Shameless Plug

I've generally shied away from plugging stuff I've written that pop up on other sites, but Cartoon Bres has again started running "Mouse in Transition". ...

So I plug it here.

(I'm craven that way. And yeah, the chapters ran here a long time ago, but republishing is always a good thing, yes? Brew throws out a better net than this blog does.)

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Your American Box Office

Early turnstile figures, (and no prizes for guessing the weekend's top grosser) ...

Early Friday projections show Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1″ heading for an opening weekend of about $125 million in the U.S. — significantly lower than recent forecasts and over 20% below the first two “Hunger Games” movies.

However, international box office for the first part of the “Hunger Games” finale is up 5% to 10% above last year’s “Catching Fire” with more than $33 million in two days. ...

Big Hero 6 is projected to drop around 40%, and come in at #2. ...

Disney’s third weekend of “Big Hero 6″ is expected to lead the rest of the pack this weekend with about $24 million, followed by Paramount’s third weekend of “Interstellar” at around $16 million. ...

Add On: The Saturday stats:

1). The Hunger Games (LGF), 4,151 theaters / $55.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $128M/ Wk 1

2). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 3,650 theaters (-123) / $4.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $20.5M (-41%)/ Total Cume: $136.1M /Wk 3

3). Interstellar (PAR), 3,415 theaters (-146) / $4.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $14.7M (-48%) / Total cume: $120.4M / Wk 3

4). Dumb and Dumber To (UNI), 3,188 theaters (+34) / $4.1M Fri./3-day cume: $13.8M (-62%)/ Total Cume: $57.1M /Wk 2

5). Gone Girl (FOX), 1,609 theaters (-350) / $803K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.7M (-41%)/ Total cume: $157M / Wk 8

6). Beyond the Lights (REL), 1766 theaters (-23)/ $803K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.5M (-60%) / Total Cume: $10M /Wk 2

7). St. Vincent (TWC), 1,707 theaters (-625) / $672K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.25M (-40%)/ Total cume: $36.7M / Wk 7

8). Fury (SONY), 1,720 theaters (-662) / $550K Fri. / 3-day cume: $1.8M (-52%) / Total cume: $79.1M / Wk 6

Micheal Keaton in Birdman9). Birdman (FSL), 862 theaters (+5) / 502K Fri. /3-day cume: $1.7M (-31%) / Total cume: $14.3M /Wk 6

10). The Theory Of Everything (FOC), 140 theaters (+99) / $402K Fri. / 3-day cume: $1.4M (+90%)/ Total cume: $2.7M / Wk 3

Ade On Too: The Rentrak Sunday stats:

WEEKEND TOTALS -- U.S./CANADA

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, The - Lionsgate - $123.0M

Big Hero 6 - Disney - $20.1M

Interstellar - Paramount - $15.1M

Dumb And Dumber To - Universal - $13.8M

Gone Girl - 20th Century Fox - $2.8M

Beyond The Lights - Relativity Media - $2.6M

St. Vincent - The Weinstein Company - $2.4M

Fury - Sony - $1.9M

Birdman - Fox Searchlight - $1.9M

Theory Of Everything, The - Focus Features - $1.5M

Nightcrawler - Open Road - $1.2M

Ouija - Universal - $1.0M

As you can see, Big Hero 6 came in a distant second to the JenLaw movie.

Add On: The last ... and the actual ... box office.

1). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (LG), 4,151 theaters / 3-day cume: $121.897M/$29,366 average /Total cume: $121.897M/ Wk 1 Includes Thursday night previews.

2). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 3,650 theaters (-123) /3-day cume: $20.1M (-42%)/$5,513 average/ Total cume: $135.7M /Wk 3

3). Interstellar (PAR), 3,415 theaters (-146) / 3-day cume: $15.3M (-46%) /$4,492 average/ Total cume: $120.9M / Wk 3

4). Dumb and Dumber To (UNI), 3,188 theaters (+34)/ 3-day cume: $14.076M (-61%)/$4,415 average /Total cume: $57.7M/ Wk 2

5). Gone Girl (FOX), 1,609 theaters (-350) 3-day cume: $2.8M (-38)/$1,763 average/ Total cume: $156.8M / Wk 8

6). Beyond the Lights (REL), 1,766 theaters (-23) / 3-day cume: $2.6M (-58%)/$1,492 average /Total cume:$10.1M/Wk 2

7). St. Vincent (TWC), 1,707 theaters (-625) /3-day cume: $2.2M (-40%)/ $1,318 average/Total cume: $36.5M / Wk 7

8). Fury (SONY), 1,720 theaters (-662) / 3-day cume: $1.9M (-48%) /$1,130 average/ Total cume: $79.19M / Wk 6

9). Birdman (FSL), 862 theaters (+5) /3-day cume: $1.85M (-25%) /$2,150 average/ Total cume: $14.4M /Wk 6

10). The Theory of Everything (Focus), 140 theaters (+99) /3-day cume: $1.5M (+106%) /$10,798 average/ Total cume: $2.8M/Wk 3

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Diz Co. and China

The Mouse gets more intertwined with the Middle Kingdom.

Walt Disney Co. plans to expand a partnership with state-owned Shanghai Media Group to include co-production of movies along with development, distribution and marketing of television shows.

The alliance will boost local content creation for international markets and create new business models in digital and conventional media, Li Ruigang, Shanghai Media chairman, said today in a joint statement with Disney. ...

Disney is also developing cartoon content for the Chinese market with Tencent Holdings Ltd. and state-run China Animation Group. ...

You can't really ignore a large and growing market with 1.4 billion people in it. (And what large, self-respecting entertainment conglomerate would even want to?)

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CTN Animation Expo this weekend!

Today marks the first day of this year's CTN Animation Expo. The CTN Animation Expo is the the only dedicated Expo for animation talent in the USA. The three-day event includes highly focused conference programming, workshops, recruiting, presentations and networking opportunities designed to connect animation artists, studio executives and industry leaders both locally and internationally.

The Animation Guild is excited to participate in this year's CTN Animation Expo as an exhibitor in the main exhibit hall. The three days of the conference are filled with animation veterans, students and enthusiasts sharing their love and appreciation for the art and skills of the craft. We never fail to meet new people and have a great experience over the length of the weekend.

To learn more about the event and purchase tickets to attend, visit the Expo website at: http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com/index.php. When you get there, come visit us at Table T105 located on the right side of the room in the middle grouping of tables (Map View of our location).

We hope to see you there!

Add On: Mr. Kaplan and I manned the Animation Guild booth on the main hall today (although it was mainly Mr. Kaplan -- I was a late arrival). There were lots of exhibits, lectures, and seminars. There were a couple of tents in the parking lot sheltering presentations.

Various animation companies have set up larger booths, and the crowds were robust. We got to catch up with old friends nd make a few new ones. Good fun!

--Steve Hulett

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Render Stress

A topic often discussed.

... The 4K revolution is proving to be a stumbling block for the animated market, as it not only puts a strain on the limitations of the machines that are currently used in the production, but they also could cause the production teams to run into delays with the time it takes to actually make the movie.

To be more specific, animated films are currently running at 2k resolution and 24 frames per second, and the higher end that filmmakers like Peter Jackson are pushing for run at 4K resolution, and at least 48 frames per second. ...

[T]he resolution of current animation projects would have to be bumped up by at least 2.5 times. Increased resolution means increased memory needs, which means that the render farms ... need to grow accordingly. ...

One thing to bump up resolution and the number of frames with CG animation. But consider hand-drawn features done the old-fashioned way. They go to 48 frames per second, that's one hell of a lot of additional drawings.

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Lawsuit City

When you live in the House of Mouse, it doesn't just rain ... it comes down in barrels.

