Student Academy Awards

The winners have been known for a bit of a while, but the list of student academy awards honorees (animation) bears repeating:


Silver award -- "The Wishgranter"

Seventeen winners of Student Academy Awards were honored Thursday as the Academy unveiled the medal standings at its 43rd Student Academy Awards ceremony, held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. ...

Animation

Gold: “Once upon a Line,” Alicja Jasina, USC

Silver: “The Wishgranter,” Echo Wu, Ringling College of Art and Design

Bronze: “Die Flucht,” Carter Boyce, DePaul University

Left to right: Echo Wu, Alicja Jasina, Lucy Liu and Carter Boyce.




Alicja Jasina accepting the Gold.


Ringling student Echo Wu accepting the Silver.

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The Box Office of the Weekend

A Western (of all things) tops the charts, with WB's Storks a distant second:

WEEKEND GROSSES

1). Magnificent Seven (SONY), 3,121 theaters / $12.7M Fri. / $13.8M Sat. / $8.5M Sun. / 3-day cume: $35M / Wk 1

2). Storks (WB), 3,922 theaters / $5.7M Fri. / $9.4M Sat. / $6.6M Sun. / 3-day cume: $21.8M / Wk 1

3). Sully (WB), 3,955 theaters (+430)/ $4.2M Fri. / $6M Sat./ $3.6M Sun. / 3-day cume: $13.8M (-36%)/Total: $92.4M / Wk 3

4). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,930 theaters (+3) / $1.47M Fri. / $1.97M Sat. / $1.1M Sun. / 3-day cume: $4.5M (-47%)/Total Cume:$16.5M/ Wk 2

5). Snowden (OR), 2,443 theaters / $1.2M Fri. / $1.8M Sat. / $1.1M Sun. / 3-day cume: $4.1M (-49%)/Total Cume: $15.1M/ Wk 2

6). Blair Witch (LG), 3,121 theaters / $1.27M Fri. / $1.75M Sat. / $930K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.95M (-59%)/Total cume: $16.1M/ Wk 2

7). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 2,438 theaters (-770) / $1.1M Fri. / $1.7M Sat. / $955K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.8M (-33%)/ Total cume: $81.1M / Wk 5

8). Suicide Squad (WB), 2,172 theaters (-568) / $800K Fri. / $1.5M Sat./ $820K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.1M (-34%) / Total cume: $318.1M / Wk 8

9). When the Bough Breaks (SONY), 1,444 theaters (-802) /$715K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. / $565K Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.5M (-54%)/Total: $26.6M/ Wk 3

10/11). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 1,209 theaters (-548) / $261K Fri. / $510K Sat. / $332K Sun. / 3-day cume: $1.1M (-57%) / Total cume: $45.9M / Wk 6 ...

So remakes are still gold (with the right actors), but some animated features fly much lower than others.

As Deadline notes:

... Storks opening is reminiscent of Sony’s Open Season which made $23.6M, earned an A- CinemaScore (which isn’t good for an animated movie when its opening is this low), had a similar cost to Storks of $85M, and did a 3.6x multiple with a final stateside take of $85.1M. Overseas was $112.2M.

Though Open Season created a launchpad for animated pics in late September, property/cost/box office-wise, it didn’t warrant a theatrical sequel (just video), and that might be the case here with Storks. The fact that it skews way younger to the under 10 crowd, and is not a ‘five-quad’ animated film will slow its pace. If you’re a frosh toon brand, you have to have wide appeal if you’re going to be a studio cornerstone franchise.

DreamWorks Animation’s The Penguins of Madagascar was another handholder-skewing movie that opened in this Storks range ($25.4M FSS, with an A- CinemaScore and an $83M final stateside take). Though Penguins was pained by its $132M production cost, the reason why it made 78% of its global tally overseas ($289.7M/$373M) stemmed from the fact that it was an established DWA brand. It would be a shocker if Storks hits those foreign B.O. numbers even with a $18.3M launch this weekend in 33 territories (including China). ...

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Thirty-Three Years Back ...

President Emeritus Tom Sito tells us:

Sept 23, 1984 --- Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and are pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Up to now their thinking had been to dismantle the animation department and earn income from the licensees of the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain. Eisner dictates memos to start the television animation division. ...

Well, something like that.

Walt Disney Productions animation division was on pins and needles about whether the production group was going to get shuttered or was going to continue. Rumors abounded. Rectums were tight.

Then word came down that the animation department was still in business and the new guys (Eisner, Wells, Katzenberg) okayed opening a TV animation division. Michael Eisner came up with the idea for The Gummi Bears (okay, he wanted a cartoon developed around the candy) and the resulting series became Disney Television Animation's first hit.

A lot of water has passed beneath Diz Co.'s bridge since those nerve-wracking days in the early eighties. It's good to see the place has prospered, even if most of the personnel at the studio in 1984 have moved on ... including Frank, Michael and Jeffrey.

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Union Vote

For some odd reason, a group of entertainment workers want improved wages and benefits.

By a vote of 43-20, employees of Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema tonight voted to join IATSE and its postproduction local the Motion Picture Editors Guild. This comes a year after postproduction technicians and artists at Deluxe’s Culver City unit on the Sony lot overwhelmingly jumped into the union game. ...

This particular further unionization of Deluxe employees comes after what sources tell me was a very heated campaign on both sides. ...

There's a lot of pushback right now from people who have to work for a living. When the standard of living slips year by year by year, folks working long hours in front of the flat screens commence taking action that will push the trend line in a different direction.

So why would this be happening in this best of all possible worlds? ...

... Over the past three decades, the share of household wealth owned by the top 0.1% has increased from 7% to 22%. For the bottom 90% of families, a combination of rising debt, the collapse of the value of their assets during the financial crisis, and stagnant real wages have led to the erosion of wealth.

The share of wealth owned by the top 0.1% is almost the same as the bottom 90%. ...

So this union vote? A small step to alter the maldistribution at the base of the pyramid.

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Handicapping Weekend Box Office

B.O. Mojo tells us:

... Industry expectations for Magnificent Seven and Storks have both films opening around $30+ million. For Storks this number appears to be about right on target, but for Magnificent Seven it seems grossly conservative. Sony is projecting a $30-32 million weekend, but if it doesn't top $40 million it would be a bit of a surprise. ...

For Warner Bros., Storks is the second film for the newly formed Warner Animation Group, which so far has only The LEGO Movie to its credit. Storks, of course, doesn't have the name recognition of LEGO so don't expect a $69 million opening, instead we're looking at titles such as Mr. Peabody & Sherman ($32.2m opening), Hotel Transylvania ($42.5m opening) and Rio ($39m opening) for comparison and, with Storks opening in 3,922 theaters, a $30 million weekend or just a bit more seems inevitable, the question is can it go any higher?

If anything will hold it back it could be the 51% rating the film currently holds at RottenTomatoes. Of course, a 45% rating for Hotel Transylvania didn't prevent it from opening over $42 million and Hotel Transylvania 2 carried its 54% rating to a September record. All things considered, Mojo's projected $31.7 million opening seems relatively safe, but to go much higher would go against the majority of the data available. ...

Storks did its pre-production here in Los Angeles, its production at Sony Imageworks Vancouver, where the Free Money roams. As a member of Storks production team related:

"Sony Imageworks has enough Vancouver staff to do three features at once. There was a lot of communication between L.A. and Vancouver as the movie was made. You can do a lot of supervision over vide up-links. It's totally feasible to have production sites in different parts of the world and make the movie. It's a wave that's coming."

The question is, however the production was done, will audiences like the story enough to flock to Storks? If the move hits $33 or $36 million on opening weekend, it will probably be viewed as a success.

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Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan Annual Reports

Artists, writers and technicians under TAG contracts receive pension and health benefits from the MPIPHP (Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan).

TAG has been getting an increasing number of calls from members asking, "So where are the Annual Reports? I need to know how my Individual Account Plan* and Defined Benefit Plan** are doing."

Today there is good news: trustees of the Plan say that the Annual Reports will be out in October. That's a few months late, but better late than not getting the reports at all. ....

Unlike the Guild's 401(k) Plan, where members self-manage their investments ... or hand the job off to Vanguard Mutual Funds ... the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan has a squad of investment experts that invest in a wide array of stocks, bonds, real estate and alternative investments (commodities, private equity, futures, etc.)

Here's how the IAP investments break down:

INVESTMENTS - INDVIDUAL ACCOUNT PLAN

U.S. Core Equity - 4.5%
U.S. Growth Equity - 3.1%
U.S. Value Equity - 1.2%
Global Equity - 14.8%
Emerging Markets - 1.8%
Total Equity - 25.4%

Fixed Income - 32.2%

Alternative Investments - 36.4%

Real Estate - 6%

The percentages above are not static. They can grow or shrink on direction from trustees of the MPIPHP. (Prior to the 2008 meltdown, the Plan's investment were more heavily weighted to fixed income. The financial experts saw at least some of the disaster coming, and shifted the Plan's portfolios to more conservative investments).

* Individual Account Plan = a big basket of investments, directed by the MPIPHP, that earns interest and capital gains.

