry. He worked in both television and theatrical features, lending his talents to Anastasia, Bartok the Magnificent, Family Guy, Futurama, and The Simpsons Movie, among numerous others.

Hard-working and upbeat, he said some months ago that he was fighting hard against the cancer that ultimately took him. He kept working almost to the end. Our condolences to Ricky's friends and family.

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James S. Blackton

From President Emeritus Tom Sito:

James Stuart Blackton certainly had an interesting career. The English born artist became a top newspaper cartoonist, a vaudevillian drag act as Mademoiselle Stuart, the first American animator, founder of the Vitagraph Company, the movie fanzine Motion Picture World.

He even successfully faked a newsreel of the battle of Manila Bay in 1898 using toy boats, sparklers and cigar smoke. No one had ever seen a real naval battle on film before, so no one knew the difference. Its considered the first filmed journalism.

He made fortunes and lost them just as quickly. He was ruined in the Stock Market Crash. On this day, he was struck and killed by a bus on Pico Blvd.

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Warner's Lego Super-Villain

From the trades:

Zach Galifianakis is in final negotiations to voice the villain in Lego Batman , Warner Bros.’ spinoff of The Lego Movie.

Galifianakis will voice Batman’s classic archenemy, the Joker, joining Will Arnett, who is reprising the role of the Caped Crusader he originated in Lego Movie. Michael Cera recently came on board to voice the hero’s sidekick, Robin. ...

The fans of Mark Hamill in the role will be chapped, but that's show biz.

If you haven't kept up, Warner Bros. has a newer animation division for the new theatricals it's doing called The Warner Animation Group (WAG). Unlike Warner Bros. Animation, which is headquartered on the Warner Ranch (formerly the Columbia Ranch), WAG occupies a two-story building on the main lot, and presently has several features in development.

WAG is using a modified Chris Meledandri/Illumination Entertainment feature animation model, wherein writers, board artists and designers do pre-production in Burbank and the production is then done overseas. (Paramount Animation, a tenant on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, is using the same basic production model. It works well in certain hands; we'll discover how well it works for Paramount.)

American animated feature production is starting to splinter: Some studios like Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios do (almost) everything under one roof.

Other studios do a lot of the work in one studio, but job sequences (features) to China and India. DreamWorks Animation falls into this camp.

And a growing number of companies -- Warner Animation Group, Paramount Animation, Illumination Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation -- use the do "pre-production stateside/ production work out of the country" approach. This type of outsourcing has been tried for theatrical features for decades, but until Meledandri made a success of it with Despicable Me, every outsourced cartoon feature going back to Once Upon a Forest had fallen on its face, box office-wise.

With the coming of CG features, lots of companies are making piles of money in the cartoon biz. So now we get to see which company ... and production method ... works best.

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Everything Old Is Rebooted

The mining of treasures, it is ongoing.

... Disney will launch “The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar,” a short primetime movie focused on the son of Simba, the hero of the original [Lion King], in November on Disney Channel. The program will follow Kion, Simba’s second-born cub, as he and a team of animals known as “The Lion Guard” try to keep the peace in the surrounding terrain. Disney intends to launch a “Lion Guard” TV series on Disney Channel and Disney Junior outlets around the world in early 2016.

The program has been about four years in the making, said Nancy Kanter, executive vice president of original programming and general manger of Disney Junior Worldwide, in a recent interview. “We were really trying to make sure, from a production value, that we could get as close to the feel of the movie as we possibly can. I think people will be sort of amazed at just how beautiful it really looks,” she said. ...

Work on The Lion Guard series cranked into high gear several months ago. (It's only a totally unsubstantiated rumor that Kion and Co. will be taking down a bow-and-arrow-packing dentist who is running amuck in an episode. But you never know. ...)



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Ruthie Tompson Bestows Scholarship

Ruthie Tompson and Susan Bin

On Saturday August 8th, Women in Animation (WIA) presented Susan Bin with the 2015 Phyllis Craig Scholarship, awarded to animation students "who demonstrate artistic talent, a passion for animation, and promise for the future." The award was presented by the eldest member of WIA, 103-year-old Ruthie Tompson.

Susan Bin is currently an animation undergraduate at Harvard with plans to pursue a career in visual development. Bin has previous training from LAAFA, Gnomon, and CGMA, interning at DreamWorks Animation and Legendary Entertainment's comics department. She currently illustrates for Facebook, her most recent published work displayed in HBO's upcoming Game of Thrones Compendium. “I am honored to be the recipient of this year's Phyllis Craig Scholarship. As a developing artist who struggled to find a pathway into the animation industry, I appreciate that I am able to turn to Women in Animation's community of members and events for support and growth in both my career and as an individual,” said Bin. ...

