Disney Feeds Startups

The Mouse provides seed money to newer companies.

In Disney's first-ever "accelerator" program, 10 start-ups got up to $120,000 each from the company, along with mentorship from dozens of Disney executives, entrepreneurs and investors. At a "Demo Day" on Tuesday, Iger and other Disney execs got to learn from entrepreneurs about cutting-edge technologies.

"The more touch points we can create with the new world order, with changes that are occurring in our market every day, that will have profound effects on our business long term—the better off we are," Iger said. ...

Iger and his team hand-selected the companies, which by the end of the 15-week program had each struck a different deal with one of Disney's divisions. ...

Jeffrey Katenberg, late of Diz Co., is working to turn DreamWorks into a min-conglomerate patterned after the Disney of the 1950s, which was also branching out from its core business of animation. (Of course, he's also trying to seek DWA).

Meantime, Robert Iger is taking a leaf out of the Warren Buffett playbook and turning Disney into the Berkshire Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates, letting a lot of different newly acquired companies under the big umbrella operate pretty much as separate entities, with their old management intact.

Judging from Disney's rising stock price, this approach seems to be working.

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On This Day in 1946 ...

Walt Disney premiered this:

Designed for 7th grade health classes in junior highs (now middle schools) all over America.

A factoid of animation history presented by TAG President Emeritus Tom Sito.

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Domestic Pick Up

A U.S. distributor buys the feature shown above. And hopes it's a winner (or at least claws its way into the black).

Home entertainment group Shout! Factory has picked up U.S. rights to The 7th Dwarf, a German 3D-animated feature based on the Snow White fairy tale.

Global Screen, which is handling international sales of the title, also closed deals with Signature Entertainment for the U.K., Rialto Distribution for Australia, Italian International Film for Italy, Flins & Piniculas in Spain and PRIS Audiovisuais for Portugal. Global said it expects to close a deal for France soon. The film had previously sold across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. ...

There is a whole subset of "niche" animated product. Not particularly polished, and definitely not high budget, but aimed at taking in a small, neat chunk of change before going on to a resilient half-life in video.

The 7th Dwarf looks as if it aspires to be one of the long-form cartoons in that category: a few clicks below the just-released Book of Life, which (in turn) is below Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney animated features.

Will the Shout! Factory be glad it was The7th Dwarf's winning bidder? Guess we'll need to wait to find out.

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Global Interweaving

Mainland China is where all ambitious American entertainment companies desire to go.

... Hollywood’s Dreamworks Animation is in talks with a Beijing-based production company to produce a slate of original online content based on “Surprise,” an Internet-driven TV show has been viewed more than 1.3 billion times since it went online last year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The show, produced by Unimedia and online video site Youku Tudou, follows penniless daydreamer Wang Dachui and his misadventures as a diaosi, a vulgar Chinese slang term for educated young Chinese men with dim job prospects, little money and no girlfriends.

Unimedia is expected to be in charge of the content creation, while Dreamworks would provide special effects and animation skills. The channel is expected to launch on a major domestic video streaming site and will include daily and weekly programs — from animated videos to talk shows – based on the original Web series. ...

Though the fictional Wang seems to be clueless about how to improve his prospects in life, at least his backers have come up with a plan: tying the knot with a beautiful and rich Hollywood studio.

This presents DWA with a way into the world's largest market, and since China is tightening requirements for foreign content, it's probably a smart move to get into domestic production.

If you want to play in the Middle Kingdom's sandbox, you have to play by the Middle Kingdom's rules.

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At Paramount Animation

Today, for the very first time, I visited Paramount Animation on the Paramount Studios lot. ...

I've tried over the last several months to find out where the hell Paramount Animation actually is. I had read about the studio in the trades, read about the hiring of Disney veteran David Stainton, then the resignation of David Stainton. Heard about products being started on the lot, but it all seemed amorphous and not quite real.

This was reinforced when I called Paramount and asked, "So where's your feature animation studio located?" And received the terse reply: "We'll get back to you."

Frustrating.

Particularly since we had a contract with the studio and I wondered what the hell was going on. And couldn't find out.

But a couple of weeks ago I called (again) and Paramount said:

"Give us a a few days, we'll get back to you."

And lo and behold, they did. And invited me over.

So I motored through the Cahuenga Pass to Paramount, drove through the arched gates, and found the place is much like a 65-acre sardine can. Cars are packed into the parking lots side to side and end to end. The sound stages, all of them filled with sitcoms, are jammed next to each other. The office buildings, some in the European mode from the twenties and thirties, some in the trailer park mode (modular units that look like portable classrooms), are filled with administrators and production offices.

There is also, for the first time, a cartoon studio.

Paramount took over the Fleischer Studios in the early 1940s and turned it into Famous Studios, which was headquartered on the east coast for a quarter century. This is Paramount's first animation studio (not counting Nickelodeon) on the west coast.

Right now Paramount Animation is housed in four different buildings on the property, three containing artists, one containing execs. There are multiple feature projects in development. I would tell you how many and what they are except I've been sworn to secrecy, since the company hasn't announced any of them yet.

A feature pitch had just wrapped up when I walked into one of Paramount Animation's buildings, and there are additional features in work in the other outposts (and it's more than two, but less than ten). There are thirty-five to forty artists working in the studio right now, with several coming aboard in the last few weeks. The company is looking to hire another thirty-five to forty artists by January.

I asked if Paramount Animation was going to outsource production work, a la Illumination Entertainment (or, for that matter, Paramount Animation with Rango.) The answer?

"It depends on what the production is. No final decisions have been made."

My assumption is, the company will outsource animation work, but nothing is set in stone. On the other hand, the new Sponge Bob movie had its production work performed overseas and the pre-production done in an office building in Burbank across the street from Warner Bros.

So we can safely guess that for Paramount Animation, all things are possible.

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Dragon 2 Deleted Scene

In glorious story reel format.



And this is the way animated features get made.

Lots of experimenting at the story development level: multiple drafts of script, multiple passes on storyboards (although now it's all digital). Cut it into continuity and see how it plays. Then get outside staffers (and the boss) in for their input, circulate notes, have story meetings.

Rinse and repeat. This section was (I think) dropped at the story reel level, although the actors recorded dialogue. Often it never gets beyond scratch track.

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Elizabeth Pena, RIP

Dead after a short illness.

Actress Elizabeth Pena died October 14 of natural causes after brief illness. She was 55.

Pena received an Independent Spirit Award for her work in John Sayles’ Lone Star. She was perhaps best known for her roles in La Bamba and Down And Out In Beverly Hills, and for a recurring role in Modern Family as Pilar, the mother of Sofia Vergara‘s character. ...

She had a significant career in voice-over work, most notably as the “Mirage” character in Pixar’s The Incredibles, and also was a regular in PBS cartoon The Misadventures Of Maya And Miguel.

Mid fifties is way too early too depart.

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Warner Bros. Into Animation With Both Feet

The company's a long way from the late nineties, when animation was barely part of its agenda.

Warner Bros. unveiled its movie and television strategy Wednesday paced by three Lego films, three movies based on J.K. Rowling ”Harry Potter”-inspired wizard stories and 10 DC Entertainment superhero projects.

Chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara revealed details of the movies, including titles and release schedules, at the Time Warner investors meeting. ...

The movies, it turns out, are live-action features larded with animation, or straight-up animated features:

"Ninjago" (2016)

"The Lego Batman Movie" (2017)

"Lego Movie 2" (2018)

And then there's the heavy-on-the-CGI specimens of the live-action persuasion:

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016)

“Suicide Squad” (2016)

“Wonder Woman” starring Gal Gadot (2017)

“Justice League Part One” with Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams reprising their roles (2017)

“The Flash” starring Ezra Miller (2018)

“Aquaman” starring Jason Momoa (2018)

“Shazam” (2019)

“Justice League Part Two” (2019)

“Cyborg,” starring Ray Fisher (2020)

“Green Lantern” (2020)

Pre-production for the Lego movies is being done in Burbank, with the nuts-and-bolts production work accomplished in Australia. All the live-action features? Those are, at this point, anyone's guess, but with expanded tax incentives, California has a shot at doing some of them.

Who knows? Maybe even some of the CG animation and effects will be done here.

Add On; Then there is this newsie tid bit:

HBO is cutting the cord.

The company announced on Wednesday that it will launch a standalone streaming video service in the U.S. that will allow you to watch HBO programming without paying for an expensive cable subscription.

"It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO," Richard Plepler, HBO's CEO, said at an investor conference in New York on Wednesday, adding that it will be "transformative" for the company.