** Defined Benefit Plan = a monthly annuity (much like Social Security) that pays you X amount of dollars twelve times per year. The amount you receive is based on the total number of qualified pension years and total number of contribution hours in your account.
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Cartoon Interstitials

From a fine entertainment journal:

Disney Channels Worldwide is set to launch interstitial programming designed to help kids lead healthy lives. Starting on Friday, animated shorts featuring characters from such series as The Lion Guard, Miles from Tomorrowland and Star Wars Rebels will start airing in rotation on Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior.

Created by animators including James Curran (Star Wars Rebels, Gravity Falls) and David Calcano (The Adventures of Papchu and Dr. Kapatoo), the shorts are designed to inspire, inform and motivate kids’ nutritious food choices and physical activities. ...

Physical fitness and nutrition are good things.

Artists having more projects to work on? Also a good thing. (The assumption here: some of this work is being done in L.A.)


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2016 Wage Survey Preview

TAG has completed compilation of 2016 wage data and is in the process of formatting and laying out the info.

Until the full survey is complete, some selected numbers:

2016 SURVEY DATA

Writers:

Feature Writers 2016 Median: $3100 (weekly)
Feature Writers 2015 Median: $3,157.89 (weekly)

TV Writers 2016 Median: $2,267.24 (weekly)
TV Writers 2015 Median: $2,200.00 (weekly)

Directors:

Feature 2016 Median: $3,752.10 (weekly)
Feature 2015 Median: $2,743.87 (weekly)

TV 2016 Median: $2,493.87 (weekly)
TV 2015 Median: $2,414.06 (weekly)

Story Art:

Storyboard Artist 2016 Median: $2,378.50 (weekly)
Storyboard Artist 2015 Median: $2,227.27 (weekly)

Production Board 2016 Median: $2,038.11 (weekly)
Production Board 2015 Median: $2,000.00 (weekly)

Animation:

3D Animator 2016 Median: $2088.96 (weekly)
3D Animator 2016 Median: $2021.05 (weekly)

Over the past few years, pay rates have been relatively stable. With the surge in employment, there's some upward push on overscale wages, but that's countered by:

1) The continuing flow of new artists and technicians from universities and art schools to entry level animation positions with lower salaries. This tends to slow upward trajectories of other rates.

2) The desire of animation studios to keep wages as close to minimum contract rates as possible.

3) Lower-compensated non-union work.

Though there's been a record level of employment, 1990s-style bidding wars for artistic talent have not reemerged.

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Blue People Not From Avatar

As we all know, humankind can NEVER get enough animation.



Sony is getting seriously involved in animated features. Probably because Sony is making money with them.


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Craft Meeting #5 -- Animation Writers

The Animation Guild's fifth craft meeting took place Tuesday night in the Guild meeting hall at 1105 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank California.

It was noted that TAG Vice President Earl Kress passed away five years ago yesterday at age 60. Earl was a prolific, talented writer who was instrumental in securing better conditions for freelance writers, negotiating health benefits for freelancers who wrote two half-hour outlines and scripts.

New Media: There were discussions regarding the Guild's New Media sideletter (pp 99-113 of the CBA), how its production budget tiers are tied to live-action that don't reflect the budgets for animation. New Media will likely be a central issue in 2018 negotiations, and there will be early indications where New Media language is going when the WGA and DGA negotiate their contracts next year.

Some writers at DreamWorks Animation TV are writing at below minimum rates, which is allowed under the sideletter. Animation work that's distributed over the internet (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) comes under New Media. If a negotiated contract fails to be ratified, then contract talks resume until a new agreement is reached or the talks reach impasse. ...

Script Fees: Only one studio has script fees (payments on top of salaries); that studio is Nickelodeon.

General Membership Meeting: Members were encouraged to attend the September 27th General Membership Meeting and run for the board or an officer position, since several officers and board members are departing.

Bank of Hours: Why hasn't the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan's Bank of Hours been raised? Because the bargaining parties (AMPTP and IATSE) haven't negotiated a hike. The 450 hours has been in place for a number of years, though the threshold for health coverage was raised eight years ago from 300 hours to 400 hours per 6-month period. This had the effect of knocking some participants off the Plan and there was some anger from members about it. Five years ago, premium payments of $25/month for participants with one dependent and $50/month for participants with 2 or more dependents were introduced.

Writer Categories: Animation Writer is a job classification in the contract. Story Editor in not in the contract, though the AMPTP told the Guild in negotiations four years ago it was part of the writer classification.

Discussion of how story editors get paid: Some writer/story editors in attendance liked total fees divided over 26 episodes and being paid weekly, and didn't want the fees tied to a weekly salary because payments would be lower. It was noted that TAG negotiates wage floors, that individuals are free to negotiate better pay and conditions.

Discussion about animation writers forming their own union. Mechanics of this are difficult, there would have to be de-certification then a new union created. There was also talk about making the Animation Guild into a national union that covers the whole country, the better to organize studios in Atlanta and elsewhere.

Screen Credits: It was noted that the contract requires screen credits for story on features and half-hour broadcast "non-segmented" half-hour television shows. It was suggested that screen credits should be required for all lengths of programs, since screen credits trigger foreign levies.

Storyboard artists should be allies with writers; where storyboard artists/writers and outline writers work together on non-scripted shows, they should share script fees.

Production Schedules: Writers/producers and show runners need to insist on reasonable production schedules. Story editors need to do the math and build reasonable time lines for scripts (and storyboards).

Many studios are using freelance writers, but some studios have staff writers. There's beginning to be more integration. DWA tv has staff story editors and small staffs of writers. Writers are in demand so studios are starting to employ staff writers to have their services full time.

Writers who know what the board artists can do are more effective because they can write scripts that reflect what can be achieved on storyboards.


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Netflix

Going for originals.

Three years after it entered the original content business, Netflix looks to have originals make up about half of its offerings. ...

“It will take us a couple more years” to hit that target, CFO David Wells says. “We’re a third to half way to where we want to be…We’ve got a ways to go” as the company looks for “a mixture of production models” — although not sports or ad-supported offerings.

But he warned the Street that Netflix likely will burn more than $1 billion a year to satisfy its growing appetite for content, and may borrow more money. The streaming video power will be “a consumer of cash” for the next year and a half, and it “could take longer building content.” ...

What's important to note here: Lots of Netflix original content is animation. The service wants to rope three-to-six year-olds into the wacky cartoons it has to offer with the expectation that the pre and elementary schoolers will stick around to consume adult fare as the years roll on.

That's the theory, anyway. And Netflix is acting on it. (As is Amazon).

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Down at the SPA

Sony Pictures Animation is (and has been) kinda busy.

There are six editorial crews working on different movies on the Sony Imageworks lot and at nearby Culver Studios. Artists are in three different buildings at Imageworks, and some will also be moving into offices at Culver. ...

Sony Pictures Animation is as busy as it's ever been. Smurfs: The Lost Village is finishing up, and Hotel Transylvania 3 awaits Genndy Tartakovsky to finish up Samurai Jack at Cartoon Network so that it can kick into high gear. (There might be some commuting back and forth for awhile).

Most of Sony Imageworks is up in Vancouver, scarfing down the Free Money. But some Imageworks employees remain in Culver City, working on various projects. If schedules hold, the company will be releasing three animated project in '17 (Smurfs, Emojimovie and The Star, and two animated features and a hybrid the following year (Hotel Transylvania 3 the live-action animated hybrid Peter Rabbit, and Spiderman).

In all the time Sony Pictures Animation has been open, its slates have never been this ambitious, but Sony animated features have been on a recent roll, with Hotel Transylvania 2 bringing in $473 million last year, bettering the original's grosses by over $100 million.

So yeah. Sony Pictures Animation is working on a lot of projects.

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Guild Elections

Not TAG, but the WGA west.

... [F]our newcomers have been elected to the guild’s 2016 board of directors along with four incumbents. The newly seated quartet includes former "Walking Dead" showrunner and Damien creator Glen Mazzara (1,732 votes of 2,440 ballots cast), "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner (1,597), longtime "Grey’s Anatomy" writer-producer Zoanne Clack (1,393) and 10-year guild veteran Courtney Ellinger (1,281). ...

The guild reported a 26.7% percent turnout among its 9,120 eligible voting members. ...

The Animation Guild has nominations for a new slate of officers in a week's time, then elections that run until mid-November.

TAG will also have a lot of newcomers, since multiple board members and four officers will be departing.

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The Awards!!

The Emmys were on tonight, and yeah, we already know some of the them, but here they are again anyway (with the newbies).

EMMY AWARDS

OUTSTANDING CHILDREN’S PROGRAM
It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
Game of Thrones

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (Masterpiece)

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ANIMATION (JURIED)
Jason Kolowski (Adventure Time, “Bad Jubies”)
Tom Herpich (Adventure Time, “Stakes Pt. 8: The Dark”)
Jason Carpenter (He Named Me Malala)
Chris Tsirgiotis (Long Live the Royals, “Punk Show”)
Scott Daros (Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship)
OUTSTANDING ANIMATED PROGRAM
Archer

OUTSTANDING SHORT FORM ANIMATED PROGRAM
Robot Chicken

OUTSTANDING CHARACTER VOICE-OVER PERFORMANCE
Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) ...