Per Women in Animation:

... Ruthie Tompson was asked to help present the scholarship to Bin along with WIA member Angela Lepito, who served as Bin’s supervisor at DreamWorks Animation. 105-year-old Ruthie Tompson was named a Disney Legend in 2000, recognizing her nearly 40-year career in animation with the Walt Disney Company. Her relationship began with the Disney brothers when they established their first West Coast studio on Kingswell Avenue in the 1920s, the Hollywood neighborhood in which she grew up. After graduating from Hollywood High School, Tompson worked as a painter on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, then moved into the animation checking department and eventually into scene planning, where she served as the supervisor for the department until her retirement in 1975. “It’s a special moment in WIA’s legacy to have a trailblazer such as Ruthie bestowing this award upon Susan, a member of our newest generation. ..." says WIA Head of Scholarship Committee Barb Cimity. ...

Ms. Thompson is one of the few surviving artists from "Snow White", animator Don Lusk being one of the others.


From left to right, bottom row: Ruthie Tompson, Susan Bin. Top row: Kaaren Brown (WIA Chair of Mentorship), Tracey Miller-Zarneke (WIA Chair of Legacy and Archives), Barb Cimity (WIA Treasurer), Marge Dean (WIA Co-President), Jinko Gotoh (WIA Chair of Chapter Support)


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High End Salaries

This is the union to work in, I guess.

SAG-AFTRA‘s National Executive Director got a $40,798 raise last year and is now making $600,485 a year, according to the union’s latest financial report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. That’s a 7.3% pay raise for David White, which is nearly three-times the 2.5% raise he negotiated last year on behalf of SAG-AFTRA members working under the union’s film and TV contract. ...

Human beings sometimes get a wee bit greedy. It was ever thus. Click here to read entire post

Dinotrux

This DreamWorks tv/Netflix series has been in work since the DWA television division set up shop in a skyscraper in downtown Glendale. And now tales set in an alternate universe of creatures that are half construction equipment, half giant reptiles are set to launch.

... Bill Desowitz: What makes Dinotrux different?

Randy Dormans: A couple of things that make it different for us as far as character design is that our characters have to be clearly identifiable dinosaur and construction vehicle or truck for the big guys. For the Reptools, they've gotta be a very identifiable tool and lizard or reptile of some sort. So Ty is a T-Rex mixed with an excavator and Revvit is a rotary tool like a Dremel, mixed with a chameleon.

It's very easy to look at the Pixar franchises [Toy Story and Cars], which is the first thing I thought of because they are these inanimate objects in a fairly realistic world. Lightning McQueen's mouth has a lot of squash-and-stretch to him.In reality, our show is not like these two shows at all. It's much more like Pixar's original short, Luxo Jr. It's all in the pose and very much back to basics and our guy [Ty] is like that. He doesn't deform -- he's constructed as if he's actually made of metal. The LEGGO Movie is the only other thing that does that. ...

There's been changes in personnel on a variety of shows (including this one) at DWA tv. With a studio that has ramped up as quickly as this one over the past couple of years, that might not be a surprise. Nevertheless, a lot of the series DreamWorks has concluded for Netflix, from Turbo Fast to Dragons of Berk have done well.

In the not distant future, the performance of this DreamWorks original will be known.


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The Slippery Slope

Another example of our moral rot.

... [T]he cable and satellite television channel Cartoon Network is currently airing three animated series – Clarence, Adventure Time and Steven Universe – that have strong “gender-queer narratives” or explicitly LGBTQ characters.

Debuting in 2014, Clarence features a main character with two moms, and while Cartoon Network reportedly nixed a kiss on the lips between a homosexual couple in an episode that October, it approved a version in which the men kiss on the cheek. ...

Well, there's two men kissing. And then there's Elmer Fudd blasting Daffy Duck in the face with a shotgun.

Moral rot is where you find it, I guess. And so another generation will be rolling to hell in a handcart with cartoons on it.

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Marge Dean

There's a new GM at SBS.

Marge Dean Named Stoopid Buddy Studios General Manager

The Daytime Emmy-winner and entertainment veteran will oversee day-to-day business operations as general manager at the animation studio.

Dean will work closely with studio founders Seth Green, John Harvatine IV, Matthew Senreich and Eric Towner.

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios creations include television’s longest running stop-motion show, Robot Chicken, as well as Sony Crackle’s upcoming SuperMansion with Bryan Cranston, the upcoming Camp WWE and MAD’s stop-motion py vs. Spy.

Dean will be based in the company’s Burbank studio headquarters and most recently served as director of production for Mattel’s entertainment division, Playground Productions. ...

Ms. Dean has been an exec in the cartoon business for a long time. A couple of years ago, she became one of the leaders of Women in Animation, an industry group that focuses on women working in the industry. Two months ago, she was speaking out about the relatively low percentage of women at L.A. studios:

... “The numbers are out of proportion because there has been very little work done to intentionally change the status quo. Most hiring in entertainment is risk averse where people hire who they know. It’s easier but what that leads to is the hiring of the same people and up until recently primarily men,” said Marge Dean, WIA co-president. ...

“Additionally, women have been trained to be artists in animation schools but not to be leaders. They need to be encouraged to be brave enough to step up to the plate,” she added. ...

We wish Marge well in her new job at Stoopid Buddies, and congratulate her on the new position.