A lot of details remain unclear at this point -- how much will the service cost? Will it simply be HBO GO sold as a standalone product, or a slimmed down version with only some of the programming? Plepler acknowledged as much in his presentation, but said that for "competitive reasons," he won't be able to answer questions today.

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Business Press (And Others) Keep Picking Up The Obvious

We're In the Middle of an Exciting Shift in the Animation Industry

In point of fact, we're not in the middle. This "exciting shift" thingie has been going on for freaking years. ...

There is more animation going on than ever in the history of the biz, but this isn't a new phenomenon. Television cartoons exploded two decades ago. As did adult cartoons. As did features.

Sure, there have been some dips since, but to make the argument that this is something new and different when it's old news, is a wee bit silly. Netflix big purchases are new. Most everything else isn't.

The breadth of animation is expanding, but the expansion has been on-going over a long stretch of time.

What's new is the number of fresh-baked studios that are out there. ShadowMachine, referenced in the linked article above, is one of the newer specimens. It's L.A.-based, non-union, and paying sub-standard wages, but at least the company offers health insurance. Unlike, for instance, ADHD. (TAG's goal is to secure contracts with SM, ADHD and other new studios. Why should artists on new hit shows make less than their industry peers?)

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Animation Down Under

Even as Turner plants live-actoin seeds in Cartoon Network, the Turner empire down under goes in the opposite direction.

Turner Broadcasting announced today that its second flagship kids brand, Boomerang, is being re-launched globally as an all-animation, youth-targeted network, repositioned with a line-up of timeless and contemporary cartoons programmed for family co-viewing, rolling out in Australia on 3 November, ahead of the US, EMEA and Southeast Asia. ...

“The re-launch of Boomerang as a second flagship channel is a testament to its global appeal,” said Gerhard Zeiler, President, Turner Broadcasting System International Inc. “We are extremely proud to see this channel move into its next incarnation – with a look and feel that conveys its quality and contemporary position. This represents a further step in our strategy to build on the success of our international kids network.” ...

Drawing upon the vast resources of the world’s largest animation library – consisting of Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network and MGM Studios television and theatrical shorts, series and specials – Boomerang’s on-air schedule in Australia will be anchored by such timeless favourites as Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo. The channel will also feature a slate of newly-acquired contemporary series’ including Mr Bean.

“Boomerang has always been a timeless favourite with multi-generational appeal,” said Christina Miller, President and General Manager, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang (US). “We see this as a unique opportunity to not only redefine the family co-viewing experience, but to grow and leverage our overall global kids portfolio and position it across all platforms in conjunction with Cartoon Network.”

Boomerang will introduce a refreshed on-air environment and for the first time offer exclusive original content on the network across its 13 international feeds. The official rollout began in Latin America on 29 September and continues with Australia on 3
November. All additional markets will premiere in 2015. Beyond its on-air presence, Boomerang will be supported with refreshed digital and mobile platforms, including a newly refaced website that features exclusive activities, free games and content to provide a full immersion experience for all visitors.

Today’s announcement comes on the back of recent double-digit, quarter-on-quarter growth in Australia among its key demographic of kids aged 5-12. Ratings also leapt by nearly 30% from Q2 to Q3 2014. (Source: OzTAM national STV, overnights.)

I do some perusing of overseas animation news, and what strikes me is how cartoons are a hot commodity all around the globe. Fuzzy animals know no nationality; even human characters translate well in foreign lands.

And of course it hasn't escaped corporate notice that popular animated shows generate profits for decades. Then there are the action figures, the plush toys, the video games and other pieces of merchandise that keep the green eye shade types at Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner and and Fox-News Corporation grinning with piggish delight.

As a corporate vice president remarked to me recently: Conglomerates. They're really just hungry bulldogs."

He ought to know.

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Jeffrey K. Speaks

... at the BFI London Film Festival.

... “The fact I was somehow able to convince these two geniuses [Spielberg/Geffen] that one third of me was worth as much as one third of Steven Spielberg and one third of David Geffen is one of the great hustles in humanity.” ... “It was only eight days after I’d been fired (from Disney). I was too happy and too stupid to know how hard it was going to be.” ...

“We had 17 hits out of 17 films [at DreamWorks Animation] over half a dozen years. It was unprecedented. ... Two out of the last four films have lost money but they didn’t put the company at risk. The company is strong and profitable. It will be around for a long time.” ....

I agree with Jeffrey that DWA will survive. I think their diversification into television and amusement parks will aid the company's corporate health and longevity. But a few correctives:

Jeffrey's feat isn't unprecedented. DreamWorks Animation had some commercial clunkers back in its hand-drawn days, and certainly Bee Movie wasn't a high flyer. As to the "17 hits in a row" thingie, Darryl Zanuck had 20 hits out of 21 releases with Twentieth Century Pictures in the early/mid 1930s. (Twentieth became the dominant partner when it merged with gargantuan Fox Film Corporation, because Darryl turned out blockbusters and Fox did the opposite.)

So DreamWorks Animation's run of hot movies isn't unique. Pixar has had fourteen out of fourteen profitable features with higher overall grosses than DreamWorks' projects. And I'll bet that Pixar's sale price will outstrip DWA's when Jeffrey's company is finally sold to a deep-pockets bidder.

Which is not to diminish Jeffrey's achievement. Counting his time at Disney, he's got more high-grossing animated features under his belt than anyone in the business, including John Lasseter. Mr. Katzenberg might be an inheritor of Walt's cartoon legacy, but he's carved his own lucrative path.

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Sexual Harassment Survey

The Animation Guild's Sexual Harassment Survey ended this morning. It was conducted over eleven days, a much shorter window than TAG's annual wage survey, and had a response rate of 8.2%. The results:

* click image for a larger view

Based on the survey, two and a half percent of members have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, and one half of a percent say they reported harassment to Human Resources.

A large majority of respondents say that they feel free to talk about the issue at their place of work, while only a slight majority felt the problem of harassment was resolved when they reported it to their studio's human resources department.

Guild officers take the issue of sexual harassment seriously, and urge members to report harassment to Guild board members, Guild shop stewards, and the business representative whenever it occurs.

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Women in Comics

We do stats around here from time to time. So these statistics aren't super surprising:

Comic Books Are Still Made By Men, For Men And About Men

To say the comic book industry has a slight gender skew is like saying Superman is kind of strong. Comic books — much like the film industry they now fuel — vastly under-represent women. The people who write comic books, particularly for major publishers, are overwhelmingly men. The artists who draw them are, too. The characters within them are also disproportionately men, as are the new characters introduced each year.

The big two comic publishers, DC Comics and Marvel, have taken note of this disparity and are trying to diversify their offerings. Marvel just published the first issue of a series introducing a new, female Thor, and the science fiction blog io9 recently praised DC Comics for upgrading Batgirl’s costume to “the best damn superheroine outfit ever.”

But these recent advancements don’t make up for the fact that women have been ignored in comic books for decades. And they still don’t bring women anywhere close to parity: Females make up about one in four comic book characters.

Among comic-creators, the numbers are even more discouraging. Tim Hanley, a comics historian and researcher, analyzes who’s behind each month’s batch of releases, counting up writers, artists, editors, pencilers and more. In August, Hanley found that men outnumbered women nine-to-one behind the scenes at both DC and Marvel. He also estimated that 79 percent of people working on comics this year were white. ...

The dynamic has not been that different in the animation industry, where men vastly outnumber women, although the ratios are better (5.2-1 male to female instead of comics' 9-1).

We have talked about the men to women thing from time to time, everything from correcting bad information, to commenting on medial stories (and e-mails), to--some years back--publishing and commenting on industry demographics.

Happily, I think the participation rate of women is going up. but it's going up slowly.

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A Continental Animated Feature

... just received its official launch.

... [The] feature-length animation film “Yellowbird”, produced entirely in France, premiered yesterday at the London Film Festival. ... The main character, Yellowbird, is an orphaned chick who is forced to lead a migration to Africa after he is left as the only bird who knows the route. ...

Before leading the “Yellowbird” team in studios in Paris and Bourg-les-Valence in south eastern France, director Christian De Vita worked as a story artist on Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie”.

“The quality of the image and the artistry involved from the whole team in France is of a very high standard,” De Vita said. ...

The stateside rights to the feature were picked up by a smaller distributor back in February:

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

Now that the movie has rolled out in London, it should materialize here sooner instead of later, don't you think?