There is always a bajillion categories, but to each and every sinner (also too, the runners up) TAG blog offers sincere congratulations.

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Your Foreign Box Office

The usual mix of genre titles, animated titles, and big studio movies with lots of animated effects.

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (World Totals)

Bridget Jones's Baby -- $29,900,000 -- ($38,100,000)

The Age Of Shadows -- $21,500,000 -- )$45,000,000)

Chinese Odyssey Part Three -- $17,300,000 -- ($35,800,000)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $9,600,000 -- ($900,000,000)

Finding Dory -- $8,300,000 -- ($961,100,000)

Sully -- $7,000,000 -- ($93,900,000)

Suicide Squad -- $5,800,000 -- ($718,900,000)

Pete's Dragon -- $5,200,000 -- ($113,000,000)

Blair Witch -- $4,900,000 -- ($14,600,000)

Star Trek Beyond -- $4,800,000 -- ($333,153,686)

Ice Age: Collision Course -- $2,300,000 -- ($402,629,990)

Sausage Party -- $2,100,000 -- ($119,559,861) ...

Kindly note that Ice Age: Collision Course, after making only a few small ripples in the United States, has cleaned up overseas. 85.2% of its take comes from abroad. This pretty well explains why Fox-Blue sky does one Ice Age picture after another.

And as a fine entertainment journal tells us:

... The fish that just won’t quit [Finding Dory] swam to another $8.3M in her 13th weekend of overseas play. ...

Grossing $5.8M this weekend, Warner Bros’ DC superhero adaption Suicide Squad climbed past the $400M mark with a $405.1M overseas cume. The biggest play of the frame was Japan with a sophomore hold of $2.3M on 682 screens. The total there is now $9.4M. All markets are open with play currently in 62. The worldwide cume is now $718.9M. ...

Disney’s Dragon had a solid $5.2M 6th weekend, hitting No. 2 in Mexico with a $2.1M start behind local pic No Manches Frida. Elsewhere in Latin America, the live-action/CGI mix bowed to No. 1 in Ecuador, Bolivia and Central America; and held the top spot in Chile for Week 2. Pete picked up $700K in Australia, just ahead of school vacations. The international cume is now $40.2M for a global total of $113M ...

Putting $2.1M in the grocery basket, Sony and Seth Rogen’s [Sausage Party] has rung up $24.2M so far overseas. The weekend was in 27 markets with Portugal the highlight at $125K from 50 screens. The UK is the top offshore play with $8.6M after three frames. ...

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Jeffrey K.'s Future

Mr. Katzenberg departed DreamWorks Animation just shy of a month ago. Why did he agree to exit after 22 years? Could it be the price was right?

... The day after selling his company to Comcast for $3.8 billion, Jeffrey Katzenberg is doing what he’s always done — presiding over back-to-back breakfast meetings. ... It’s clear Katzenberg isn’t planning on spending the rest of his life bobbing around on a yacht in the Bahamas. In fact, he’s champing at the bit to start his next chapter: running his own investment firm. Over a bowl of seeded pecan granola and a Diet Coke, he is simultaneously taking calls on his cell phone and answering questions. ...

Sources close to Katzenberg say he’s intrigued by the model his longtime mentor, Barry Diller, has built. IAC, Diller’s conglomerate, owns everything from dating services like Match.com and Tinder to video sites like College Humor and Vimeo. How Katzenberg will put his own spin on that model remains to be seen.

What’s absolutely clear is that he has zero plans of retiring. Ever. “No, not possible,” he says incredulously when asked. “My work is my happiness.” ...

To J.K's credit, a decade ago he saw that smaller, stand-alone companies were spiraling down to extinction. He was interested in selling DWA not long after Pixar was snapped up by Diz Co. but the financial meltdown in 2009-2009 put an end to the possibility of a Pixar-sized sale.

Years passed and the economy recovered, even as DreamWorks Animation hit a rough patch with a string of animated features that failed to turn a profit. (It's tough to survive on a business model that dictates creating nothing but theatrical blockbusters. The odds are high that this particular biz model will, sooner or later, fail).

To the company's credit, it reacted to its movie under-performers by diversifying in multiple directions, by getting into television, amusement parks, and merchandise, and building a Chinese partnership. All of these strategies were steps in the right directions, but DreamWorks Animation was, at the end of the diversification, still a smallish company.

And DreamWorks was likely to remain smallish. Given all that, Katzenberg's decision to cash in with a sale makes perfect sense. Better to take a bundle of cash and strike out in new directions than plow the same old fields in the hopes gold will sprout under your feet.

Here's hoping Comcast-Universal does right by its new acquisition.

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Your American Box Office

The miracle on the Hudson continues to reside at the top of the heap.

WEEKEND GROSSES

1). Sully (WB), 3,525 theaters / $6.6M Fri. / $9.6M Sat./ $5.8M Sun. / 3-day cume: $22M (-37%)/Total: $70.5M / Wk 2

2). Blair Witch (LG), 3,121 theaters / $4M Fri. / $3.6M Sat. / $1.9M Sun. / 3-day cume: $9.65M / Wk 1

3). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,927 theaters / $3M Fri. / $3.25M Sat. / $1.95M Sun. / 3-day cume: $8.24M / Wk 1

4). Snowden (OR), 2,443 theaters / $3M Fri. / $3M Sat. / $1.97M Sun. / 3-day cume: $8M / Wk 1

5). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 3,208 theaters (-176) / $1.6M Fri. / $2.5M Sat. / $1.3M Sun. / 3-day cume: $5.6M (-32%)/ Total cume: $75.3M / Wk 4

6). When the Bough Breaks (SONY), 2,246 theaters /$1.6M Fri. / $2.6M Sat. / $1.2M Sun. / 3-day cume: $5.5M (-61%)/Total: $22.7M Wk 2

7). Suicide Squad (WB), 2,740 theaters (-363) / $1.1M Fri. / $2.2M Sat./ $1.25M Sun. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $4.7M (-18%) / Total cume: $313.8M / Wk 7

8). The Wild Life (LG), 2,493 theaters / $530K Fri. / $1.3M Sat. / $797k Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.65M (-21%)/Total:$6.7M/ Wk 1

9). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 1,757 theaters (-578) / $521K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. / $783M Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.5M (-24%) / Total cume: $44.2M / Wk 5

10). Pete’s Dragon (DIS), 1,948 theaters (-737) / $459K Fri. / $1M Sat. / $520K Sun. / 3-day cume: $2M (-34%) / Total cume: $72.8M / Wk 6 ...

As happens from time to time, animation can under-perform at the box office. Kubo and the Two Strings has yet to break $50 million after five weeks of release, and The Wild Life, dead on arrival last weekend, looks to pick up $2.5 million at #8 in its second weekend of release.

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Trailer ... Late To The Game

This has been out a few days so TAG blog is slow out of the blocks (especially since millions of people have SEEN it already). But TAG blog would be remiss in ignoring it since .... you know ... we represent the artists and technicians and writers who are making Moana. ...

And as the interwebs say:

... Over the last five years, [Walt Disney Animation Studios'] output has consisted of Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia, each of them creative triumphs that are at the head of the class for family films over that time. Hot streaks like that are hard to sustain, but if Disney falters, it doesn't look like it's going to happen with Moana. ...

Every department is pretty much done except for lighting, which will be done with the last of its shots in a few weeks (the picture comes out at Thanksgiving). Crew members have been moving out of the big building at the end of the Burbank/Bob Hope runway was their jobs wrap up, returning to the Hat Building on Riverside Drive.

Moana, from the looks of it, will be doing well.

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One More Feature In Release

Because you can never have too much toonage.

CGI Australian toon Blinky Bill: The Movie will get a platform release starting October 7 in Los Angeles. The character is widely popular Down Under — with credits including a 1992 film and a local TV series the following year — and the distributor is hoping to ride that wave to American shores. The pic originally was set to arrive here this month. ...

The new Blinky pic was directed by Deane Taylor and co-directed by Alexs Stadermann. The screenplay was written by Fin Edquist.

BBTM currently tracks at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, twenty points lower for audiences' "want to see". Come October, audiences will determine how the picture opens.

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... And One More Feature Into Early Prep?

20th Century Fox Animation buys material for a long-form animated movie:

The Littlest Bigfoot, author Jennifer Weiner’s latest book for kids, will be made into an animated feature by Chris Bender (We’re the Millers) and Jennifer’s brother Jake Weiner (Leap Year), courtesy of 20th Century Fox Animation in a deal that was negotiated by another in the Weiner family, brother Joe. The IP seems set for a sequel as the author is writing the next installment called Little Bigfoot, Big City. ...

Bender and Jake Weiner will produce via the newly launched Good Fear Film production company, and Jennifer Weiner will serve as executive producer. Andrea Miloro will oversee the project at Fox Animation. ...

So many animate features have done so well over the past few years (though some have flamed out) that our fine entertainment conglomerates are eager to step up and create more.

This is a long way from the 1970s and 1980s, when long-form animation was shunned by big studios and left to Disney. Success at the box office turned earlier avoidance into passionate embraces. But some of these new features will fail, because failure is the lot of many movies, no matter how successful the segment in which they exist happens to be.