Fourteen new individual lawsuits were filed this week against Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“The systems, policies and procedures associated with the Disability Access Service which Disney rolled out in October of 2013 were certain to create discrimination against Plaintiffs, and it was obvious that the community of persons with cognitive impairments would be harmed by the DAS,” said the filings in federal court in Florida. ... Representing 26 families with children with autism and other developmental disorders who visited Disney World, these latest complaints come out of an order late last month by a judge breaking up the group discrimination case against the House of Mouse first filed in April. ...

This is only distantly related to animation, but demonstrates how lawsuits often come in clusters.

Or ... I donno. Maybe the media just creates the illusion of clusters.

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Jeffrey's Woes

And speaking of the media being tough on this or that corporate entity, the LA Times has this:

It has been a rough month for Jeffrey Katzenberg.

In the space of a few weeks, the mogul and co-founder of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. has been rebuffed by three high-profile potential buyers: Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp., Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox and Hasbro Inc.

Katzenberg, known for driving a hard bargain, may have overplayed his hand. The studio executive was said to be pursuing a deal worth about $3 billion — about $1 billion above the company's current market value. In the case of Hasbro, investors also balked at the idea of getting into the volatile movie business and the company risked alienating its main licensing partner, Walt Disney Co.

The collapse of deal talks left some Wall Street analysts wondering what Katzenberg's strategy is. ...

The strategy is what it's been for years.

Cash out at a big profit.

I'm told that back in the ought sixes and sevens, Mr. Katzenberg was after a buyout along the lines of the Disney-Pixar deal, but that didn't happen. And then along came the crash of '08-'09, and any potential DreamWorks Animation suitors were in short supply. (Because the suitors were focused on surviving, not purchasing a cartoon studio.)

So now here we are, a whole lot further down the Log Flume of Life, and Jeffrey Katzenberg is again pushing to sell DWA. If I were to hazard a guess as to why things aren't currently going well (and I'm about to), I would say that Jeffrey is

A) Overly optimistic about the price he can command;

B) Pushing a wee bit too hard for a bigger price-per-share in negotiations;

C) Getting undone by competitors who have more leverage than he does. (Can we spell D-I-S-N-E-Y? I knew we could.)

I still think DreamWorks Animation will find a bigger fish willing to swallow it, I just don't know when that might be. So I'll hold fast to my "within 36 months" prediction.

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Conspiracy?

As Bloomberg relates:

Pixar President Edwin Catmull acknowledged the use of such agreements when he was questioned by lawyers for thousands of employees who sued his company, along with Apple, Google and four others, in 2011. An unapologetic Catmull said he was trying to help the industry survive by stopping hiring raids, remarks that triggered a trio of complaints in the last three months against animation studios in California. ...

People sent me the Brew's take on this, and I keep getting asked about the wage fixing. My response:

"Sure, wage fixing goes on. The problem is proving it." ...

My opinion? The only time there hasn't been some sort of collusion reining in wages in L.A. was during the mid-90s, when Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner went to war with one another and began bidding up the price of talent.

That was a grudge match, and lasted for years. TV salaries went up at the same time, topping out at the end of the decade. In the twenty-first century, studio have become increasingly aggressive about holding down salaries, so the fact that they're forging agreements with one another isn't a surprise.

Now we have Dr. Catmull admitting same in depositions, and stating it's the right and proper thing to do. But why not? It saves the companies for which he works significant coin, and there is minimal downside.

Until now.

There are currently a pile of lawsuits; Diz Co. and others are telling the court that the suits should be thrown out, and the judge has scuttled an earlier settlement, saying the $324 million both side had agreed on wasn't big enough because there was "evidence of an overarching conspiracy."

No kidding. But winning cases in court, convincing juries of significant damages, could still be a steep hill to climb.