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World Box Office

Not many animated features in the higher reaches, but that will soon change.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Dracula Untold -- $33,900,000 -- ($86,057,000)

Guardians of the Galaxy -- $28,000,000 -- ($687,077,000)

The Boxtrolls -- $3,600,000 -- ($72,832,412)

Per the trades:

“Dracula Untold” topped the foreign box office this weekend, edging out “Gone Girl” and “Annabelle” overseas with a $33.9 million haul.

The Universal Pictures release cost $70 million to produce and has a worldwide total of $86.1 million after two weeks of release. ...

“Guardians of the Galaxy,” [had] the weekend’s big opening in China. The Marvel film grossed $26.6 million in the People’s Republic, making it the third best premiere for any Disney film in China. ...

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Reality Overtakes Fiction

Uh oh.

... Creators of FX’s animated spy farce say that Archer is dropping the acronym for its fictional covert agency International Secret Intelligence Service. With Islamic State jihadists tearing through Syria and Iraq and closing in on the latter’s capital city, it just makes sense to sidestep the ISIS name. (Anyone remember that appetite-suppression product called Ayds whose sales for some reason plunged by the mid-’80s?) ...

It's a good thing the rampaging hordes in Syria and Iraq aren't calling themselves KAOS. Because that would be the end of the Get Smart reruns.

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Newer Marvel Animation

This has been in work for a while:

Hot on the heels of the successful summer blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, Star-Lord and his motley crew are heading to television.

Disney XD announced Friday during New York Comic Con that it has ordered an animated Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy series to launch in 2015 during the network's "Marvel Universe" block. ...

Prior to this announcement, Marvel Animation's California studio had been developing this series. I asked an exec weeks ago if the show was still under wraps. He said "YES."

So, I kept my trap shut and typing fingers quiet. The animation studio is working on the Guardians animated show in a separate location from its Flower Street studio in Glendale.

Secrets must be kept.

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Your American Box Office

With one animated feature at the Top Ten Party.

). Gone Girl (FOX), 3014 theaters / $8.1M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $27M (-26%) / Wk 2

2). Dracula Untold (UNI), 2887 theaters / $8.9M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $23.8M/ Wk 1

3). Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (DIS), 3088 theaters / $5.2M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $18.9M/ Wk 1

4). Annabelle (WB), 3215 theaters (+30)/ $5.2MFri. / 3-day est. cume: $15.9M (-58%)/ Wk 2

5). The Judge (WB), 3003 theaters / $4.4MFri. / 3-day est. cume: $13.1M/ Wk 1

6). The Equalizer (SONY), 3117 theaters (-119) / $2.8MFri. / $3-day est. cume: $9.5M/ Wk 3

7). Addicted (LGF), 846 theaters / $3M Fri. / $3-day est. cume: $8.4M/ Wk 1

8). The Maze Runner (FOX), 3072 theaters (-533)/ $2.05M Fri. /3-day est. cume: $7.2M/ Wk 4

9). The Boxtrolls (FOC), 3270 theaters (-194) / $1.6M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $6.9M/ Wk 3

10). Meet the Mormons (Purdie), 317 theaters/ $1.2M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $3.3M/ Wk 1

The Boxtrolls took in around $1.6m for its third Friday of release. The feature will probably have a $6.5m weekend, which will give it a $41,000,000 domestic total.

Here's a bummer: Box Office Mojo is now ... kaput.

BoxOfficeMojo.com has vanished with the site redirecting to Amazon.com’s IMDb.

The Box Office Mojo site was acquired by Amazon in late 2008. Reps for Amazon were not immediately available for comment.

The free Box Office Mojo site was widely used by the movie industry for up-to-date box office results along with historical data and release dates of upcoming titles. It was founded in 1999 by Brandon Gray. ...

A shame, since it was a good place to go for box office information. Ah well, nothing is forever. I hope Mr. Gray got a nice chuck of change, selling the site to Amazon.

Add On: And now Mojo is back. Mostly.

Box Office Mojo was back online on Sunday, but the site's editor says he doesn't want to talk about it. ...

Of course that doesn't really solve the mystery of where the popular site for real-time box office statistics went for three days. On Friday visitors were redirected to the website of its parent, IMDb.com. There was no explanation posted on either site. ...

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"Shahs of Sunset" Unionized

I spent a chunk of my afternoon walking "The Shahs of Sunset" picket line today. (That's a reality show on Bravo,if you're tracking this at home). So apparently, although there was no hint of this when I left in mid-afternoon, the company and Editors Guild have reached an agreement and the crew has ratified same.

... The striking crew of the Bravo series ["Shahs of Sunset"] voted unanimously to ratify a union agreement, the Motion Picture Editors Guild I.A.T.S.E. Local 700 wrote on its Facebook page Friday.

The strike began Sept. 10, with editors picketing outside the offices of Shahs producer Ryan Seacrest Productions. The crew was seeking the right to unionize.

Bravo took over production of the series on Sept. 26 after RSP said it could no longer work with the striking editors and dropped them. At the time, sources told The Hollywood Reporter Bravo had opted not to rehire the editors for the fourth season of its reality show. ...

There wasn't a hint of a deal when I was tromping back and forth this afternoon. Everybody assumed we would be back with picket signs next week. Some magic must have happened somewhere.

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The Deluge

Oh my.

... The legal floodgates have opened on DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Pixar and Sony as yet another class action has been filed against the ‘toon companies over alleged anti-poaching and wage fixing deals.

“Visual effects and animation studios, including Lucasfilm, (including its division Industrial Light & Magic), Pixar, DreamWorks, The Walt Disney Company (and its division Walt Disney Animation Studios), Sony, ImageMovers, Digital Domain, and others have engaged in a long-running conspiracy to suppress the wages of their highly skilled workers and employees,” claims a complaint from David Wentworth (read it here). A former Associate Computer Graphics Supervisor at Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers, Wentworth’s October 2 filing in federal court is very similar to two previous class action suits put before the courts in the past five weeks. ...

Those trial lawyers, filing them lawsuits.

My guess is that this will, in due course, wend its way to a settlement. Hard to imagine the studios will want these lawsuits to fester and fester. Harder still to imagine that Disney, DreamWorks, et al wants executives testifying under oath. Or being deposed.

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From the Mail Bag: The Testing Plague

Okay, actually from the e-mail INBOX, but anyway.

It's a plan to solve the scourge of testing, and goes like this ...

I am a 23 year veteran director, board artist, animator and character designer with a long line of great resume credits and plenty of highly-regarded industry names who I can call on as references.

This does not matter in the least these days when it comes to looking for most jobs in our industry. Most studios hand out tests like a bowl of cheap candy and the only one biting are the kids. More and more veterans I talk to are fed up with testing and for good reason. Often times the studios are testing 20 people for one job opening and they might even hire someone before you are done with your test. Some times they want you to test for a new show that hasn't even defined it's own style yet. They can't even give you reference material to follow other than character designs leaving you blindfolded. Do they not believe in any of your previous work experience?

You can't trust a test for everything the job is anyway. I just directed on a show where everyone was tested, but only half of the artists were truly strong enough to be there and hardly any of them were meeting their deadlines. We don't know if people are taking their tests at home, if they had help, or if a friend gave them notes. Even the production staff is starting to agree that tests don't tell the whole story of whether a person can do the job.

So why are we still insulting the artists by ignoring all of the years of work they have done on their reels and resumes? I equate the artist to a pro athlete: We have all of the fundamentals and the coach brings in a new play that they scouted from another team. We study the tape and then execute.

I have a simple solution that I believe will benefit both the artist and the studios. I once did a test in-house and the producer paid me $500 for the week I was there. The studio was able to see me at work and get to know me a little, I was able to shake hands with lots of people on the show I had worked with before and show them I fit right in. I was also able to show my roughs and get some direction and to follow that direction before my time was up. I could ask a question if I needed to. This is essential for the studio to know how well I followed direction and how good my attitude was. Did I ask too many questions? Or did I seem capable with very little handholding? It worked out great and I got hired.

I've thought about this process for a long time since. If the studios have to pay a small amount to testers then they have to take your resume seriously and whittle it down to only the best candidates. They can't hand out 30 tests for one job. And they have to have a job opening in order to justify paying for you to come in. This also benefits them because they have paid for the work and can use your work if they want and the directors who review the work are not besieged with tests to review.

And lastly, strong veterans will not walk away but will prosper in an environment that they know. The artist will be able to access the style better, see the tools that others are using, and quickly adapt so he/she can be reviewed fairly instead of eliminated on a technicality like not knowing the studio likes to use brushes to stamp in the characters clean and then just move around the model sheets instead of drawing everything out.