So will see if all the hugs the majors now give animation turn less ardent as some movies come out and bomb.

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Batman In All Directions

Netflix is so ... yesterday.

Batman: The Animated Series is coming to a Mattel’s View-Master VR Viewer, the toy company announced today. Batman will be brought to View-Master VR Viewer through a partnership with Warner Bros. and the use of OTOY Inc cinematic rendering technology. ...

Batman: The Animated Series producer/director Bruce Timm and writer/producer Paul Dini collaborated with OTOY’s artists and engineers on the VR project. The original voice cast of Kevin Conroy (Batman), Mark Hamill (The Joker) Loren Lester (Robin) and Tara Strong (Batgirl) also reprised their roles, with the guidance of Batman: The Animated Series voice director Andrea Romano.

Sam Register, President, Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Digital Series, said: “We are extremely excited for our fans to be able to experience Batman: The Animated Series in a new and immersive way. ...

I've been told by more than one industry guru that virtual reality is the latest big Thing.

Third Floor is working on a VR project; various animation studios are toying with it. So maybe the guru is right. Virtual Reality is what all the thirteen-year-olds will be doing (the hell with binge-watching on the computer flat screen!) in the next thirty-six months.

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The Power of Free Money -- Part 52

Apparently France hears the siren call of Canadian cash ... like many others

Paris-based On Entertainment, the company behind recent feature-film release The Little Prince, says it plans to hire a staff of 300 over the next three years to run a new studio in Montréal, Québec.

"Our new Montréal studio gives us a foothold in North America and provides us with the resources we need to ramp up production and extend our reach with films intended for international release," said On Entertainment co-founder Thierry Pasquet in a prepared statement. The company expects to ramp up production and release one animated feature every two years.

On Animation Studio will receive about $3.7 million (U.S.) in government loans, split between the governments of Canada and Québec (the latter granted through financing corporation Investissement Québec) to help fund the studio's opening, the company said. ...

Generous subsidies won't be going away anytime soon. They are now embedded into the fabric of Canada, the great state of Georgia, Britain, France, and to a somewhat more limited degree, California.

As an IATSE Vice President who studies tax subsidy cultures said to me a week ago:

"Tax subsidies are pretty well established in a lot of countries now, and a bunch of states. Georgia has a big subsidy program and they've done studies so they know the subsidy doesn't pay for itself, but they're all in. They've got studios and sound stages and they're going to keep on giving the money away. Because they want the industry to be there."

And there you have it, our free enterprise system at its finest. "Pay us, and we will come. Otherwise we go to Montreal or Vancouver."

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DWA Downsizing

From a fine entertainment trade paper:

About 200 positions are being eliminated from the DreamWorks Animation unit in Glendale, CA following Comcast and NBCUniversal’s $3.8 billion acquisition of the company this year. The news came as a memo to the staff from Jeff Shell, Chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, who wrote: “We have begun sharing organizational decisions that will result in the elimination of approximately 200 positions at our Glendale campus. These changes are focused in the corporate overhead groups as well as distribution and consumer products, areas where we can fully integrate operations with NBCUniversal.” ...

Employees in marketing, distribution, consumer products and financial areas in Glendale will start receiving termination notices as early as this week. ...

TAG members at DreamWorks Animation tell us that no Guild jobs are impacted.

These layoffs aren't a surprise. Restructuring is a fact of life in Tinsel Town. Disney (as was reported yesterday) is doing it, but the reality is that studio tweek, trim and reconfigure on an ongoing basis. No animation employee has to be reminded that her/his job is only viable until "end of project". After that it's off down the side walk in search of the next gig.

That's simply reality in 21st century Hollywood. For live action and animation alike.

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Downsizing at the House of Mouse

A fine entertainment journal tells us:

Disney has trimmed approximately 5% of its consumer products and digital media staff in job cuts affecting 250 people, the company confirmed today through a spokesman.

50% of the cuts came from the company’s remaining video games-related workforce. Disney largely exited the video game publishing business in May in favor of a licensed games model, announcing the cancellation of its Disney Infinity line of interactive games and toys at that time. Several of the affected employees came from a team working on Marvel: Avengers Alliance in Bellevue, Washington. That series was cancelled last week.

The other 50% of affected employees were casualties of Disney’s recent merger of its Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media divisions. ...

Layoffs at Diz Co. aren't limited to consumer products and digital work.

Walt Disney Animation Studios is laying off dozens of staffers as Moana nears the end of production. Disney Television Animation is undergoing significant restructuring as more shows get outsourced to smaller Los Angeles animation studios and DTVA employees are shifted to various shows that remain in house.

Disney is always shifting, tweaking, working to squeeze more profits out of its far-flung enterprises. Diz Do. isn't a Renaissance Art Studio, after all. It's a huge conglomerate trying to get huger.

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Craft Meeting #4 -- CG Animator/Modelers, Technical Directors, and Compositors

On Tuesday night, the fourth Animation Guild Craft Meeting took place in the Guild's meeting hall at 1105 N. Hollywood Way. Notes of the proceedings:

Review of First Year of 839 Contract: There was a discussion of collective bargaining agreement, how Tech Directors and CG animators are being impacted. At the feature studios (Disney and DreamWorks) overtime is being paid and there have been no major complaints. Production schedules are compressed, but opinions are divided on the negative impacts. Some people like the extra overtime pay; others would prefer more weekends and evenings spent with family. At tv animation studios – principally DreamWorks Animation TV -- more work is being piled onto leads and supervisors, with more job stress.

For CG Classifications, there are no job descriptions and no clear parameters about what the jobs entail. This is a problem. Companies can reconfigure and redefine what a CG lead is, what a supervisor is, at a moment’s notice. There needs to be some controlling language in the CBA. Business Representative described the history of CG classifications getting into the contract in the mid-90s, when non-Guild tech directors working on “Dinosaur” at Disney agitated to be covered by the contract and to have pay rates track contract rates. At that time, numbered classifications were introduced.

New Media: Studios are hiring artists and tech directors at below contract minimums (this is happening at IA locals covering live-action as well), but studios ARE paying the 6% Individual Account Plan pension percentage at the contractual minimum rate, not the actual rate of pay. The New Media Sideletter (Sideletter N – pp. 99-113 of 839 CBA) enables studios to negotiate freely below minimum rates. The budgetary tiers that would mean 85% of minimums would have to be paid reflect live-action budgets, and animation budgets are way lower so “budget tiers” in the Sideletter are never reached. This was an issue at the last negotiation, will be an issue at next IA and TAG negotiation in 2018.

Simplifying Contract classifications: There was discussion of simplifying contract categories, keeping categories broad-based and simple and having fewer classifications and categories (Senior artist; jumior artist, apprentice artists, trainee). Some CG artists wanted definitions and more specific names in classifications. The Business Representative said that studios had resisted defining classifications in the past, that it might be more doable to get descriptive names in contract than definitions.

There is also an additional concern at some jobs about the combination of different job classifications into one; some people have reported doing multiple jobs in the same deadline, whereas before they only had one. The issue there is that people are taking those jobs and not fighting against the job compressions.

Wage Suppression Lawsuit: Individuals have gotten letters regarding the Wage Suppression class-action lawsuit involving Blue Sky Studios, Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Pixar, Sony Pictures Animation (etc). A number of attendees had received letters. Business Representative said that the Guild is not directly involved, although it held a meeting with one of the lawsuit attorneys and referred people to his law firm early in the process. Business Representative said he was subpoenaed for a depoition and that documents were also subpoenaed. It was noted that Blue Sky Studios and Sony Pictures Animation have reached settlements on the suit, but Disney, DreamWOrks and Pixar have not settled.

Live-Streaming: Some artists thought that live-srtreaming was a viable way to involve members who could never get to General Membrship Meetings; others though meeting conversations need to stay in the meeting room. There was a worry that the streaming of meetings would keep people from speaking up.

CG Classes at Guild: There was a discussion of reconfiguring the computer lab so that in-house classes could be held. Right now, CG classes are held off-site under the Contract Servicies Administration Trust Fund.

Meeting adjourned at 9:30 p.m. ...

What comes through at craft meetings to date?

A) Concern about lower wage rates of New Media work. Animation budgets for Subscription Video on Demand is far below live-action, yet the "budget tiers in Sideletter N (pp. 99-113 of the CBA)

B) Interest in sharing work and wage information. Interest in building better employee in various studio departments.

C) Desire to begin crafting possible proposals for 2018 contract negotiations.

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Joe Resurgence

Let's journey back ...

... In 1982, G.I. Joe was brought out of retirement thanks to a brilliant marketing campaign executed with military precision.

The Hasbro toyline had been defunct since the late '70s, with the American public soured on the military following the Vietnam War and the toys falling victim to rising oil prices that made 12-inch figures too expensive to manufacture. As Joe sat in retirement, Hasbro watched with envy as Star Wars toys made obscene amounts of money by trading off the emotional attachments children had to the film series' colorful characters.

Hasbro chairman and CEO Stephen D. Hassenfeld was at the helm of the company when the Joes were taken out of mothballs and reconceived for a new generation. For the first time, the Joes were given a storyline: They were good guys locked in an eternal battle with the ultimate villains, Cobra. That story transformed Joes from generic figures into an intellectual-property-driven concept. ...