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Diversifying

Hey now. Not enough that animation is the "most profitable" movie sector, it's also #1 in diversity. (f course, everything's relative.)

Animated films lead pack in Hollywood diversity, but it’s a slow pack

A new study on diversity in popular movies helps quantify a fact that any attentive moviegoer has likely noticed: The world as portrayed on the big screen is still overwhelmingly young, white, male, and straight. ...

But the report — the latest installment in a study that began in 2007 — found a smidgen of hope in a sometimes-overlooked corner of Hollywood: animated films. ...

“It makes sense that we should see a shift in what’s on-screen in animation,” says study co-author Stacy Smith, director of the USC program. She notes the shifting demographics in the U.S., pointing out that roughly half of children under the age of 5 are from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. ...

Having a wide array of characters is an easier lift in Cartoonland: Most everything on screen is stylized to start with, and so less threatening.

Plus five and six-year-olds haven't had time to build up burdensome prejudices. They're young and impressionable, so if a black or brown or Asian cartoon character is a major player in an animated feature or TV show, little kids are down with that.

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World-Wide Box Officing

With Add On!

I'm actually a bit surprised here.

Inside Out is a big worldwide hit, but Minions, a spin off of the Despicalbe Me tent-poles, has rocketed past it.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Mission Impossible -- $65,500,000 -- ($265,354,207)

Fantastic Four -- $34,100,000 -- ($60,300,000)

Minions -- $18,200,000 -- ($912,524,400)

Jurassic World -- $15,100,000 -- ($1,581,256,780)

Ant-Man -- $9,200,000 -- ($326,336,546)

Monster Hunt -- $16,400,000 -- ($312,000,000)

Pixels -- $9,200,000 -- ($131,245,304)

Inside Out -- $10,800,000 -- ($635,475,150)

Monkey King -- $4,700,000 -- ($128,200,000)

Shaun the Sheep -- $100,000 -- ($68,821,338)

Ted 2 -- $3,800,000 -- ($166,566,230)

Terminator Genisys -- $1,600,000 -- ($322,496,273)

You will note that the Chinese animated morsel Monster Hunt has now hit $312 million overseas on $0 domestically, since it hasn't been released n the U.S and/or Canada. Meanwhile:

... Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation grossed an additional $65.5M in its sophomore session to bring the offshore cume to $156.7M. The global total through Sunday is $265.3M. ...

Minions added $18.2M this frame in 62 territories as the henchmen beat Despicable Me 2’s international gross with $609.8M to date. This makes the origins story the 5th biggest animated film of all time at the offshore box office. It also becomes Illumination Entertainment’s best overseas take to date. ...

Jurassic World added $15.1M this frame to take the international tally to $945.6M. That makes it the 5th biggest grosser of all time internationally. ... Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out has now crossed $300M overseas with a cume to date of $300.1M. With domestic included, the Pete Docter charmer is at $635.5M. The weekend was worth $10.8M internationally, in 53 territories which is 74% of the footprint. ...

Animation, it does well.

Add On: Monster Hunt, per Deadline, keeps rolling along in the Middle Kingdom:

... MH has been on a tear, steadily rounding up records during its 25-day run thus far. Rentrak puts Monster Hunt‘s cume as of Sunday at $328.4M locally which shoots it past Transformers: Age Of Extinction ($318.78M) to become the No. 2 movie ever at the Chinese box office.

The Global Times reports that Monster Hunt‘s official Sina Weibo account said it had earned 2B yuan ($322M) as of Saturday night. The only other film ever to cross 2B is Furious 7 with 2.43B.

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SpongeBob VoiceWork

Bill Faberbakke expounds on voicing the sidekick on Spongebob Squarepants.

... Part of the appeal of [Spongebob], it works so well in 11 minute segments, so to take it to 85 minutes of whatever, the cuffs are off! To really get to go with every goofy impulse... That's what you get from the movie. The writers are so good. It was really a treat for us to have Stephen Hillenburg, the creator, back in the fold. ...

[The feature Sponge Out of Water] wasn't as enjoyable as the series, where we all are together and it's like doing a radio play. We have so much fun. We did very often work together on the film, but so much of creating an animated film is bits and pieces. It seemed endless, because we're used to the television pace. We'd stopped doing the TV series so they could do the film. We were down for almost two and a half years, so it was kind of agony. We were more accustomed to the different pace. ...

In the last few decades, big-name actors have gotten cast in animated features. Sandra Bullock, Brad Pitt, Will Ferrell, Robin Williams (etc.) among a few. The artists who put the images and characters onto the screen labor in anonymity; the voice actors sell the product and get the large coin.

This isn't usually the case with TV voice talent, but even there the actors -- who show up for the occasional recording session -- get questioned more than the creative staff who live with the shows week in and week out, sometimes for years on end. (See "Simpsons, The" to see what I mean. Harry Shearer, voice actor, gets a lot more news copy by holding out on a new contract than a veteran director who gets fired or demoted.)