We can do that, if we know that is how the studio does it. A test doesn't tell these things. Many vets are refusing tests and going through friends at other places, leaving the studios to use lots of new recruits. The directors carry these inexperienced artists on their backs through the whole production and get burned out fast.

A short, paid in-house test solves a lot of the problems we face in tests. They can call it a temporary job or probationary week if they have to. I think we as artists need to stand together and fight for a solution that has unfairly hurt artists for a long time. I would also encourage studios to use this process by favoring current employees first and rolling them onto other projects within the same studio. There is nothing more insulting than hitting home runs for your studio on a project then being asked to take a test in order to move to the next project your studio is doing.

Please help me spread the word that there is a better solution.

All my best,

An anonymous veteran artist

Lots of truth up above.

The industry is roaring right now and lots of artists and directors with production experience feel insulted and demeaned by tests. Most tests are handed out on-line, and are as impersonal as glass bricks. And many of the victims artists who take them never hear much of anything from the studio after the things are turned in.

So the current reality is: Many skilled veterans avoid tests like a contagious virus, and studios who deploy tests willy nilly to weed out the riff raff end up with a less-experienced, lower-quality employee because the industry performers have given the company's on-line hoop jumping contest a wide berth.

I've long advocated a four-hour test performed in-house. This gives applicants enough time to demonstrate what they can do, and doesn't waste a director's or storyboard supervisor's workday looking at pages and pages of storyboard tests. As one Disney supervisor said to me:

"I can tell if an artist has what we need in three or four story panels. I don't need to look at more."

If only management was as smart regarding tests as the artists who create their profits, we wouldn't have this on-going problem.

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Same Judge, New Lawsuits

From Variety:

Doubtful that DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Sony Picture Imageworks, Lucasfilm and others would call it a case of the more the merrier but the potential class actions against them are now connected – or at least at the same bench. In a move that could see the actions move ahead faster, Judge Lucy Koh has agreed to preside over the second lawsuit against the studios over allegations of an illegal anti-poaching and wage suppression deal they had going for years.

It can’t make the animation studios happy that the judge who rejected Apple and other tech companies’ $325 million settlement attempt to end a similar case against them is now overseeing their fate in these two cases.

Last month, Koh agreed to the request from former DWA effects artist Robert Nitsch Jr. that the Northern District of California federal judge be reassigned his class action. Nitsch’s basic argument was that his September 8 filed antitrust class action complaint was “related” to the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case that Koh had been presiding over that for the past several years.

Obviously the Judge agreed. ...

There are a number of lawsuits percolating around animation studios' wage suppression program. We're aware of the law firms working on some of them, and when artists come to us with a complaint about being mistreated by this cartoon studios or that cartoon studio, we refer them to a law firm, the better to participate in any pending lawsuits.

We continue to monitor the unfolding situation. (Based on what we've learned, there was collusion between studios ... and a coordinated effort to keep wages artificially low. Free enterprise now and FOREVER!)

But right now, we're waiting to find out what the attorneys uncover.

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Robert Iger Speaks

The Disney CEO speaks to Bloomberg reporters.

On Shanghai: Iger maintains the company will avoid the mistakes it made with Euro Disney. Disney Shanghai won't start out off with the mound of debt that its Paris park took on just to turn the lights on.

On sports: The exec remains confident the enormous NBA rights contract signed recently by ESPN will provide enough value to customers to justify costs. ESPN's pro football ratings are said to have shown no ill effect from the player scandals in the league this year.

On Star Wars: Iger says the franchise will be a bright spot for Disney. Filming in the U.K. is progressing on schedule.

Robert Iger has probably changed Diz Co. more than Michael Eisner.

The company's valuations is way larger than it was when Eisner left nine years ago (can it actually be that long ago?), and the company is now more than ever the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates.

Pixar runs pretty independently of the Big Mouse.

Likewise Lucasfilms.

Ditto for Marvel.

Like Warrern Buffett, Mr. Iger is buying brand companies and allowing them to continue to run themselves. This has turned out to be a pretty smart move. The company has never been richer. Or bigger.

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Expanding the Franchise

Sony (via press release) informs us it's building two animated features into a larger franchise.

DHX Media, a key player internationally in the creation of content for families and children, has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Animation to expand the blockbuster film franchise Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs into television with a brand-new adaptation.

The far-reaching deal will see DHX Media develop and produce twenty-six 22-minute, traditionally animated small-screen episodes of the acclaimed computer-generated animated feature films, and includes global television and non-US home entertainment exploitation rights to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Series (Sony will distribute home entertainment in the US). The deal also has DHX Media representing merchandising for the television series on a worldwide basis.

The 2009 mouth-watering animated comedy Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and its 2013 sequel, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, were produced by Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Both films were critical and commercial successes which grossed a combined $510 million in theaters.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Series takes place before giant food came raining down on Swallow Falls. Flint Lockwood is a high school tween with big dreams. Swallow Falls is a blue-collar town where sardines are driving a booming economy. But Flint suffers from NFD: Non Fish-related Dreams. He wants to be a serious scientist and maybe one day not have his inventions blow up in his face. Along for the ride is Sam Sparks, who's the new girl in town and the school's newest wannabe ace reporter. These two outsiders come together for laughs and comedic adventures with all the great characters from the film: Flint's Dad Tim, Steve the Monkey, Manny the head of the school's audiovisual, school gym teacher Earl before he becomes a cop, Brent who still models baby wear, and Mayor Shelbourne, who wins every election on the pro-sardine platform.


Steven DeNure, President and COO of DHX Media, said: “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has a tremendous legacy as beloved children’s books and a duo of highly popular feature films, showing how great ideas can succeed across media. We believe audiences both old and new are going to love this fiercely funny franchise reimagined for the small screen.”

Bob Osher, President of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, said: “I'm thrilled to see the adventures of our beloved characters from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs further expanded to television for audiences around the world to enjoy.”

Rick Mischel, executive producer at Sony Pictures Animation, added: “DHX’s track record in creating great kids’ television content makes them an ideal partner to capture the unique humor and tone of Flint Lockwood and his friends that made the theatrical franchise so successful.”

DHX Media is, naturally enough, a Canadian company.

Sony's going to Canada to get the show done. That's where the most free money is. (Time will tell whether any California artists are able to pick up some free-lance work.)

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Accepted Wisdom

Story director Mark Kennedy explains why the consensus views of "experts" is often wrong.

... I worked for many years on the film "Rapunzel" which eventually became "Tangled", and during all that time I had many discussions with people that thought Disney was crazy to make another fairy tale. Many people thought that the success of "Shrek" had proven that audiences were too sophisticated and too steeped in irony to really appreciate a sincere fairy tale anymore. People thought that in the post-Shrek world, there was no room for an old-school Disney fairy tale with princes and princesses that sing.

These days, it may be hard to remember that people once felt that way, after the success of "Tangled" and the monster runaway success of "Frozen". But I had many conversations with people who would ask why were doing such and obviously dumb thing in making an animated fairy tale. A Disney princess musical hadn't been successful in years, and some people at Disney thought we were going to be embarrassed when it came out because we would look stale and uninspired compared to the offerings of Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky, who were--at that time--dominating the animated market with everything other than princess fairy tale musicals.

For whatever reason, after "Princess and the Frog" came out, people seemed to take an even dimmer view of what we were doing. It sometimes felt like the studio would have cancelled "Tangled" if they could. Luckily for us, it was too late at that point, and it seemed like the studio was resigned to release it and get on with making other kinds of movies. On the web and in print media, all I ever read about "Tangled" is that it was an ill-conceived idea and was destined to be an embarrassing flop.

Then we had our first preview screenings, and the audiences really liked it. Things started changing after that, and the film starting building good momentum and good buzz. After it came out and did well, it seemed like nobody in the press or on the internet was that surprised…that it made sense, somehow, that Disney would make a CG fairy tale musical and of course make it feel both modern and traditional.

So to me, "Tangled" felt like a bit of a black swan. Yes, Disney is known for making animated fairy tales, so it wasn't a huge new risk in that way … but it was risky because accepted wisdom at that point was that audiences wanted something different and fresh. That the days of animated musical fairy tales was over.

Until it wasn't. ...

Hollywood's smart money doesn't have any lock on what properties will click with the movie-going public, and what properties will go south. And it's pretty much always been this way. Like for instance:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was considered a disaster in the making, especially by people who hadn't seen the story reels.

Civil War movies were considered box office poison. Then Gone With the Wind got released.

Westerns never make their production costs back. (Okay, there was Blazing Saddles and Dances with Wolves, but what about A Million Ways to Die in the West?)