It gets lost in the mists of time, but the mid-eighties saw a resurgence of TV animation because of 1) Disney getting into the TV animation game (Gummi Bears!) and 2) TOYS.

It wasn't just G.I. Joe. There was He-Man. There was She-Ra. Filmation, now a fading memory in the long history of cartoons, created hundreds of animated half-hours in support of plastic action figures that sold very well. It was noted at the time that the cartoon industry was becoming a sales tool for toy companies, but animation selling toys had been a long-term trend.

True, the cartoons usually came first, then the toys. But honestly? Whether the doll came first ... or the theatrical short, was there really that much difference?

What the tv cartoons of the eighties foretold was the total and complete marketing of product we all enjoy here in the 21st century. Today, we first get the multi-colored moments of animated entertainment on our flat screens and theater screens, then (two days later) the toys, apps, video games, lunch boxes and Christmas tree ornaments which are derived from that entertainment that we order from Amazon.

Ain't progress grand?

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Music and Cuteness

From a fine trade magazine:

Gwen Stefani and Nickelodeon are joining forces.

The singer's animated series, Kuu Kuu Harajuku, is set to make its American debut on the Viacom-owned cable network, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Inspired by the Harajuku girls that became a staple of Stefani's solo act in 2004, Kuu Kuu Harajuku is co-created and exec produced by the former No Doubt lead singer. The series first premiered in Australia in November 2015 after Stefani announced the series the year prior.

Like the name of Stefani's 2004 solo album, the series centers on four Harajuku girls named Love, Angel, Music and Baby who form the group HJ5 with their inspirational leader, G. ...

A chip off the old Powerpuff.

Or is that over-projection?

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Working At TAG Studios

Several days ago we broke down jobs by classification. Now we'll break down employment by studios, largest to smallest. Understand when we get down to the micro-studios with a handful of employees, companies like "Made in Paradise, Inc." and "Daisy, Inc." we won't bother listing them.

TAG MEMBERS' EMPLOYMENT BY COMPANY

DreamWorks Animation -- 569

Walt Disney Animation Studios -- 561

Disney TVA -- 391

DreamWorks Animation TV -- 325

Cartoon Network -- 298

Nickelodeon -- 276

Warner Bros. Animation (tv) -- 269

Fox Animation -- 254

Robin Red Breast/Titmouse -- 121

Bento Box -- 88

Sony Pictures Animation -- 83

Marvel Animation -- 72

Paramount Animation -- 65

Hasbro -- 59

Rick and Morty -- 50

Wild Canary -- 47

Warner Animation Group -- 45

Original Force -- 22

PUNY LLC -- 19

Six Point Two -- 18

Universal Cartoon Studios -- 15 ...

The only company on the list above that has been continuously under IATSE contract is Disney. There was a period of time when Warner Bros. went away, and every other corporate entity is new since Local 839's charter six-and-a-half decades ago.

Nothing is forever.

But even with Disney, labor contracts have changed. Disney Feature Animation (aka "Walt Disney Productions" in the great long-ago) was under an 839 contract from 1952 until the turn of this century, when an IA contract titled "TSL" (The Secret Lab, after the secret lab in The Emperor's New Groove) took precedence.

Today, Local 839 (otherwise known as TAG) has a contract with Disney Television Animation, and the feature division has been rechristened Walt Disney Animation Studios and operates under the TSL contract, as does the remnants of the Disney Toon Studios.

As for the rest, studios come and studios go. Warners, as noted above, ceased existing for several years then came back with a vengeance in the late eighties. There was Warner FEATURE Animation for a brief while, but that Warners division died after six years ... and now there is Warner Animation Group which concentrates on pre-production work for theatrical animated features (The Lego Movie) produced outside California.

The take-away: Local 839 and Disney have danced together for sixty-four straight years, while every other corporate entity has come to the dress ball at a later time. (Except Warner Bros. They were there at the start, then got bored and exited, then returned to drink more party punch.)

And here we are.

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Zorn

So Son of Zorn rolls out tonight, and the question ...



... does it fly or does it end up in the curbside trash like the giant bird? ...remains to be asked. . Of course it's part of Fox's Sunday lineup. ...

It might not be everyone's cup of java, but The Guardian in the U.K. give is a thumbs up:

Does it work? Yes, because Son of Zorn actually isn’t that weird. Well, it is, but aside from the fact that Zorn is a cartoon character, this is a traditional fish-out-of-water sitcom. Anyone who watched Green Acres, Perfect Strangers or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will recognize what works about pulling someone from one very specific culture and asking him to fit into another. It just happens that Zorn’s culture is ripped out of a bad 1980s cartoon. When Zorn’s new boss asks him if he has a shirt, he responds: “Does a Griffion herdsman have nine anuses?” Now, we have no idea what this herdsman is or why he is so prodigious in the colorectal arena, but we know it’s a solid joke and it’s made even funnier by the absurdity of it. ...

Actually, I don't know why somebody didn't think of this before. (Maybe somebody did, except they didn't have the clout that Phil Lord and Chris Miller have.)

It should fit nicely with the other animated half-hours Fox offers on a Sunday night.


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Your International Box Office

Apparently animation is still a force at global turnstiles.

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (WORLD TOTALS)

Star Trek Beyond -- $16,600,000 -- ($318,100,000)

The Age Of Shadows -- $16,000,000 -- ($16,000,000)

The Secret Life Of Pets -- $15,100,000 -- ($789,000,000)

Suicide Squad -- $10,100,000 -- ($699,400,000)

The Shallows -- $9,600,000 -- ($110,000,000)

Sully -- $9,500,000 -- ($45,000,000)

Don't Breathe -- $9,000,000 -- ($87,100,000)

Ben-Hur -- $8,300,000 -- ($65,756,294)

Jason Bourne -- $4,800,000 -- ($390,800,000)

Sausage Party -- $4,200,000 -- ($113,582,579)

Ice Age: Collision Course -- $3,700,000 -- ($334,100,000)

Finding Dory $3,300,000 -- ($950,600,000) ...

And a fine trade paper tells us:

... The Secret Life of Pets is having another great weekend, scratching in about $15.1M in 56 territories for an international total of $427.2M. ...

The DC-Comics based film [Suicide Squad] was one of the top films of all the holdovers this weekend, raking in another $10.1M from 5,800 screens in 64 markets. ...

It's hard to believe that [Finding Dory] is still playing after being released in June, but it is and it has navigated in with another $3.3M for its distributor Disney. Its international cume is a staggering $467M for a worldwide total of $950.6M. ...

Kubo and the Two strings has garnered some good reviews overseas just as it had done stateside. The film brought in another $2.3M from its 32 territories this weekend for an early international total of $8.4M. ...

In other animated news, The Wild Life, released domestically this very weekend, has delivered a paltry $3,400,00 stateside but has taken in $20,883,953 overseas.

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Wing of Darkness

The Reporter tells us:

... [Darkwing Duck] has its roots in DuckTales ... which featured an episode in which Launchpad is a secret agent called Double-O Duck. Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg liked that concept as a potential series and asked Stones to take a stab at it. Stones turned in a pitch trading off the James Bond theme, one he says lacked heart. He didn't believe in the pitch, and when Katzenberg rejected it, he was relieved … until the exec asked him to try again.

The second time around, Stones got it right, injecting Silver Age comics nostalgia, and reconceiving its lead as a superhero instead of a secret agent (as late Bond producer Cubby Broccoli owned the rights to the Double-O name). Most importantly, he injected a healthy dose of heart thanks to the endearing relationship between Darkwing and his daughter.
...

The DuckTales episode from which Tad Stones built the new series came from two Disney staff writers ... who got a little miffed when Disney TVA declined to honor a studio memo that promised a $10,0000 bonus to anybody who created a script that ultimately morphed into a network series, which this particular episode ultimately did. (And let's face facts squarely: ten grand is chickenfeed for a large, international conglomerate).

The Animation Guild filed a grievance on the writers' behalf, and after several months of arbitration (some of which the division chief attended), the arbitrator awarded the scribes their ten grand. As far as anyone knows, the studio never used that particular arbitrator again, but at least the writers got the money the studio had promised.

It's always a good thing to keep giant corporations honest.

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Your American Box Office

The new animated entry lands with a dull, squishy thud, but Tom Hanks remains potent at the box office.