I shrink from labeling anything "fair" or "unfair", and I get how the actors are visible and therefore better agents for publicizing this show or that. But I do like to point out the dynamic: the actors have the visibility and therefore the ability to leverage more money; the artistic talent have their skills, talent and capacity for work. In this culture, it's clear where the leverage lies.


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Your American Box Office

What this week's Top Eleven proves is:

1) Not all animated features end up hits.

2) Not all super-hero movies are mega-blockbusters.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1/2). Fantastic Four (Fox), 3,995 theaters / $11M to $11.5M Fri. (includes $2.7M preview) / 3-day gross: $27M to $29M / Wk 1

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (PAR), 3,988 theaters (+32) / $8.3M to $8.6M Fri. / 3-day cume: $28.4M to $29.4M / Total cume: $107M to $108M (-51%) / Wk 2

3). The Gift (STX), 2,503 theaters / $4M to $4.3M Fri. (includes $585K preview) / 3-day gross: $10.6M to $11.4M / Wk 1

4). Minions (UNI), 3,123 theaters (-452) / $2.3M to $2.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $8M+ /Total cume: $303M / Wk 5

5/6). Ant-Man (DIS), 2,910 theaters (-412) / $2.25M Fri. / 3-day gross: $8M / Total cume: $147.6M / Wk 4

Vacation (WB), 3,430 theaters (+19) / $2.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $8M (-46%) / Total cume: $36.1M / Wk 2

7). Ricki and the Flash (SONY), 1,603 theaters / $2.3M Fri. (includes $200K preview) / 3-day gross: $7M+ / Wk 1

8). Trainwreck (UNI), 2,525 theaters (-435) / $1.8M Fri. / 3-day gross: $5.9M to $6.1M / Total cume: $91M / Wk 4

9). Pixels (SONY), 2,864 theaters (-859) / $1.6M Fri. / 3-day cume: $5.4M / Total cume: $57.5M/ Wk 3

10). Southpaw (TWC), 2,274 theaters (-498) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.3M to $4.6M / Total cume: $40M+ / Wk 3

11). Shaun the Sheep Movie (LGF), 2,320 theaters / $1.2M Fri. (715K Wed. preview) / 3-day cume: $3.6M to $4M / 5-day cume: $5.2M to $5.5M / Wk 1 ...

Meantime, after fifty days of release, Inside Out sits north of $333 million in domestic box office, and has now falled out of the Top Ten.

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Shifted

Rupert's minions protect a franchise.

Twentieth Century Fox has moved Ice Age: Collision Course, the newly christened fifth chapter of its Blue Sky animated franchise, from July 15 to July 22, 2016.

This will shift Sid, Manny, Ellie and company off their previous collision course with Sony’s Ghostbusters and two other pictures, the musical La La Land from Lionsgate and The Lake from EuropaCorp. For the time being, Ice Age: Collision Course is sharing its new date with one other title, Warner Bros’ King Arthur. ...

Pushing the cartoon back a week is a smart move. Ghostbusters will chew into Ice Age grosses a lot more than a picture about the knights of the round table would.

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Long Ago ... Far Away

Years ago (like eighteen?) Shrek was in development at DreamWorks Animation. And Eddie Murphy was working with a comedy actor from Saturday Night Live ...



... and it wasn't Mike Myers. ...

Chris Farley had the lead, and as director/story artist/animator Tom Sito once told me, "He brought a lot of energy to the part. Chris was big, made me feel like Twiggy. And he had a different take on the role than Myers did." ...

Shrek did not have a smooth ride from book to screen. The studio went through several directors. The board artists struggled to get the right balance of comedy and story, gags going into sequences then being pulled out again. Jeffrey Katzenberg considered using motion capture but then rejected it.

And in the midst of production with 90% of the dialogue recorded, the actor in the title role died.

It's amazing, when you consider all the ups and downs of the production, that the feature turned out as well as it did. When finally released, not only did Shrek open at #1, but the feature went on to gross almost a half billion dollars against a budget of sixty million. And it was the first winner for "Best Animated Feature" beating the Pixar and Nick entries.

What Shrek might have been with Chris Farley? An unknowable unknown.

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Brave New World

This wave seems to be cresting.

It's been two days of harsh reckoning for the entertainment industry as long-simmering concerns about declining pay-TV subscriptions boiled up in quarterly earnings reports, leading investors to dump shares of media stocks amid worries that a key Hollywood money pot is threatened..

The massive sell-off — one analyst called it "the media meltdown" — came after Walt Disney Co. warned investors late Tuesday that profit from ESPN and other cable channels would not be as robust as initially thought because fewer consumers are subscribing to full pay-TV packages.

The sell-off continued Thursday as Viacom disappointed Wall Street with weak sales. Over the last two days, Time Warner slid 10%, Disney shares dropped 11%, Fox fell nearly 13% and Viacom plunged 21%. ...

Diz Co. has ridden the ESPN cash cow for years, but that animal is getting feeble and doesn't produce as much milk.