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Renewal

And we should mention:

TBS has ordered a new 22-episode season of Twentieth Century Fox Television's animated hit American Dad!, which is currently in the midst of its first season as a TBS original. Created by Seth MacFarlane, Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman, American Dad! is executive-produced by MacFarlane, Weitzman and new showrunner Brian Boyle. The series airs Mondays at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) on TBS, with encores presented by sister network Adult Swim.

Since coming to TBS in mid-October, American Dad! has ranked as one of basic cable’s Top 3 entertainment programs in the Monday 9 p.m. timeslot with adults 18-34 and one of the Top 5 entertainment programs in its timeslot with adults 18-49. The current season is averaging 3.1 million viewers in combined audience for each week’s premiere on TBS and encore on Adult Swim. ...

I know the crew was a wee bit tense about getting picked up for another season. The one thing that almost always turns the trick is a robust ratings number.

Then there's always the issue of how many new episodes the very busy Mr. MacFarlane wants to record. But that's what recording studios in remote locations are all about: to make doing your multiple parts as easy and simple as possible.


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Profit Margins

The Fool (not me, another fool) shines a light on Disney movie grosses and Disney profits.

... Marvel's The Avengers set new opening weekend records in May 2012, going on to earn over $1.5 billion worldwide. Among Disney pictures, only Frozen has produced more profit since the studio took full control of Pixar in May 2006.

Most Profitable Films -- Total Gross -- Gross Profit -- Profit %

Frozen -- $1,274,219,009 -- $628,559,074 -- 40.57%

The Avengers -- $1,518,594,910 -- $621,295,630 -- 35.82%

Toy Story 3 -- $1,063,171,911 -- $447,485,580 -- 34.13% ...

... From the close of the Pixar acquisition on May 9, 2006, to today, Disney has added roughly $90 billion in market cap -- from just over $62 billion to more than $155 billion as of this writing. Pixar is probably responsible for over half those gains. ...

Which isn't to say that Marvel's been a slouch, just that buying Pixar (which, let's face it, wouldn't have happened if Michael Eisner had remained in charge) has been one of Iger's better strategic moves.

One management team (Catmull and Lasseter) runs two successful cartoon studios; also, too, the less successful DisneyToon Studios. So all in all, the $7.2 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006 has paid off.

The Marvel acquisition has worked well too, just not as richly as the Emeryville pick-up.

And with the torrent of good news, there was today this announcement:

Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios promoted both Walt Disney Animation Studios' Andrew Millstein and Pixar Animation Studios’ Jim Morris to president.

“We're fortunate and proud to have an abundance of strong creative leadership at Disney, and Andrew and Jim are two incredible talents that embody the perfect blend of business and artistic focus,” said Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. ...

To give you the chronology, Mr. Millstein was a DreamQuest executive when Disney bought the visual effects house in the late '90s. (This was long before VFX studios were dying like fruit flies. Andrew was part of the Disney team that negotiated the Secret Lab contract in 1999. I was part of the union group on the other side of the table).

Andrew Millstein ran The Secret Lab -- feature animation's internal visual effects facility -- and after that Disney Animation Florida. When the Orlando facility closed in the mid oughts, Mr. Millstein returned to the California studio (now known as The Walt Disney Animation Studios, and has worked there ever since.

Congratulations to both Andrew and Jim Morris.


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"B.O.O." Push

The Times reports:

... DreamWorks has decided to push back the release date for "B.O.O.: Bureau of Other Worldly Operations," one of two original movies (rather than sequels) planned for next year, two people close to the studio said.

One person said DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was unhappy with the progress of the film, while another said the decision had more to do with the competitive landscape the studio faces next summer. Pixar also will release its movie "Inside Out" in June. ...

The story I got from staffers during a trek through the studio last week was that the story needs work. A recent presentation of the feature to lead creatives and execs indicated weaknesses, and so the shift in release dates maybe isn't a surprise, eh?

A note to the uninitiated: In Animationland, stories almost always need "tweaking". Sometimes a whole lot of major league tweaking.