WEEKEND GROSSES

1). Sully (WB), 3,525 theaters / $12.2M Fri. (includes $1.35M preview) / $14.6M Sat. (+20%) / $8.7M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $35.58M / Wk 1

2). When the Bough Breaks (SONY), 2,246 theaters / $5.4M Fri. / $6.1M Sat. (+16%) / $3.6M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $14.8M to $15M / Wk 1

3). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 3,384 theaters (+333) / $2.3M (-42%) Fri. / $3.78M Sat. (+55%) / $2M Sun. (-48%) / 3-day cume: $7.8M to $8M+ / Total cume: $66.5M to $66.8M / Wk 3

4). Suicide Squad (WB), 3,103 theaters (-189) / $1.4M Fri. (-38%) / $2.7M Sat. (+91%) / $1.5M Sun. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $5.65M / Total cume: $307.4M / Wk 6

5). The Wild Life (LG), 2,493 theaters / $715K Fri. / $1.5M Sat. (+120%) / $1M Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $3.3M / Wk 1

6). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 2,335 theaters (-650) / $677K Fri. / $1.59M Sat. (+135%) / $955M Sun. (-49%) / 3-day cume: $3.2M / Total cume: $40.8M / Wk 4

7). Pete’s Dragon (DIS), 2,685 theaters (-587) / $645K Fri. (-56%) / $1.48M Sat. (+132%) / $890K Sun. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $2.9M to $3M (-52%) / Total cume: $70M / Wk 5

8). Bad Moms (STX), 1,888 theaters (-418) / $830K Fri. (-32%) / $1.2M Sat. (+45%) / $667K to $790K Sun. (-43%) / 3-day cume: $2.6M to $2.8M / Total cume: $107.4M / Wk 7

9). Hell or High Water (CBS/Lionsgate), 1,445 theaters (+142) / $681K Fri. (-41%) / $1.1M Sat. (+55%) / $680K Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $2.5M / Total cume: $19.7M / Wk 5

10). Sausage Party (SONY/APP), 2,071 theaters (-695) / $700K Fri. (-49%) / $1M Sat. (+48%) / $570K Sun. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $2.3M / Total cume: $93.19M / Wk 5 ...

Yet even though The Wild Life perishes on impact, proving once more that Europe hasn't quite figured out how to make a global animated blockbuster, Kubo clings to #5 and Sausage Party down at the tenth spot, closes in on a $100 million domestic gross.

Other animated pics that remain in at least some theaters? Ice Age: Collision Course has grossed $62,958,040; The Jungle Book has accumulated $363,891,757, and The Secret Life of Pets owns $360,575,775.

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Feature Scoob

From Variety:

Warner Bros. is in negotiations with Dax Shepard to co-direct their latest “Scooby-Doo” animated film with “Space Jam” helmer Tony Cervone.

Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, who produced the last two “Scooby-Doo” live-action movies, will produce this as well. The studio has dated the film for Sept. 21, 2018.

Shepard will also co-write the screenplay with Matt Lieberman, while Dan Povenmire (“Family Guy”) executive produces. ...

The new “Scooby-Doo” will be a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation under the Warner Animation Group banner, which rose to prominence last year with “The Lego Movie.” ...

Since Mr. Shepard doesn't have a lot of background in cartoonland, Tony Cervone will probably act as guide through the thickets. It's not as if Mr. Shepard doesn't have directing experience. Just not with animators.

Plus, Dan Povenmire is an executive producer on the pic. Mr. Povenmire also knows his way around a cartoon studio.

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Working Under TAG Jurisdiction

From time to time we get asked "What categories of artists, writers and technicians are employed these days?" (Okay, not in those words, exactly, but this is a blog post. We gotta start somewhere.)

Below we answer the question, classification by classification. Please keep in mind that we're only listing the groups with employment numbers above 94, and that these numbers and classifications are what several dozen studios of varying sizes send us via work-status reports.

(Remember, these are working TAG members. There are another 5% to 12% of unemployed active members that are between jobs or waiting to start a gig.)

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT BY CLASSIFICATION

706 Storyboard Artists

313 Tech Director 1s

294 Background Artists

251 Model Designers

233 Staff Animation Writers

(77 Freelance Animation Writers)

221 Directors

175 CGI Animator/Modeler 1s

165 Storyboard Cleanup/Revisionists

151 Layout Artists

138 Animators

106 Visual Development Artists

96 Trainees (various classifications)

95 Tech Director IIIs ...

The classifications shown above represent 16.45% of all the Guild's contract categories. However, the other 83.55% of Guild positions (classifications such as "Final Checker" -- 2 individuals working, or "Color Modelist" -- 3 individuals working) have fewer than 95 people in any one of them, so ... as we say up top ... those numbers have been excluded*.

And understand that the statistics above are data points in time. They could be larger next week, then smaller by December. But employment numbers have been steadily growing over the last 4-5 years, and it looks as though numbers will stay strong over the next 24 to 48 months.

* You might be asking, "So why do 'Freelance Writers' get broken out?" Because it's the one category that has a "freelance" sub-group in the data.

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Meanwhile On the Sub-Continent

From Media in India:

Why India stopped producing quality animation films?

...While the Indian film industry, hailed as one of the largest in the world produces over 1400 films in a year, the country is peculiarly ignorant to the immense potential of animation films since its last release in 2014. Although keen interest from broadcasters and audience promise exponential revenue generation, the animation and VFX segments are yet to receive the adequate magnitude in the country. ...

According to the collaborative Indian Media and Industry Report 2015 from Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce Industry and KPMG, a Netherlands based auditing company, Chaar Sahibzaade (2014), a Harry Baweja computer-animated film, made with a budget of INR 200 million, generated a box-office revenue of over INR 650 million.

It is interesting to find out that 45 pc of this collection came from the overseas market, mainly from the Indian diaspora. A lack of the creation of original intellectual property is leading to the lack of a globally merchandisable brand, an alarming situation considering the approximate of 400,000 employees in the animation industry. ...

India's track record with animated features has been decidedly spotty.

The country has done reasonably well sub-contracting live-action visual effects work. And its efforts on behalf of Disney's home video products (The Tinkerbell series in particular) have been fruitful. But when the sub-contnent has turned its hand to theatrical product, there's been a number of fizzles.

Disney partnered with Yash Raj films to present Roadside Romeo in 2008, but the picture bombed with both audiences and critics. Planes and Planes II, Disney Toon theatricals largely produced by Indian studios, did mediocre business at the global box office. Other CG theatricals have also under-performed.

DreamWorks Animation has used Indian studios on some features with varying degrees of success. DWA staffers say that work on recent features has been pulled back to Glendale due to "quality issues".

But quality, or the lack thereof, is not a new issue inside the India Computer Graphics industry:

India’s First 3D Motion-Capture Film Looks Like An Epic Trainwreck

India’s first 3-D mo-cap CGI feature, Kochadaiiyaan, will open on May 9th. By Western feature animation quality standards, it looks comically bad, but perhaps it’s impressive if you’ve never seen animation before. Predictably, the film’s animation quality has already been criticized. ...

The picture performed badly in Indian theaters, and did minimal business outside its home country. As one animation veteran with knowledge of India's CG biz explained:

India has talented CG animators and tech directors, but studios down there are structured to get shots out quickly and inexpensively, not to nurture talent.

There's a low glass ceiling. So employees with animation chops get what training they can, then move to Europe or the United States where they can stretch creatively, develop themselves and grow their careers. That doesn't happen much in India. ...

But hey, India is still releasing theatrical animated features:

Viacom18 is set to take the Indian animation industry to greater heights with the release of Motu Patlu King of Kings – the network’s maiden 3D stereoscopic animation theatrical. Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Nickelodeon have joined hands to create the movie based on the very popular Lotpot characters Motu Patlu. The movie, produced by MAYA, will create a new milestone for Indian animation by promoting India’s vision of ‘Made In India’ content. The movie is slated to release on October 14, 2016, in Hindi and Tamil in over 700 screens across India. ...

It's doubtful that a moderately budgeted feature based on a moderately budgeted kiddie show will lift the animation industry to new heights, but maybe it's a case of "tiny steps for tiny feet."

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The European Entry

So in two days, America gets a real-time experiment in how animated features from the continent might fare stateside. The L.A. Times has some doubts.

... Without much humor, and with a very straightforward story, there isn't a lot to hook you [in the Belgian animated feature The Wild Life], leaving one a bit cold toward the characters. There's a message about accepting outsiders without judgment and working together as a team, and some strange subtext about a primitive island life versus a civilized one (involving guns, weapons and economic exploitation — a pirate's life, indeed!), but it's all presented without much complication, aside from those pesky cats. ...

The pic is tracking "so so" on Rotten Tomatoes, but Lionsgate is rolling the pic out in 2200 theaters, so LG must be hoping for some action down-list from Clint Eastwood's Sully, which the smart money expects to open at #1 in the $25 million range.

So the question, "Can Europe create an animated feature the world wants to see?" might get some kind of answer by Sunday.

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TAG 401(k) Stats

Next week the Guild holds its 401(k) Board of Trustees meeting; Vanguard has supplied fresh data, to wit:.

TAG 401k PLAN

Total Assets -- $243,956,005

Average Balance -- $91,540

Equity Allocation -- 73%

Professionally managed allocations -- 85%

Total Participants -- 2,665

Total contributions (12 months) -- $14,166,164

The Plan started on a shoestring in 1995, and Disney employees were the first to get into it. Twenty-one years later, assets and participants grow at a steady clip, and it's become an important adjunct to guild members' Motion Picture Industry pensions.

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Inequalities

You'd better sit down for this. It seems that white men rule Hollywood.

... [A] scathing new report [from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism] found that only 31.4% of all speaking roles in the 100 top-grossing films last year were female and that nearly half (49%) had no speaking roles for Asian or Asian-American characters. ...