The pricing structures and business models conglomerates have enjoyed are now being reshaped (eliminated?) by ever-changing technology. The days of high-priced cable packages give way to Subcription Video on Demand, YouTube and pirate sites. Teenagers and Twenty-Somethings want their entertainment at cut-rate prices. Or free.

Which presents challenges to our fine, entertainment conglomerates. They have to find new ways to squeeze money from all those new platforms ... without alienating the public that consumes content, something of a conundrum.

Movie companies face their own versions of record companies' earlier plight: When little silver disks got replaced with song downloads off the internet, and $16 CDs became history. How Disney, Fox, Warners (etc.) navigate their newer tech challenges is a tale that continues to unfold.

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Women in Animation Now

When I entered the animation business (back when saber tooth tigers were falling into Southern California tar pits with frightening regularity), roughly half of the Guild's membership were women. But most of those women worked in ink and paint departments, and technical jobs like final checking and animation checking (think of those as "screen continuity" positions, weeding out all the visual glitches that cropped up while putting cartoons together.)

The Guild was smaller then, 1500 people compared to over 3000 today. But here in the 21st century the ink and paint positions have gone away, removed because of outsourcing and technological change. And there's a lower percentage of women working under TAG's jurisdiction. Even so, there are way more women working in creative positions today than twenty or thirty or fifty years ago. And the jobs break down like so: ...

WOMEN -- (MEN) = Percentage of Females

Total Women - 692 -- Total Men - (2,614) = 21%

Directors -- 22 -- (175) = 13%

Art Directors -- 6 -- (31) = 19%

Timing Directors -- 14 -- (42) = 33%

Writers -- 48 -- (220) = 22%

Storyboard Artists -- 103 -- (481) = 21%

Animators -- 6 -- (121) = 5%

Background Artists -- 73 -- (173) = 42%

Kindly note: The percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number. And I haven't included all the work categories in which women work, because it's late and my fingers are tired and nobody cares how many apprentices and Level Three assistants are working anyway.

But you should know that women have been steadily gaining in almost every job category, and my expectation is that the trend will continue upward because more women are training in animation jobs in colleges and universities (half the undergrads in Cal Arts' animation department are female), and as more women enter the business, more women climb to supervisory positions where they are in a position to hire other women.

Who knows? Perhaps one day in the future, the animation business will be known as a "Girls' Club". If it can happen in one direction, it can happen in another.

Here's what some percentages were five months ago. The percentage of women in the biz has risen about a quarter percent.

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Dragons Not Bawling

A foreign animated feature from across the sea does well.

After a highly successful international run, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F opened in the domestic market in only 894 select theaters and playing only one time a night — at 7 PM and the performance here is as stunning as it was overseas in Japan. On Tuesday and last night, it had collected a whopping $1.97M and Wednesday is said to have drawn in another estimated $1.6M.

The movie’s per screen average of more than $2,198 landed it in first place yesterday among all movies. Theater sell outs were reported in major metropolitan areas including New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. They could pull in a similar $1.5M number tonight as well. In fact, this anime picture, on a budget of only $5M, could end up doing $18M to $19M in one week domestically. ...

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, animation is a format, not a genre. You can have multiple animated productions in the marketplace doing well because they're not the same but different, catering to a variety of audiences in the same way that ... ahm ... live-action movies play to different age groups and sensibilities.

It really isn't a hard concept to understand if people take a couple of minutes to look, study and understand it. Maybe someday some of the denser critics and analysts will catch on.

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Churlishness

We've gotten questions about this the last few days, and now CB points out the odd behavior, to wit:

... Now that the profile of our show [BoJack Horseman] is rising, we need to get a lot more protective about what we show online. I know a lot of character designers have been posting their work online since season 1. Sadly, we need to bring an end to that practice. If you have samples of your artwork for the show posted on Tumblr, Instagram or any other website, you’ll need to pull it down. Same goes for any storyboard samples, background and prop art, animatics and any other original art created for the show. ...

The usual drill?

Management frowns on artists putting artwork samples from un-aired shows and unreleased movies into their on-line portfolios. In fact, management does more than frown. It has conniption fits. It tells employees too get said art off the internet pronto. At decibels near the threshold of pain.

And it's understandable. The production isn't out in the marketplace yet, and the release of development materials might negatively impact the unfinished product. But that's for unseen shows or theatrical features.

Once a show or movie is released, managers at most studios are fine with artists showing work samples in their digital portfolios. Industry-wide, the understanding is that people need to get hired, and the major way to get hired is to show the latest storyboard and/or designs to prospective employers. It's the way the biz works. And few managers are interested in ancient work created for shows long gone.

So BoJack suits wanting work to be taken down after it's been up for months? Weird. Just weird.

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Bear Bares All

From the Southern half of the hemisphere.

... "Bear Story" the sad tale of a lonesome bear who builds an elaborate mechanical diorama in an attempt to remember (and perhaps recover) the life he used to live with his wife and son, before he was ripped from his home and sent to a circus.

But audiences in Osorio’s native Chile immediately know that it’s more than that — it’s also an allegory for the way families were torn apart during the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1970s. ...