Star Wars got turned down by various studios because each one knew that nobody ever went to space movies. But Fox finally took a flier on it, and now George Lucas is a billionaire.

The Sixth Sense was in production when Disney decided it had a turkey on its hands and sold off most of its ownership in the film. Then, of course, it turned into a smash hit.

Frozen languished in the development deep freeze until Tangled was a hit. Then they thawed the Hans Christian Anderson project out. This time, the Mouse had the good sense not to sell its equity position in its property.

Nobody is an unalloyed genius when it comes to the making and selling of movies. Even under the best of circumstances, clunkers get made and box office bombs result. And geniuses are particularly few and far between when it comes to predicting which movies are going to hit big.





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Feature Release

The newer animated feature from Studio Ghibli launches here on October 17.



The Brew noted that The Tale of Princess Kaguya had an okay but not gangbuster release in Japan. But now it's being rolled out in the U.S., Australia, and other places.

Geoffrey Wexler produces the English version, with Frank Marshall of Kennedy/Marshall exec producing.

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Pursuit of a Sale

BuzzFeed reviews what's been obvious.

... For the first time in his 40-year movie career, [Jeffrey] Katzenberg’s performance is being seriously questioned by both Wall Street analysts and Hollywood peers. As an independent studio not tethered to a larger organization in the cost-heavy field of animated movies, his studio [DreamWorks Animation] is overly dependent on the box office performance of individual films to meet its financial targets. Further, DreamWorks Animation’s business model of only producing two to three movies per year has suffered from the dual realities of increased competition in family films and an overall downward trend in attendance at the domestic box office. ...

As a movie studio executive who also requested anonymity said, “When you only make two movies a year, you better make sure one of them isn’t a flop otherwise you’re in trouble.” ...

According to a story in last week’s Hollywood Reporter, Katzenberg may have personally sabotaged the deal with Softbank by trying to leverage it into a richer offer from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. ...

Jeffrey Katzenberg is a smart man. He wants to sell his company to the highest bidder and springboard to the next level, but he's hemmed in by some cold realities.

1) Most of the big entertainment conglomerates have fully functioning animation division, and aren't looking to add another one at a steep price.

2) Most CEOs in movie land aren't angling to buy another movie company, especially if it means they have to step aside at a future date for Mr. Katzenberg.

3) Most large corporations who want to own DWA, aren't in the mood to overpay for the privilege of owning it.

I don't think Jeffrey "sabotaged" the deal with Softbank, not purposely anyway. The deal might have soured because Mr. Katzenberg attempted to sweeten the it too much. Pressing hard for the last dollar sometimes causes merger talks to unravel.

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Tom Sito's Animation History

The former TAG Prez's take on significant events for October.

CARTOON HAPPENINGS

Oct. 1, 1945- Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin leaves the cartoon business to work full time at Paramount doing live action movies. (He wrote for the Marx Brothers and later directed the Dean Martin Jerry Lewis comedies.)


Oct. 1, 1992- Cartoon Network goes on the air.


Oct. 2, 2004- Dreamworks film Sharktale opens in theaters.


Oct. 2, 1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts.


Good ol' Charlie Brown was the name of a fellow post office worker all the guy's liked to play jokes on. Schulz's idea 'little folks' was initially rejected by all the major comic syndicates. Three months before the strip was accepted his girlfriend broke off their engagement. He had left his job at the post office and she was convinced he would never amount to anything. At the time of his death Charles Schulz had mountains on the moon named for his characters, and he was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.


Oct. 2, 1958- Hanna & Barbera’s The Huckleberry Hound Show premieres.


Oct. 3, 1855- American artist James McNeill Whistler arrives in Paris to study painting. He had tried to apply to West Point for a military career, but failed the entrance exam. Years later, he jokingly told friends "If I hadn't identified phosphorous as a gas I'd be a major general by now!'


Oct. 3, 1955- Good Morning, Captain. the Captain Kangaroo kiddy Show debuted on television. 


Oct. 3, 1955- The Mickey Mouse Club TV Show premieres. “Who’s the leader of the Band that’s Made for you and me…?”


Oct. 3, 1957- Walter Lantz's The Woody Woodpecker Show debuts.


Oct. 3, 1964- There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here! On NBC.


Oct. 4, 1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.


Oct. 4, 1950- The first "Peanuts" comic strip with Snoopy.


Oct. 4, 1984- Fist of the North Star began airing in Japan.


Oct. 5, 1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuts on British television BBC-1.


Oct. 6, 1932- THE BIRTHDAY OF WONDER WOMAN. William Moulton Marston was an educational consultant in 1940 for Detective Comics ( DC Comics). Marston saw that the DC line was filled with images of men such as Green Lantern, Batman, Superman. He was left wondering, "Why isn't there a female hero?"


Max Gaines, then head of DC Comics, was intrigued by the concept and told Marston that he could create a female comic book hero - a "Wonder Woman." Marston did that, using a pen name that combined his own middle name with the middle name of Gaines: Charles Moulton Marston's 'good and beautiful woman' made her debut in All Star Comics #8. 


Oct. 7, 1993- Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park with CGI dinosaurs earns $712 million dollars ... just in North American box office. Something not to be equaled until Titanic five years later.


Oct. 8, 1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTOR'S FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees.


The catch was, the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads in Washington. The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules such as a ceiling cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year. (The producers had no such cap). There were restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old salary contract would stay in effect even after the contract expired until it was renegotiated.


This night at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd. hundreds of movie stars meet to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. SAG president Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) is considered politically too far left to face Roosevelt, so he steps down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize.


(In previous meetings at the El Capitan, the earth tremors from the Great Long Beach Earthquake the previous March made actors reconvene in the Grauman's Chinese parking lot across the street.) Cantor goes to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition and has the hated articles taken out of the code.


Oct. 9, 1986- The Fox Network's first program- The Joan River's Show, premieres. That show didn't last, but future hits like The Simpsons, Married With Children and The X-Files make Fox a major network.


Oct. 10, 1953- Winky Dink and You show by Harry Pritchett and David Wycoff. The birth of Interactive TV. Children were invited to place a piece of celluloid acetate on their TV screens from a kit and help Winky Dink through numerous adventures by drawing on their TV.


Oct. 10, 1957- RKO Studios, which produced King Kong, The John Ford Westerns and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, (not to mention the features and shorts from Walt Disney Productions) is sold to Desilu - the television production company of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez.


Oct. 10, 1985- Orson Welles and Yul Brynner die one hour apart. They were both 70. Welles had just finished taping yet another appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Brynner had a furious smoking habit. When he knew he was dying of the stuff, he recorded several television spots to be aired after his death. He looked squarely at camera and said: " I smoked. -Don't."


Oct 11, 1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premieres on TV. “Overture, hit the lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”


Oct. 11, 1967-The NY Times prints an image of a female nude by Bell Lab artist-in-residence Ken Knowlton. The image done on a computer as a digital mosaic of thousands of numbers was a breakthrough for CGI.


Oct 12, 1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signs the first animation union contract and settles the Cartoonist strike begun May 8th. The following year, Fleischer tries to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, but the additional expenses and poor box office ruins his studio.


Oct 12, 1994- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce the partnership that would be named Dreamworks SKG.


Oct. 13, 1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on Hollywood Blvd Walk of Fame.


Oct. 14, 1926- Happy Birthday Winnie the Pooh! A.A. Milne’s first book of Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuts this day.


(Milne was a prolific author. His book "The Red House Mystery" was a big best-seller -- and later critically taken apart by Raymond Chandler in the essay, "The Simple Art of Murder". Milne considered the Winnie the Pooh books lesser works, but they've stood the test of time. And made kajillions for the Disney Company. -- Steve Hulett)


Oct. 15, 1946 Walt Disney’s film Make Mine Music premieres.


Oct. 16, 1923- Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy sign a deal with M.J.Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budgets - $1,500 each. ...

And the back half of the month:

Oct. 18, 1946- Walt Disney premieres The Story of Menstruation.


Oct. 18, 1950- In a heated and emotional showdown at the Directors Guild, all motions by C.B.DeMille and Frank Capra to extend the Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist to include expulsion from the Director's Guild are defeated. Billy Wilder, John Huston, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy supported President Joe Mankiewicz who blocked the Blacklist Motions, and they also prevented a recall vote on Mankiewicz' s presidency.


Oct. 18, 1967- The Jungle Book, last cartoon feature done under Walt Disney's supervision, premieres. Disney had died the previous December.