Behind the cameras, the report found that females directed only 4.1% of the top-grossing 800 films evaluated between 2007-15 (excluding 2011). “Women of color were almost absent from these ranks,” the report said, noting that only three of those directors were African-American and one was Asian. ...

Women fared slightly better as writers (11.8%) and producers (22%) but far worse as composers: Only one of the 113 composers who worked on the 100 top films last year was female. From 2007-15 (excluding 2011), only 1.4% of all composers were women — a gender ratio of 72-1. ...

Animation is not much different than the live-action sector. Women have always been a small fragment of the creative part of the business, although when ink-and-paint was a studio department (instead of something shipped overseas) women dominated it ... and brought up female representation in cartoonland to 40-50%.

But that was in the far-away past. In 2016, there is no ink and paint, and women make up 22% of the creative workfroce. This is low, but the percentages are moving in the right direction. Not too many years ago women were 19% of the total animation workforce.

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Wilma Baker, RIP

Wilma Baker, a Disney veteran who went back to animation's first Golden Age, passed away on September 4 at age 99.



Above, Harvey Deneroff chats with Ms. Baker for the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists' Golden Award banquet. He writes:

... [Wilma Baker] was hired by Disney in 1937 as part of the final push to finish Snow White. As was standard procedure at the time, she entered the unpaid evening training program and was eventually judged good enough to be hired at $16.00 a week as a painter. In my interview she talks about the type of painting she was doing, including the use of transparent paint. She retired from Disney as head of Final Checking Department in 1983—she gets credit as a final checker on The Black Cauldron, which was released in 1985.

However, as the Animation Renaissance gained steam, she returned to animation, and is listed as a final checker on several major films, including FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Cool World, as well as doing paint markup on The Hunchback of Notre Dame back at Disney. ...

Ms. Baker's first husband was Louis Sammon, who was killed during World War II. She returned to the Studio after the war as a young widow and mother, where she met her second husband, Ted Baker, a studio editor.

After five decades in the animation industry (including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi, and more than a half century later, Hunchback. she retired to Laguna Beach California in the 1990s.

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Who

From The Guardian:

The BBC is to release an animation of a Doctor Who story that was lost eight years after its one airing in 1966.

The Power of the Daleks, a story with six episodes from the fourth season of Doctor Who, featured Patrick Troughton as the Doctor.

A handful of clips have been salvaged and posted online but no complete recording is known to have survived a purge of the master negatives from the BBC’s archive in 1974.

BBC Worldwide said it has commissioned an animation studio to recreate the episodes. They will be released on the BBC Store at 5.50pm on 5 November – exactly 50 years since it was first transmitted on BBC1. ...

So what we've got here is an animated remake of an old, live-action classic. This goes against the current grain of mining live-action product from old animated features, but turnabout IS fair play.


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Winners/Losers

Since it's "Labor Day Box Office" time, let's examine end-of-summer box office:

4 losers and 3 winners from a lousy summer at the box office

The 2016 summer movie season very nearly broke records for how poorly its movies performed

... Captain America was the first big movie of the summer, and it still sank fairly rapidly at the box office. The summer’s top hit in the US, Finding Dory, was the first big family release in several weeks, and that also goes for the season’s third biggest movie, The Secret Life of Pets. ...

If you look at the top 10 films for the year at the worldwide box office, only one of them — the enjoyable Chinese comedy The Mermaid (which came and went without making much noise in the US and deserved better) — isn’t about talking animals or superheroes.

The other nine? Captain America: Civil War, Zootopia, The Jungle Book, Finding Dory, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Deadpool, The Secret Life of Pets, Suicide Squad, and X-Men: Apocalypse. ...

It's an ongoing theme. On this planet at this time, there are only two styles for summer mega-hits: spandex-clad do-gooders accompanied by lots of animated visual effects, and animation features loaded with animated visual effects.

When you're talking grosses of $500 million and up, that's the whole ball game.

Of course, there are also small to mid-budget movies without animation that (honest to God) occasionally hit a clean single or double and therefore make money, but those are, more often than not, small and happy accidents.

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Animation Replaces Animation

If Europe wants to get into feature animation in a meaningful way, it better get cracking. Because a U.S.-Canadian production just replaced an American production at the top of the U.K. box office list.

Sausage Party ended Finding Dory’s two-week reign as the UK’s number one as it debuted top of the box office.

Sony’s adult animation bit into a strong $3.6m (£2.7m), including $535,000 (£400,000) in previews, from its 525 sites. Its Fri-Sun tally of $3.1m (£2.3m) would have also seen it land a clear number one.

The opening is almost double that of most previous original Seth Rogen comedies, including This Is The End ($1.86m/£1.39m from 407 sites) and Superbad ($1.98m/£1.48m from 402). ...

Dory has been red hot during its run in the United Kingdom, up there with The Junge Book and Inside Out. As you might have noticed, along with the two pure animated titles in the Big List, there's a super hero epic replete with animated visual effects.

UNITED KINGDOM'S TOP FIVE -- Weekend -- Total Cume

1 Sausage Party (Sony) $3.6m (£2.7m) -- $3.6m (£2.7m)
2 Brotherhood (Lionsgate) $2.64m (£1.98m) -- $2.64m (£1.98m)
3 Finding Dory (Disney) $2m (£1.49m) -- $51.9m (£38.86m)
4 Bad Moms (Entertainment) $1.55m (£1.16m) -- $5.31m (£3.98m)
5 Suicide Squad (WB) $1.04m (£780,000) -- $43.4m (£32.46m)


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Europe's Weakling Features

The continent's movers and shakers are concerned:

Shaun the Sheep vs Kung Fu Panda: EU aims to help animated films take on US giants

... Europe’s mostly low-key animated film industry needs a helping hand in taking on US goliaths like Pixar and DreamWorks — and EU regulators say they are ready to join battle.

“We would like to concentrate on the European animation sector,” EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told journalists today on the sidelines of the world’s oldest film festival in Venice.

“We will launch a dialogue with the major European animation studios to identify specific challenges and opportunities and agree on a joint action plan by the middle of 2017,” the Digital Economy commissioner said.

While animation films are the audiovisual category with the largest European circulation, European animation films, such as Britain’s 2015 Shaun the Sheep Movie, struggle to compete with US productions.

Between 2010 and 2014, not one European production made it to the top 30 list of animation films in Europe by admission, overshadowed by hits such as Frozen (2013) and Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012).

US animated movies routinely become global blockbuster franchises, including the Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story and Shrek films, whereas in Europe they tend to be independent art-house productions. ...

Europe (including Britain) has gifted America with comedy (Charlie Chaplin), music (The Stones, Beatles) and loads of movie stars. But it's never clicked in the animation department.

It's hard to say why this is.

Part of the reason might be characters and subject matter; another reason could be format. Aardman makes terrific stop motion features, but global audiences aren't jazzed by stop motion, and box office results tell the tale. Kubo and the Two Strings has no traction, Shaun the Sheep underperformed; even Nightmare Before Christmas a well-loved title if ever there was one, was no great shakes. Nightmare earned a mere $75 million at the domestic box office back in 1993-94.

In the current era, MacGuff in Paris is the only continental studio turning out blockbuster animated features. But MacGuff is owned by California-based Illumination Entertainment, and so it's not truly "European", but a hybrid: part Yankee Doodle, part French.

It's not enough that Europe throw its government shakers and deep thinkers behind this new effort. The continent must create subject matter that the rest of the world wants to see.

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International Box Office

Animation in all its forms continues to rake in the big bucks (and yen, euros, rubles, etc.)

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (GLOBAL TOTALS)

Star Trek Beyond $37,000,000 -- ($285,400,000)

Suicide Squad -- $11,800,000 -- ($672,900,000)

The Secret Life Of Pets --- $17,300,000 -- ($761,600,000)

Finding Dory -- $6,300,000 -- (943,200,000)

Sausage Party -- $4,600,000 -- ($97,122,884)

Pete's Dragon -- $3,300,000 -- ($92,422,939)

Kubo and the Two Strings -- $1,700,000 -- ($39,728,436)

The Jungle Book -- $800,000 -- ($963,689,442)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $678,000 -- ($244,435,823)

The BFG -- $900,000 -- ($160,697,477) ...

And the trade press informs us:

... After a strong bow last weekend in China, Ice Age: Collision Course (Fox’s 5th Ice Age entry) stuck its course at No. 2 there with a $6.1M frame and a total $59.2M. Italy also held No. 2 behind newcomer Me Before You. The total session was worth $8.2M on 8,254 screens in 30 markets. That takes the international cume to $326.6M. ...

Finding Dory splashed up another $6.3M in 20 territories. The forgetful blue tang now has an offshore tally of $461.4M and has $943.2M in the global tank. ...

Lifting the international cume to $375.5M, Suicide Squad added $11.8M in 65 territories. ...

Crossing $400M international and $750M worldwide, Illumination/Universal’s The Secret Life of Pets got a $17.3M tummy rub this weekend in 55 territories. The offshore cume is $403M; globally it’s at $762.7M. ...

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That Old-Time Animation

Hand-drawn animation is (sadly) a thing of the past here in the continental United States. But animation of the stop-motion has continued to maintain a beachhead inside the citadel of commercial movie-making. ...