Because of the internet, work many would never know existed get's a showing in the U.S. and other markets.

It isn't all Pixar/DreamWorks/Disney/Blue Sky. Which is a good thing when you reflect on it.

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March of the 2015 Wage Survey

Last month, TAG launched its latest industry wage survey. We sent out the largest number of survey questionnaires we have ever distributed. To date, we've received 27% of them back, which places us below last year's rate but above previous percentages.

Last year's survey:

Selected Wage Categories (2014)

Staff Story Editors (weekly): Low - $1640; High - $4,000; median - $2,531

Staff feature writers (weekly): low -- $1499.60; high - $7,558.82; median - $2,800

Staff TV writers (weekly): low - $1100; high - $3000; median - $2000

Feature Directors (home video, theatrical; weekly): low - $1973.19; high - $9,615.39; median - $3,800

TV directors (weekly): low - $1,406.25; high - $4,600; median - $2,475

Timing Directors (weekly): low - $1,375; high - $3,100; median - $1,824.43

Retake Directors (weekly): low - $1,707.38; high - $3,100; median - $2,593.75

Feature Storyboard artists (weekly): low - $1,400; high - $3,789; median - $2100

TV Production Board artists (weekly): low - $1,238.16; high - $3,307.50; median - $2000

Character layout (weekly): low - $1,312.50; high - $2,526.32; median - $1,886.40

Background layout (weekly): low - $1,175; high- $4,200; median - $1,909.40

Art Directors (weekly): low - $1,187.50; high - $2,909.09; median - $2,363.64

Production Designers (weekly): low - $2,125; high - $5,250; median - $2,330.47

3D Animators (weekly): low - $1,200; high - $3,100; median - $1968

Effects animators (weekly): low - $1,346.15; high - $2,850; median - $2,018.10

To date, we've had the highest number or responses in the survey's history, but not the highest percentage returns.

We're extending the window to mid-August. If you know somebody who hasn't yet filled out their questionnaire, get on them about it., because the bigger our sample the more useful the results.


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Record B.O.

When you're fragrant with money, it's all good.

... North American box-office revenue has hit an all time record year-to-date, a significant achievement after last year's downturn.

Through Tuesday, revenue for 2015 stood at $6.863 billion, narrowly besting the $6.783 billion earned between Jan. 1 and Aug. 3 in 2013.

"Look at the huge franchise films we've had this year," said Rentrak analyst Paul Dergarabedian. He also credited titles such as American Sniper, Cinderella, Fifty Shades of Grey and Kingsman: The Secret Service.

So far, the top-grossing title of the year domestically is Universal's Jurassic World with a T. Rex-like cume of $632.2 million, the second-best showing of all time behind Avatar ($760.5 million) and Titanic ($658.8 million); Disney and Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron ($456.9 million); Universal's Furious 7 ($351 million); Disney and Pixar's Inside Out ($330.4 million); and Universal and Illumination's Minions ($289.6 million). ...

Kindly note that animation of one type or another makes up a huge part of the above mix of films.

Happily, the pure animated features have not cannibalized each other. More happily, the idiot trade press is no longer talking about one animated feature chewing into the box office of the other because "too many animated features" is an invention of analysts with minimal basis in reality.

It's like saying "live action movies are cannibalizing each other." It's parrot talk, designed to side-step the reality that animation and live-action formats are delivery systems, not content. And audiences go to movies based on content. When they want to see a movie, they go see it. Period. Some day the "analysts" who claim to know the intricacies of the motion picture market might admit this truth, but I tend to doubt it.


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Path Tracing Made Easy

Disney reveals how some of its screen magic is made.



Diz Co. relates the way its renderer, Hyperion, works.

It happens due to a technique called "path tracing", which is a ray-tracing technique. Millions of rays of light are individually simulated. The simulated rays commence at the camera and are shot into the scene. ...


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Cartoon Makers' Earnings Projections

Now with Add On!

The big:

... Disney shares are trading at an all-time high, up nearly 45 percent over the past 12 months.

Expectations continue to rise ahead of results due out Tuesday afternoon. Disney is projected to grow revenue 6 percent to $13.225 billion, while earnings are projected to grow 11 percent to $1.42 per share. ...

Projections [are] that "Star Wars" will gross around $2.2 billion globally. ... "The Avengers" is expected to bolster the quarter's studio results, but analysts are projecting the company will take a write-down of $130 million to $140 million on "Tomorrowland." The upside — since the film is not part of a franchise -- that box office disappointment [won't] "ripple" into Disney's other earnings streams. ...

And the less big:

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION EARNINGS FORECAST: Second-quarter net loss of 26 cents a share is the consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, compared with a loss of 18 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Though the studio released the hit “Home” during the quarter, earnings could still be hit by costs associated with the company’s restructuring plan -- a turnaround announced in January that cut 500 jobs and scaled back its film production to two releases a year, from three.

The specter of this year’s layoffs still hangs over DreamWorks, and Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg’s assurances to investors that a turnaround is in motion has split the analyst community. Some believe the studio is playing a smart long game, while others caution that it is too little, too late.