Oct. 19, 1985- Take on Me by Aha hits number one on the pop charts. Part of its appeal was the hand-drawn comic strip MTV video, directed by Michael Patterson.


Oct. 20, 1955- J.R.R. Tolkein’s last book of the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King is published.


Oct. 22, 1941- Walt Disney’s Dumbo premieres.


Oct. 24, 1947- Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a friendly witness. He accuses members of the Cartoonists Guild and the League of Women Voters –which he mistakenly called the League of Women Shoppers -- as being infiltrated by Communists "Seeking to subvert the Spirit of Mickey Mouse'.


Oct. 24, 1994 Walt Disney TVA show Gargoyles premieres.


Oct. 26, 1970- Doonesbury is born. Yale law graduate Gary Trudeau was convinced by Jim Andrews his classmate, now an editor at Universal Press syndicate, to recreate his funny comic that he did in the campus newspaper. It's original name was 'Bull Tales".


Oct. 27, 1954- Walt Disney breaks with other Hollywood movie studios and debuts his TV show Disneyland.


Oct. 27, 1966- Bill Melendez Peanuts TV special “ It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, premiered.


Oct. 28, 1726- Johnathan Swift publishes "Gulliver's Travels"-"To Vex the World rather than Divert it."


Oct. 28, 1892- The first cartoon to be projected in France Pauvre Pierrot.


Oct. 29, 1969- THE BIRTH OF THE INTERNET- 

In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, Lick Licklider, Vincent Cerf, Robert Kahn, Lawrence Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. “We typed the 'L' and we asked on the phone 'Did you see the “L”?' 'Yes, we see the “L,”' was the response. Then we typed O and asked 'Did you see the O?' 'Yes, we see the "O”' was the response. Then we typed G, and then the system crashed!”

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NE; a few years later, it was known as the Internet.


Oct. 30, 1973- The Carlin Case- radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!


Oct. 30, 1994- Nickelodeon premieres Aaah! Real Monsters!


Oct. 31, 1993- Young movie star River Phoenix overdoses and dies on the street in front of the Viper Room nightclub in L.A after partying with Johnny Depp and Alicia Silverstone. The club is owned by movie star Depp and was once the Melody Room owned by old mobster Bugsy Siegel. Ironically, as Phoenix was thrashing spasmodically, people walked by unconcerned, because it’s a common occurrence on the Sunset Strip.

Birthdays: Julie Andrews, Zack Galifanakis, Satoshi Kon, Groucho Marx, Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Keane, Art Babbitt, Matt Damon, Guglielmo Del Toro, Pete Doctor, Jodie Benson, Rod Scribner, Hugh Jackman, Chuck Berry, Angela Lansbury, Mike Judge, Vip Partch, Jerry Siegel, Auguste Lumiere, Trey Parker, John Lithgow, Bela Lugosi, Snoop Dog, Jerry Ohrbach, Mary Blair, Weird Al Yankovic, Ang Lee, Preston Blair, Bob Kane, Picasso, Bill Tytla, Seth McFarlane, John Cleese, Berni Wrightson, Bill Gates, Ralph Bakshi, Bill Mauldin, Ollie Johnston, Peter Jackson, John Candy.

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Misogynistic Cartoons

The issue of racism in Tom and Jerry cartoons has re-reared its unattractive head over the past week, but Nikki Gloudeman in the Huffington Post focuses on its cousin:

... Amazon Prime recently add[ed] a racism disclaimer to a Tom and Jerry collection it's selling. While some commended the move, others have called it needless censorship.

More complicated still, some parse out the outcry even further insisting it's a bit ludicrous to cry "censorship!" over a simple disclaimer. ... There's another element this brouhaha has brought up, if only on the fringes of the conversation: sexism in classic old cartoons. And this "ism," while not as egregiously offensive as racism, is still worth scrutinizing. ...

Tom & Jerry, for its part, featured Toodles Galore, an eyelash-batting seductress who rarely spoke (because being mute is hot) and made Tom go ga-ga.

These particular stereotypes however, are to be expected in programs hailing from decades ago, when sexism was both rampant and sanctioned. But what do we make of the sexism that continues to reign in children's cartoons?

In 2012, when writing about a previous disclaimer regarding Tom and Jerry racism, Margot Magowan said in the SF Gate:

"Unfortunately, the reason that there's no disclaimer and no introduction [about sexism] is because sexist stereotypes in kids' cartoons are just as accepted in 2012 as they were sixty years ago. Sexist jokes in animation are, apparently, still hilarious."

But of course Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and selected Mickey Mouse shorts have racist/sexist images. T and J and all those other cartoons of the thirties, forties and fifties are eight minutes of Technicolored popular entertainment that (hold on to your iPads) reflect the mores and standards of the times in which they were made. One simple solution to putting them on display in 2014?

... When Whoopi Goldberg introduces a 2005 Looney Tunes Golden Collection, she addresses its politically incorrect themes, stressing that “they are presented here to accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored” and that “removing these inexcusable images and jokes from this collection would be the same as saying [these prejudices] never existed.” ...

I'm not big on censorship. There are novels, movies and cartoons circulating through the zeitgeist that many people would consider over the line. But I'm not sure what, in the fourteenth year of the new millennium, that line actually is, given what Family Guy and South Park do for thirty minutes of any particular weekend.

Disney shies away from distributing Song of the South in the U.S. of A., but has no problem selling the title everywhere else on the globe, so tell me again what we're getting our undergarments in a knot about? And Time-Warner is now in the process of celebrating Gone With The Wind's 75th anniversary, even though the picture -- Scarlett and Rhett's steamy clinches notwithstanding -- is several clicks more racist than Uncle Walt's depiction of the Old South.

As for the sexism of cartoons, it's hard to see that changing anytime soon because gender mores change slowly, and the creative end of the animation industry continues to be a male preserve. (And yeah, there are lots of women executives in the business, and Cal Arts is now 50% female, but women still make up only 17% of unionized animation employees And the men-folk don't think there are any major problems with gender presentation in American cartoons).

Whoopi Goldberg, I think, has it right. Call out racist or sexist cartoons for what they are, even as you point out that, like them or not, they're part of America's ever-changing culture. But please don't sweep shorts and features with unsavory characters and sequences under the rug, pretending they never existed. Denial is the last thing we need.


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401(k) Retirement Investing

TAG's 401(k) Plan has been transitioned from Mass Mutual for sixty-five days now, and there's been some changes.

A majority of participants were invested in bond funds and actively-managed stock funds prior to the move; now 93.5% of participants are in Vanguard Target Date Funds. All the Target Date funds (and we have twelve) have broad diversification with the following funds:

Vanguard Total Stock Fund
Vanguard Total International Fund
Vanguard Total Bond Fund
Vanguard Total International Bond Fund

(The shorter term target date funds add Vanguard's Short-Term TIPS Fund.) ...

It seems counter-intuitive, but the simplicity of a Vanguard Target date fund is the central pillar of its strength. Participants are broadly diversified, and they can "set and forget" their investment and know their asset allocation is doing better than 85% of all investors in the known universe.

Here's another reason to set and forget:

... Fidelity [Mutual Funds] had studied which customer investing accounts performed the best: They were the ones held by people who had forgotten they even had Fidelity accounts, and so did no buying or selling from them. ...

Need more motivation about keeping investing simple? How about this:

... [Warren] Buffett describes advice he has left in his will as to how the trustee should invest money Buffett is leaving for his wife. Here’s Buffett’s advice:

“My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10 percent of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90 percent in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.)” ...

I've made almost every mistake known to human-kind while saving for retirement, and after endless blunderinging around, my rules of thumb are (by now) pretty cut and dried:

1) Invest in Index Funds; avoid individual stocks (unless someone is gifting them to you.)
2) KISS: Keep it simple, stupid. Balanced Funds or a three-fund portfolio (Total Stock Market, Total International, Total Bond) are good things because they out-perform almost any other style of investing. So wallow in "the majesty of simplicity", you'll be richer for it.
3) Stick with your saving/investing program. Don't freak during dips (plunges?) in the market. Don't bail out at the bottom of a market and get in at the top. You'll have way less money.

Lastly. I am holding enrollment meetings for TAG members at different studios over the next several weeks. Here are the nearest dates:

Animation Guild 401(k) Plan Enrollment Meetings

Wednesday, October 8th -- Disney Feature Animation (Hat Building) -- Conference Room 1300 -- 3-4 p.m.

Monday, October 13th -- 6 point 2 Animation (Glendale) -- 6th floor -- 3-4 p.m.

Wednesday, October 15th -- Fox Animation -- Main Conference Room -- 2-3 p.m.