I'm not sure why that is, but several studio want to keep doing the art-form. (Can't blame them; when the medium works, it really works).

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Holiday Box Office

The Big List has some animation in it, also other things.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 3,051 theaters / $3.8M (-62%)Fri /3-day cume: $13.7M (-48%)/$4-day:$16.7M/Total:$52.1M / Wk 2

2). Suicide Squad (WB), 3,292 theaters (-290) / $2.2M Fri. (-33%)/ / 3-day cume: $9.8M (-20%) /4-day: $12.77M/Total cume: $300.2M/ Wk 5

3). Pete’s Dragon (DIS), 3,272 theaters (+28)/ $1.4M Fri. (-26%)/3-day cume: $6.6M (-12%)/4-day: $9M/Total cume: $66.7M/Wk 4

4). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 2,985 theaters (-294)/ $1.3M Fri (-32%)/ 3-day cume: $6.2M (-21%)/$4-day: $8.5M/Total cume: $36.4M/ Wk 3

5). Sausage Party (SONY/APP), 2,766 theaters (-369) / $1.2M Fri. (-47%)/ 3-day cume: $4.7M (-38%)/4-day: $6.3M/Total cume: $89.4M/Wk 4

6). Light Between Oceans (DIS/DWA), 1,500 theaters / $1.45M Fri /3-day cume: $5M /4-day:$6.2M/ Wk 1

7). Mechanic: Resurrection (LG), 2,258 theaters / $1.2M Fri (-53%) / 3-day cume: $4.78M (-36%)/4-day: $6.1M/Total: $16.2M/ Wk 2

8/9/10). Bad Moms (STX), 2,306 theaters (-259)/ $1.2M Fri. (-31%)/3-day cume: $4.7M (-15%)/4-day:$6M/Total cume: $103.8M/ Wk 6

War Dogs (WB), 2,848 theaters (-410) / $1.1M Fri (-43%)/3-day cume: $4.7M (-34%) /4-day: $5.9M/Total cume: $36.4M/Wk 3

Hell or High Water (CBS/Lionsgate), 1,303 theaters (+394) / $1M Fri. (+10%) / 3-day cume: $4.4M (+24%)/4-day: $5.5M-$6M/Total Cume: $16.1M/ Wk 4 ...

The Secret Life of Pets might be out of the Top Ten but is still chugging along, and will be up to $357 million domestic by the end of the weekend. (Add On: The pic earned another $3.5 million and has now collected $358,504,100 in domestic grosses).

Finding Nemo increases the number of theaters to over 2000 and should take in more than $2 million. (Add On: It made $1,980,000 and now stands at $481,855,069).

Ice Age: Collision Course remains in 692 theaters pulling in Some money. to date it's grossed $62 million domestically, but has a much higher accumulation overseas. (Add On: The feature made another $690,000 and now owns a domestic total of $62,596,030).

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Wager Survey(s)

First point:

The Animation Guild's Wage Survey wrapped up today. As of noon, TAG had a 29% return of 4,650 surveys. We'll be tabulating results for the next couple of weeks (and accepting late surveys while we do it), then we'll publish the results on the blog, in the Peg-Board, on the website.

(You can find last year's TAG Wage Survey here.) ...

Second point:

Energetic Canadians are doing their own animation and VFX wage surveys in different Canadian cities here. ...

We are now surveying wages in Ontario Animation

For all positions held in 2016. Our survey can be found at

https://goo.gl/forms/ASKkOHOhgaCEPn3u2

Currently you can see preliminary data after you submit, but the wages and positions are not currently linked. Please follow this blog for regular survey results.

Our data will only be as good as our sample size. If you work in Ontario animation, please share this survey widely....

Third point:

Cartoon Brew is reporting on the various Canadian wage surveys here:

A new artist-run survey of Vancouver animation industry employees has revealed stunning low salaries that in some cases barely reach Metro Vancouver’s baseline standard for a living wage.

Another key revelation from the survey, besides low wages, is that over 90% of animation workers in Vancouver have reported not being compensated for overtime work, a major violation of British Columbia labor law. When the unpaid overtime hours are factored into the salaries, many Vancouver artists earn below a living wage for Metro Vancouver. ...

Besides the wage sharing survey, the artists are posting commentaries that defend why unionization is currently their best option and explain what to do if a Vancouver artist learns they’re being underpaid. They point out that all of the thousands of live-action film workers in Vancouver are unionized and receive overtime compensation. ...

Unionized workers receive higher compensation? Who would have thought?

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Bountiful Russia

Diz Co. has many things about which to be grateful and happy, but the continuing shower of rubles into corporate coffers is surely one of them.

Thanks to the likes of 'Zootopia' and 'Jungle Book,' Disney releases have grossed more in the local currency so far in 2016 than in any previous full year.
The third quarter isn't even over yet, but Walt Disney has already hit its best-ever box-office year in Russia in local currency terms.

The company's releases have grossed 7.9 billion rubles ($120 million) by early September, a figure that is higher than the full-year haul for any previous year.

With four more months to go, Disney's Russian box-office performance has handily surpassed last year's figure of 7.3 billion rubles, the studio's previous record in rubles.

The company's biggest hits in Russia of this year are 'Zootopia', which has grossed 2.3 billion rubles, 'The Jungle Book' (1.4 billion rubles) and 'Captain America: Civil War' (1.1 billion rubles). That makes them the year's top-, seventh- and ninth-highest grossing movies in Russia, respectively. ...

Talking animal pictures generally travel well. This is certainly the case with Zootopia and The Jungle Book, somewhat less so with the super hero pic. (Captain America prospering in VladPutinLand? I guess Russians compartmentalize entertainment and politics. Or they just can't get enough of caped do-gooders).

But continuing robust ticket sales for animated projects in Lands Beyond Our Shores, would point to lots more animated projects getting made, no?

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Merger Hiccup

An entertainment journal tells us:

China's commerce ministry says it has received unspecified complaints that the U.S. deal, which closed last week, could hurt competition in the Chinese market.
China's commerce ministry is launching an anti-trust investigation into Comcast's recent acquisition of DreamWorks Animation.

"We will probe into the case based on anti-monopoly laws," said Shen Danyang, a spokesman from China's Ministry of Commerce, during a briefing in Beijing on Friday, as reported by Reuters. Shen said authorities had received complaints that the deal could threaten competition in the Chinese market, but he declined to specify the source of the objections.

U.S. cable giant Comcast announced in April it would buy DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion via entertainment arm NBCUniversal. The U.S. Justice Department approved the purchase in June after finding no threat to competition. ...

No merger is without its bumps (brick walls?) in the road. The United States government thinks the marriage is peachy-dandy, but now the Middle Kingdom is saying "Welll. Let's take this thingie over to the light where we can get a good look at it. THEN we'll tell you what we think."

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At the Diz Co. Animation Studios

This week I've had occasion to hold 401(k) enrollment meetings at two locations of the Walt Disney Animation Studios.

At WDAS Tujunga: Most of the animators on the first floor, their work completed, have decamped for the Hat Building. (And nobody sad to be leaving. The building is out in the dusty reaches of the Burbank-Bob Hope Airport's "no man's land" beyond the main runway, surrounded by machine and body shops and acres of cracked asphalt. And not a decent restaurant within three country miles of the front door).

Upstairs, the lighting department (and various surfacers) continue on Moana for another month. ...

At WDAS Riverside Drive: Interior construction seems to be at an end, since the first floor is filling up, the curved staircase from the front entrance to the second floor is now operational, and cubicles and offices are filling up. The big common area on floor #2, somewhat similar to Pixar's large open space, with hardwood floors, tables in the center and couches out on the edges, looks to be fulfilling its function as a place for employees to meet and interact. A staffer said:

"The plan was to cap out staff at 870. The redone building would hold that many people, but now we're up to 920 and the pace wasn't designed for that number of employees. So they're going to have to make adjustments. Rooms with two people will now have three. Rooms containing four people will now have five."...

I observed that management could always add cubes to some of the open areas. (Not an option they would like much, I'm betting).

The staffer said it could come to that.

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Case Continues

Better late than never: the trade papers told us:

On Monday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an effort by Disney and DreamWorks to delay a class action lawsuit that alleges that animation studios colluded with each other to deny [their] workers better job opportunities and keep wages low.

Robert Nitsch, a former visual effects worker who worked on Matrix Revolutions and Kung Fu Panda, and others are moving forward after striking a $13 million settlement with Sony Pictures and a $5.9 million deal with Fox's Blue Sky Studios. A trial is currently scheduled for June 2017 to hear evidence in an antitrust lawsuit pertaining to the alleged way that these companies conspired about a decade ago not to "cold call" one another's employees.

In May, U.S. District Court judge Lucy Koh partially certified the class over Disney's objections that the issue of statute of limitation precluded this outcome. ...

The Big Conglomerates are going to fight this until the writing appears in bright, raised letters on the wall. And even then they might push on. Because "Deep Pockets" are two of their middle names.

I'm not expecting DreamWorks, now part of the Comcast family, or the Disney Company, to settle. But then, I didn't anticipate self-driving cars to come into existence, so who the hell knows? Stranger things than th settlement of a lawsuit have certainly happened.

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