Pixar's orphan movie "The Good Dinosaur" has a new parent — and a new story..

First-time feature director Peter Sohn, an artist at the studio in Emeryville, Calif., since 2000, unofficially took over the film a few months after Pixar executives removed its first director, Bob Peterson, amid creative concerns in the summer of 2013.

Over the last year, Sohn has been quietly streamlining the story, a buddy comedy about a teenage dinosaur and a human boy, in preparation for a November 2015 release. ...

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Disney Renewal

Diz Jr. has re-upped a high-performing cartoon half-hour.

Disney Junior has ordered a second season of its breakout series Sheriff Callie’s Wild West. The series starring Mandy Moore as the voice of Sheriff Callie was the first Disney/ABC Television Group show to launch on the company’s Watch mobile platform. It amassed more than 23 million views in its launch window. The success translated on-air, with the back-to-back premiere telecasts in January ranking as Disney Junior’s Top 2 telecasts of all time in total viewers. Since its linear premiere, Sheriff Callie has been the No. 1 series across preschool-dedicated TV networks in kids 2-5. ...

Sheriff Callie is produced in Toluca Lake by Wild Canary Animation*.

(For whatever reason, Diz Co. doesn't do this one in-house, but instead sub-contracts the production. WHY does the mouse sub-contract the Sheriff? Because it's likely cheaper than building additional corporate infrastructure to get the show made. Disney Television Animation is just now bursting at the seams, but there's this ongoing market demand for more cartoons. So the Mouse improvises.

* Wikipedia says that "Callie" is produced by Wildbrain Entertainment, which is a different Wild altogether. But Guild records say that Wild Canary Animation is the production entity.

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At Prospect

Today I took a quick spin around Marvel Animation's new location on the eastern edge of old Hollywood. (Seen above ... a few years ago).

Marvel Animation's Guardians of the Galaxy (the cartoon version) moved to Disney's Prospect Studios three months back, and is now in full-bore production ...

The newly minted series is headquartered in the middle of the Propsect Street lot.

A lot that was built in 1915 as a Vitagraph Co. outpost on the Left Coast (which complimented its Brooklyn studio). The Vitagraph had been a going concern since the 1890s, but by the roaring twenties the movie company was fading, its market share beaten down by the likes of upstarts MGM, Warner Bros., and Paramount. The Prospect Street Studio was sold to Warner Bros. in 1925, then the ABC network purchased it, and years later the Walt Disney Co. swallowed up the TV network and ... here we are.

Marvel board artists and designers sit on the second floor of a building that dates to the beginning of the lot, looking out on a lumber warehouse, sharing the facility with General Hospital and Gray's Anatomy. But it's fitting that animation has returned to the old Vitagraph Studio, since Vitagraph was one of the pioneers of screen animation.



Could we say that Vitagraph/Warner Bros./ABC/Disney has come full circle? Probably not, but Prospect isn't that far from the old Hyperion Studios, right?

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On This Date (But Actually Yesterday) ...

The last Disney animated featurette painted on cels was released with the first Disney animated feature painted digitally. ...

The Prince and the Pauper, one of Mark Twain's literary nuggets, was colored in the traditional way in the ink and paint building in Burbank, while the picture was animated in Glendale at the Flower Street studio. (This was the last animated theatrical painted on the lot, wrapping up five decades of cartoon production work at 500 S. Buena Vista Street.)

Meantime, The Rescuers Down Under was done in Glendale, start to finish.

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Ground Zero of Animation's Renaissance

It happened a quarter century ago.

... The Little Mermaid, which opened 25 years ago, on Nov. 17, 1989, realized its makers’ dream: recapturing the magic of classic Disney as destination entertainment to enthrall generations of moviegoers. More than two decades after Walt Disney’s death, and following a series of less-than-fabulous cartoon features, this was the picture that launched the Disney Renaissance that soared with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. ...

I was there are at the birth of Ron Clements' and John Musker's movie.