Thursday, November 6th -- DreamWorks Animation -- Dining Rooms B & C -- 2-3 p.m.

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Your Worldwide Box Office

Where animated product continues to be a performer.

Overseas Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

The Boxtrolls -- $6,000,000 -- ($58,539,208 )

Guardians of the Galaxy -- $2,400,000 -- ($653,760,000)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $3,500,000 -- ($349,113,151)

But the most interesting thing this weekend is ... a film from China topped the big list.

... Chinese road-trip comedy Breakup Buddies shot to the top of the international box office chart with a weekend take of $38 million in China, pushing the film's nine-day total to a staggering $93 million. ...

The U.S. had to make do with the "place" position.

David Fincher's Gone Girl placed No. 2 internationally, opening to $24.6 million from its first 39 markets for a global launch of $62.6 million. Overseas, the U.K. led with $6.9 million, followed by Australia with $4.6 million, both record openings for Fincher. ...

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Sixty-Nine Year Ago ...

From President Emeritus Tom Sito:.

Oct. 5, 1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK (sometimes called the Battle of Warner Bros) - Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars.

Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. The head of Warner Bros security was the brother-in-law of the chief of the Burbank police, so many strikebreakers had legal gun permits.

Contract screenwriter Ayn Rand talked most of the producers' secretaries into crossing the picket line. One of the strikeleaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then later arrested for incitement to riot.

It's hard to even imagine this sort of riot happening today. Happens in the Ukraine, happens in the middle east, happens in Thailand. But here? In good old Burbank?

I guess if things get dire enough, anything is possible. French aristocrats in 1789 and the czar's circle of chums in 1917 thought workers rising up was beyond the pale. But when people and social/political forces whirl together in a certain way, it happens with explosive force, and then carves out its own swath.

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The Weekend Derby

The numbers, Friday to Sunday:

1). Gone Girl (FOX), 3014 theaters / $13.2MFri. / 3-day est. cume: 37M+/ Wk 1
2). Annabelle (WB), 3185 theaters / $15.45MFri. / 3-day est. cume: $32M+/ Wk 1

3). The Equalizer (SONY), 3236 theaters (0)/ $5.6M Fri. / $3-day est. cume: $18M (-44%) / Wk 2

4). The Maze Runner (FOX), 3605 theaters (-33) / $3.4M Fri. /3-day est. cume: $11.6M / Wk 3

5). The Boxtrolls (FOC), 3464 theaters (0)/ $2.7M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $10.4M (-38%) / Wk 2

6). Left Behind (Freestyle), 1825 theaters / $2.3M Fri. / $ 3-day est. cume: $7.5M / Wk 1

7). This is Where I Leave You (WB), 2735 theaters (-133) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $4M / Wk 3

8). Dolphin Tale 2 (WB), 2790 theaters (-586) / $798K Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $3.04M/ Wk 4

9). Guardians of the Galaxy (DIS), 1894 theaters (-557) / $794K Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $2.9-3M/ Wk 10

10). No Good Deed (SONY), 1580 theaters (-550)/ $741K Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $2.4M/ Wk 4

Forbes analyzes the top of the list:=. d

... Warner Bros.’ Annabelle, a spin-off from The Conjuring, scored the top spot at the box office on Friday night, earning a robust and impressive $15.5 million. The $6.5m New Line Cinema production, which centered on an evil doll, is an unquestionable horror smash in a year relatively bereft of them. Spin-off or not, Annabelle played like a proverbial sequel to The Conjuring, earning just 8% less than the $16.95m earned by The Conjuring on its first Friday. ...

The knockout debut for Gone Girl is frankly something I had secretly half-expected but dared-not-utter out of fear of poisoning the well. A $20 million weekend debut would have been just fine for the sure-to-be-leggy thriller, but it smelled like the kind of film that basically every available adult moviegoer rushes out to see. As such, the film’s $13.2 million Friday debut not only establishes the film as a genuine hit but also firmly establishes the film as a major Oscar player. ...

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Cartoon Partnership

A new feature consortium:

The British Film Institute is partnering with Aardman Animations are launching a new scheme backed by £1 million of lottery funding to help support the development and production of new animated feature films and the creative talent aardman animationsmaking them.

The BFI will provide funding for up to two years to three filmmakers or filmmaker teams to develop their projects with dedicated development support through the BFI Aardman Animation Development Lab. The process for developing animated feature films is lengthy and expensive limiting the opportunities for British filmmakers. Wallace & Gromit producer Aardman will work with the filmmakers – animators, writers, directors, producers – to shape their ideas with the aim of emerging with a set of greenlight-ready materials for their films, ready to advance to production. The closing date for applications is November 28. ...

Development of animated features doesn't have to be expensive. It can be as simple as two story artists in a room, cobbling a visual storyline together, then putting it up on story reels* to see what works and what doesn't.

Once you know there's something tangible and workable, you can call in the designers, the modelers, and the art directors. And then it's off to the races. (You know that some of the projects you have in work aren't going to get the hoped-for green light; that's why you have a bunch of projects in work at any one time. Some will be still-born.)

What sometimes happens is the production side swings into action before a story is nailed down, then everything grinds to a halt while acts II and III get wrestled with up in the story department. (One of the extreme examples of this was Warner Bros. Feature Animation in the 1990s. There were a couple hundred production people sitting around twiddling their funds at two grand a week while the head of production made up his mind what animated feature he wanted to move forward with. The dawdling got expensive, and the division ultimately got shuttered.)

But good luck to Aardman and the BFI. There seems to be room in the pool for more animation production, so come on in!

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End of Days

Specifically, the end of Day #6.

This past Saturday, the CW became the last broadcast television network to cut Saturday morning cartoons. The CW is replacing its Saturday cartoon programming, called “The Vortexx,” with “One Magnificent Morning,” a five-hour bloc of non-animated TV geared towards teens and their families.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Saturday morning time slots were synonymous with cartoons. Broadcast networks and advertisers battled for underage viewers. But that started to change in the 1990s.

In 1992, NBC was the first broadcast network to swap Saturday morning cartoons for teen comedies such as “Saved by the Bell” and a weekend edition of the “Today” show. Soon, CBS and ABC followed suit. In 2008, Fox finally replaced Saturday morning cartoons with infomercials.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a Saturday morning cartoon viewership could grab more than 20 million viewers. In 2003, some top performers got a mere 2 million, according to Animation World Network.

What happened? Cable, technology and the FCC. ...

When I broke into the animation business, Saturday morning cartoons were what fueled the majority of animation employment. Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and the other TV animation studios relied on network orders to keep the doors open. What got picked up? What didn't? There were months of nail-biting, each and every year.

John Kimball related:

Most of us in animation in the sixties and seventies worked in t.v. You got used to a rhythm: Six to eight months of employment, then four to six months off while the networks made up their minds which shows they'd pick up. You would maybe pick up some freelance work, do some commercials. And save your money until the new season started. ...

For decades, that was the way things worked, but nothing is forever. Filmation broke out of the Saturday morning strait jacket by doing big orders of syndicated cartoons, much of it tied to toys. He Man and She Ra were designed to boost the toy market, and did. Then Disney stormed into t.v. animation and initiated a syndicated block of shows called "The Disney Afternoon."

After that, cable animation took off, and now here we are ... in the Netflix era. Nothing stays constant for very long.

So it was probably inevitable that Saturday morning cartoons were, at some point, going to vanish. Maybe the amazement is that they lasted as long as they did.


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Show us the MONEEE

The Hollywood Reporter unspools a long article (and fairly detailed breakdown) of who gets paid what in Hollywood, top to bottom:

... How bad is the decline in actor salaries over the past decade? Despite the huge sums still being raked in by such superstars as Robert Downey Jr. (his $75 million comes from his 7 percent, first-dollar slice of Iron Man 3, as well as his $12 million HTC endorsement deal) and Sandra Bullock (a 15 percent, first-dollar deal on Gravity and about $10 million more for her summer hit The Heat), most actors are feeling a definite squeeze, especially those in the middle.

"If you're [a big star], you're getting well paid," says one top agent, "but the middle level has been cut out." Sometimes with a hacksaw. ...

Top directors of photography, of which there are probably about 10 to 15 in the industry, can command $25,000 to $30,000 a week on movies that shoot up to 12 weeks ... On a low-budget indie fare, DPs often take home $2,000 to $5,000 a week. On TV productions, the range is $5,000 to $8,000 a week. ...