REVENUE FORECAST: Analysts forecast a revenue of $167 million, compared with last year’s $122 million.

When I was a wee tot, Walt Disney Productions (as it was then named) was the small, sick studio of Hollywood. It made few movies and its animation staff, though working in pleasant surroundings -- there were ball fields and ping pong tables scattered about -- made wages that were low compared to other animation studios.

Dad would come home from Disney's with his paltry pay check, and make ends meet with freelance work. The studio would sweeten the low pay with stock options, but Disney stock was never worth very much, and the shares paid almost nothing in dividends.

Disney storyman Larry Clemmons recalled how he came back to the studio while a writer on Bing Crosby's network radio show, and was viewed with awe and envy by former co-workers: "Gee Larry, you're working for real Hollywood!"

But all that was a lifetime ago. Then, Disney's was the DreamWorks Animation of its day. Now, the Disney Company is a gargantuan powerhouse of an entertainment conglomerate, no longer sick, no longer struggling.

And what studios will be prospering and which gone bankrupt a lifetime from today? I can make a semi-educated guess, but I really haven't a clue. It'll probably be a company that is currently a mere blip on the horizon.

Add Ons:

The DWA actuals:

While DreamWorks Animation seemed to be getting Wall Street off its back when the company’s share price rose more than 52% from late January to early June, it has since retreated about 13.3%. That was the mindset going into today’s quarterly earnings report from the animation company. In a call with Wall Street today, DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg revealed that the quarter ending June 30, 2015 has resulted in an increase in revenues that represents a 39.7% jump from the same period last year. Specifically revenues were $170.8M (which beat forecasts), coming from the expansion of the company’s television and new media businesses and from the theatrical success of its last animated film. Also, the Television segment revenues more than doubled year-to-year to $55M.

The operating loss, however, was $21.8 million logging in a net loss of $38.6 million, which is a greater net loss than anticipated. That translates to .45 cents per share. The restructuring-related charges totaled $20.9M or a loss of .25 cents per share. ...

... and the Mouse:

Disney shares continued to fall in post market trading today after execs, in a conference call, told analysts that some financial results will come in lower than it expected — due in part to declining pay TV subscriptions for its biggest profit generator: ESPN.

The company says its cable unit’s operating income through the fiscal year ending September 2016 will rise by a mid-single digit percentage. That’s down from its projection in April for high single digit growth. Revenues will continue to grow by high single digits. ...

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Your International Box Office

To start:

Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out continues to spread the joy, crossing the $600M worldwide box office mark. With an additional $17.8M from overseas and $4.52M at home in the frame, the global total has now risen to $602.29M. Of that, $272.7M is the international portion and domestic is worth $329.59M. The Pete Docter-helmed animated family film is the 7th in the Pixar stable to reach the $600M benchmark. ...

And to continue:

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals<)

Mission Impossible -- $65,000,000 -- ($121,000,000)

Minions -- $39,100,000 -- ($854,646,275)

Ant-Man -- $20,000,000 -- ($291,647,919)

Pixels -- $19,800,000 -- ($102,111,497)

Monster Hunt -- $27,000,000 -- ($279,000,000)

Inside Out -- $17,800,000 -- ($602,293,892)

Jurassic World -- $4,400,000 -- ($1,559,456,710)

Monkey King -- $6,700,000 -- ($121,000,000)

Ted 2 -- $3,600,000 -- ($160,320,795)

While Inside Out does well, the whacky spin-off Minions is running wild at the box office. $854.6 million and still raking in the bucks.

... Minions has passed Shrek The Third to become the 9th biggest animated film of all time worldwide — and there are still five more territories to open, including China on September 13. It’s gaining on Ice Age: Continental Drift at No. 8 with $880M.

Abroad, Stuart, Kevin and Bob have passed The Lion King to take the No. 6 slot on the all-time animated chart and will next take on Gru, their Despicable Me 2 master who currently sits at No. 5 with $607.5M. ...

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A Human Being With Human Short-Comings

Was Walt Disney an anti-Semite? Uh ... no.

... “Preposterous,” [Richard] Sherman several times called the charges during the Q&A.

Disney treated him and his brother, Robert, like his own sons, insisted Sherman, the son of Jewish immigrants who, with his brother, wrote some of Disney’s biggest music hits including songs for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and the Disney theme park tune It’s a Small World After All. ...

Was he anti-Communist? Anti-Screen Cartoonist Guild but pro-IATSE (the labor organization that employs yours truly?) Absolutely yes.

Did he carry grudges? And black-list key employees who walked out during the '41 strike, who he considered disloyal? You betchya.

In other words, a normal human being with the usual human foibles and prejudices. ...

The studio, back in Walt Disney's heyday, was also not the highest payer of animation salaries, not by a long-shot. As Woolie Reitherman once said:

"None of us got rich from the pay checks we got. We ended up well fof because of the stock options." ...

Some of the veterans kept their shares in Disney and became wealthy; others cashed the stock in and ended up less wealthy.