Your average studio chief — think Alan Horn, Brad Grey and Amy Pascal — earns a base salary of about $5 million. But bonuses and other sweeteners (structured on box office and production output, among other factors) usually amount to two to three times that payday. Plus, the job comes with the best perks in Hollywood, from private jet rides to 24-hour assistants. ...

Here in Cartoonland, the Animation Guild has its own X-ray machine regarding industry wages, and like our live-action counterparts, we have the "good news", "bad news" thing going on. As Deadline observed:

... Salaries for animators are holding fairly steady this year compared with last year. But the reported median weekly pay for some jobs — most notably staff TV writers, feature storyboard artists, and staff story editors — is down from salaries reported five years ago. The median weekly pay reported by feature animation directors is up compared with 2013 and 24% higher than in 2010. Meanwhile, overall employment at the guild, IATSE Local 839, is at an all-time high. About a third of the guild’s 3,200 members took part in this year’s survey, up from 26% last year. ...

Our takeaway from the various wage analyses? People are working, but people are also getting squeezed. Although TAG members are doing better than their below-the-line, live action counterparts, many are essentially holding their own compared to four, five and six years ago.

Studios have grown accustomed to playing hardball, and they have no compunctions about throwing hard pitches that are fast and inside.

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FOR SALE: Disney Animation Furniture

Seller eager to part with Disney Animation furniture from the 80s. Furniture needs to be picked up from North Hollywood.

All interested parties should contact Ron Dickson by email at jrdickson@earthlink.net

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At the Diz Co.

No guard tailing me at the hat building. I just flash my card, sign the register and stroll the halls....

There's been waves of layoffs as Big Hero 6 moved steadily through the various production departments. Lighting finished a few days ago, and the temporary production hires are now departing, while core staff members clean up odds and ends and sit down to figure out -- as a crew member told me -- how they can do the next movie better.

Everybody on the first floor is now more relaxed because the long work days have ended. But there are newer features being made elsewhere on the premisses. I saw some footage on an upcoming movie Diz Co. has in development, and it looked impressive.

Staff is going to be moving in November as renovations on the hat building start in earnest. the different feature units will be staying together, but there won't be room for everybody at Riverside Drive, so some employees will be moving to another building.

On a related but different subject: An article out of Britain interviews WDAS producer Roy Conli, who says ...

... What John [Lasseter] really believes in: that the directors will drive the story and must own the story. ... [in the nineties] "We got into an executive-driven era and now we’re back.” ...

I think Roy is mostly right about the above. But what's always left out, and what I find a teensy bit aggravating, is that minimal acknowledgement is made by company spokespersons that when a director drives the movie to a place the creative head of the division [Mr. Lasseter] doesn't want to go, the director departs.

And there's nothing wrong with this. The top guy is hired to produce profitable features in the way he believes they should be made. When a director doesn't give him what -- by his lights -- is necessary, then hesto presto! New director!

It's been this way since the days of Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, and David O. Selznick. So wouldn't it be good to admit the way things actually work?

Lastly, the trades are full of praise for Disney chief Robert Iger, who will remain at the helm an extra few years.

Iger was supposed to retire in July 2016, and those two aforementioned guys were the leading contenders to succeed him (respectively the head of theme parks and the CFO). Problem was, neither of them was nearly as compelling a candidate as the guy already in the chair. And more important: The 63-year-old Iger looked around and decided there was nothing he would rather do, according to individuals with knowledge of his thinking. ...

The Disney board of directors was thrilled with that conclusion, according to a company insider. Under Iger's leadership, Disney has expanded its global reach, and the stock has soared steadily from $20 a share in 2010 to about $86 a share now. In 2013 the company made $6 billion in earnings on $45 billion in revenue. The company statement on Thursday noted that shareholder return has increased 311 percent since Iger became CEO in 2005, with Disney's market capitalization rising to $150 billion from $48.4 billion. ...

Sitting in a lighter's first-floor office this morning, I was trying to explain the difference between the Disney of 2014 with the Disney of 1976. But it's hard to do, because the company of today has as much in common with the mid-seventies version as an aircraft carrier has with a rowboat.

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No Surprise

As Jeffrey K. wanting to sell DreamWorks Animation is not startling news, neither is this:

Bob Iger, previously set to retire in June 2016, will remain Disney's (DIS -1.1%) chairman/CEO for two years longer, under the terms of a contract extension. The extension "maintains the same annual compensation terms" as Iger's existing deal, but includes "the opportunity to earn a performance-based retention bonus if certain financial performance goals are met over a five-year period ending with fiscal year 2018." Details will be provided in an 8-K tomorrow.

As it is, there had been speculation Iger, 63, would stay on board beyond 2016. ...

When the Head Guy is presiding over record-high multiples and a record-high stock price, you don't get rid of the Head Guy.

This is business-econ 101.

If Michael Eisner had been riding atop similar earnings eleven years ago, Michael could have survived Roy Disney's corporate guerrilla campaign. Because a booming stock price and gushers of money trump everything else.

But at the time, Diz Co.'s profits were faltering, so it was "buh-bye, Mr. Eisner".

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Art of Blue Sky

... the studio, not the atmosphere above our aging earth.

Before 2002, the Connecticut-based Blue Sky Studios was best known for its commercials and visual effects. Started by animator and Tron veteran Chris Wedge and a tiny group of co-founders in 1987, the studio created simple animated logos and everyday objects (such as a time-release pill for a pharmaceutical ad) before creating more complex, character-based work for clients such as M&Ms and Nickelodeon.

The Art Of Blue Sky Studios covers the company’s output to date, with writer Jake S Friedman leading us, film by film, through such films as Robots, Horton Hears A Who, Rio and Epic, as well as the Ice Age series, with contributions from the artists involved in bringing them to the screen. ...

This Art Of focuses almost exclusively on the concept art and character sketches created by such artists as Kyle Macnaughton, Greg Couch and Peter de Seve - much of it produced either with traditional pencils, pens and paints or with a graphics tablet. What this means is that, as you turn each page, you’re confronted by wildly different textures and techniques, from early, abandoned character designs for Ice Age, quickly etched out with bold pencil strokes, to bold and often quite beautiful landscapes picked out in fresh, shimmering colors. ...

A veteran of the first Ice Age tells me that the studio's pivot away from the "boutique studio" mind-set of commercials and short films was not painless. Staffers were used to working by themselves on individual pieces: separate lighting, separate designs, separate shots.

But this method of working wasn't feasible for a long-form feature, and Blue Sky artists had to become more collaborative, work as a team. Clearly they succeeded, but there was a bit of angst before the new methods took hold.

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At Nick

Took a turn through Nickelodeon Animation Studios this morning, where they have a guard (a very nice guy) following me around because management is afraid (I guess) that I'll walk off with one of the big statues out on the corporate lawn ... or some of the wall decorations.

Nick is the only studio that has me march around with a uniformed officer (kind of a modified "perp walk"). But then, they're the only studio with big statues out front. And you can never be too careful. ...

Nick's ramping up a number of new shows and previously empty cubicles are starting to get occupied. Artists are staffing up to work on The Loud House, and preparations are being made to activate other hand-drawn productions (both old and new titles).

In the meantime, the studio has so many shows in the process of becoming that one of the CG shows will be moving to a new building. And the studio's long-term plans include constructing a new animation facility next door to the current studio on Olive Avenue in Burbank, where productions will (ultimately) be consolidated. But that consolidation is a ways off, most likely 2016 or 2017.

I'll have worked my way through a half-dozen more guards by then.

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Still Dealing?

The Reporter of Hollywood tells us:

... It's still not clear what killed the SoftBank acquisition of DWA, which multiple sources believe was well along when THR revealed the talks Sept. 27. Sources say DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had made an unsuccessful appeal to Rupert Murdoch to buy the company for about $4 billion — a number that long has been Katzenberg's target. (A Murdoch rep and DWA declined comment.)

"Jeffrey's overplaying his hand," says one observer, who, like many, is surprised that DWA hasn't closed the SoftBank deal. "I would have jumped all over it. He could claim victory, get his $3 billion and work his way into Masayoshi Son's ear to buy other stuff." ...

I've thought for the longest time that DreamWorks Animation's distribution deal with Fox was Step One in a multi-step deal to have News Corp. buy the whole kit and kaboodle.

After Disney scooped up Pixar for $7.2 billion, rumors were circulating that Jeffrey wanted to sell DWA for the same price. Nice dream, but there were no takers, and the 2008 economic meltdown put the whole idea of selling on ice.

Mr. Katzenberg wants to maximize profit. And this isn't the end of DreamWorks being on the sales block. More like the beginning. If DW Animation isn't sold within the next eighteen months, I'll be surprised.

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