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Synergy!

The Mouse's animation library can never be sequeled and prequeled and spun off enough.

The Disney Channel has another potential hit movie franchise on its hands with Descendants, a modern-day coming-of-age tale about the teenage sons and daughters of Disney’s most infamous villains.

In its premiere at 8 PM Friday night, the movie drew strong 6.6 million total viewers, including 3.0 million Kids 2-11. Additionally, the movie set a record with 1.4 million views on the WATCH Disney Channel app since Friday July 24. Adding up the two, the total pre- and premiere night viewership for Descendants would eclipse the 7.7 million who tuned in for the TV premiere of the first High School Musical movie. ...

Descendants‘ soundtrack, released on premiere date, Friday, July 31 on Walt Disney Records, is currently at #1 on the iTunes soundtrack chart and #2 on the iTunes album chart. On Twitter, Descendants was the #1 most social non-sports program on Friday, July 31, producing over 2 million impressions. ...

There have been several times in Disney's corporate history when management decided fairy tales were no longer where It was at. In the mid-eighties, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg thought that Princess-type movies were pretty much moldy figs. And Rich Ross, briefly Disney studio chief in the 21st century, shelved Frozen.

But the company, I think, has been disabused of the notion that princesses and fairy tales aren't viable. At least it certainly seems that way.

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Down-Sized

A Burbank effects house shifts work to the Land of Northern Tax Subsidies.

... Visual-effects company Stereo D, which last summer announced plans to open a Toronto office, notified the state earlier this year that in June it would be laying off more than 225 employees, including 75 temporary employees.

However, William Sherak, co-founder and president of the company, which specializes in converting films to a 3-D format, said there are still about 100 employees at the Burbank location.

“We will always remain committed to Burbank as our headquarters,” he said.

According to the filings with the state, the majority of the Stereo D layoffs affected artists, though some production supervisors and managers were also slated to be let go. ...

The California Film Commission last May awarded $82.8 million in tax credits for television productions. ... Sherak said it’s too soon to know the impact of those incentives on his business. The firm is a leader in 3-D conversion, a labor-intensive process that involves artists working on every frame of a film, which some artists call “pixel pushing.” ...

The recent formation of Deluxe Animation Studios, which Sherak also heads and which is located in the same building as Stereo D on Empire Avenue, could add 20 to 40 positions, Sherak said.

The company is set to recruit animators at the 42nd International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, known as SIGGRAPH 2015, which will be at the Los Angeles Convention Center the week of Aug. 9, as well as the Creative Talent Network Expo at Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport in November. ...

I'm a wee bit skeptical about Stereo D's commitment to Burbank, since there are all those layoffs supplying evidence to the contrary.

Still in all, they're recruiting staff for the new cartoon facility. And Mr. Sherak does imply that the talent pool in Southern California creates a gravitational pull for companies making cartoons.

So maybe when the hirings and layoffs are done and the corporate dust has settled, Stereo D/Deluxe Animation Studios will have a net gain in personnel.


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All American B.O.

So Minions had a short sit at the top of the heap.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1). Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (PAR), 3,956 theaters / $20M Fri. / 3-day cume: $51.4M / Wk 1

2). Vacation (WB), 3,411 theaters / $4.35M Fri. / 3-day cume: $13.3M / Total cume: $19.7M /Wk 1

3). Minions (UNI), 3,575 theaters (-491)/ $3.65M Fri. (-46%)/ 3-day cume: $12.6M (-45%)/Total Cume: $287.5M / Wk 4

4). Ant-Man (DIS), 3,322 theaters (-546) / $3.5M Fri. (-52%) / 3-day cume: $11.9M (-52%)/Total cume: $131.4M/Wk 3

5). Pixels (SONY), 3,723 theaters (0)/ $3.1M Fri. (-66%) / 3-day cume: $10.2M (-57%)/Total cume: $45.7M/ Wk 2

6). Trainwreck (UNI), 2,960 theaters (-211)/ $2.8M Fri. (-47%) / 3-day cume: $9.3M (-46%)/Total cume: $79.2M/ Wk 3

7). Southpaw (TWC), 2,772 theaters (0) / $2.3M Fri. (-63%) / 3-day cume: $7.8M (-53%)/ Total cume: $31.9M/Wk 2

8). Inside Out (DIS), 1,904 theaters (-813)/ $1.5M Fri. (-31%)/ 3-day cume: $5.1M (-31%) /Total cume: $330M/ Wk 7

9). Paper Towns (FOX), 3,031 theaters (0) / $1.6M Fri. (-75%) / 3-day cume: $4.9M (-61%)/Total cume: $23.9M / Wk 2

10). Jurassic World (UNI), 1,912 theaters (-733) / $1.2M Fri. (-44%) / 3-day cume: $4.1M (-42%) /Total cume: $631.4M/ Wk 8

Percentage-wise, Minions is declining more steeply than the now long-in-the-tooth Inside Out, but they'll both be $300+ million animated features at the end of their release cycles.

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