But nobody knew (at the time) that it was the start of animation's renewal. The scene was just a big pitch meeting in a back room of the Disney commissary. Just another Eisner/Katzenberg "gong show", the kind they had hosted numerous times before.

But the session in the summer of 1985 brought forth Oliver and Company, The Little Mermaid, and Treasure Planet. Ron Clements proposed the Hans Christian Anderson story as an animated feature, but Jeffrey and Michael shot it down. Ron, never one to be stopped by a first refusal, wrote a treatment anyway, and sent it to Jeffrey.

And Jeffrey changed his mind.

Development work started on The Little Mermaid, and four years later, the second Golden Age of Animation commenced

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International Box Office

The animation, it rolls along well.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Interstellar -- $106,000,000 -- ($321,909,855)

Big Hero 6 -- $11,900,000 -- ($148,353,891)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $11,300,000 -- ($11,300,000)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $4,200,000 -- ($474,362,931)

Dracula Untold -- $3,100,000 -- ($208,825,500)

The Chinese opening of Penguins (the only country where it's open) garners the DreamWorks Animation feature the Place position:

The Eric Darnell-/Simon J Smith directed Penguins took $11.3M from 3,500 China locations after bowing on Friday. That was good for a No. 2 slot.

Interstellar and Penguins will now run for another three weeks and will have to face off with local competition. ...

Big Hero 6 started rolling out internationally on October 25 and now has an overall cume of $148.4M worldwide. It added a total $11.9M overseas this frame in 23 territories for an international total of $36.7M. ...

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Soaring

The Mouse climbs higher.

The Walt Disney Studios on Friday reached a new milestone, passing $4B at the global box office for the second time in its history. The first time was just last year, but that was on November 26, meaning Disney bested its speed to $4B by 12 days this year. The new tally of roughly $4.05B joins other 2014 records which include the studio getting to $2B internationally, on August 4, and $3B globally, on August 5, faster than any other year prior. ...

Maleficent and Frozen helped propel Diz Co. to new heights, along with its comic book franchises.

It's good to remember that all or most of the content, which of course provides inspiration for the attractions at the amusement parks and the toys on shelves at Wal-mart, Toys-R-Us and other venues, contains large dollops of animation, either the undiluted kind (Frozen) or the type that gets embedded in live-action movies (Maleficent, Guardians of the Galaxy).

And that won't be changing anytime soon.

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Your American B.O.

The projected totals:

Weekend Box Office

1). Dumb and Dumber To (UNI), 3,154 theaters / $13.9M Fri. (includes Thursday night previews of $1.6M)/ 3-day cume: $35.6M / Wk 1

2). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 3,773 theaters (+12) / $8.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $33.7M (-40%)/ Total Cume: $109.2M /Wk 2

3). Interstellar (PAR), 3,561 theaters (0) / $8.475M Fri. / 3-day cume: $28.1M (-41%) / Total cume: $97.6M / Wk 2

4). Beyond the Lights (REL), 1,789 theaters / $2.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $6.6 M / Wk 1

5). Gone Girl (FOX), 1,959 theaters (-265) / $1.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.4M (-29%)/ Total cume: $152.6M / Wk 7

6/7). St. Vincent (TWC), 2,332 theaters (-123) / $1.1M Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.9M (-28%)/ Total cume: $33.1M / Wk 6

Fury (SONY), 2,382 theaters (-452) / $1.1M Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.9M (-30%) / Total cume: $76.1M / Wk 5

8/9) Ouija (UNI), 2,382 theaters (-298) / $970K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.8M (-52%) / Total cume: $47.9M / Wk 4

Nightcrawler (OPRD), 2,103 theaters (-663) / $891K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.8M (-48%) / Total cume: $24.8M / Wk 3

10). Birdman (FSL), 857 theaters (+397) / 662K Fri. /3-day cume: $2.2M (-4%) / Total cume: $11.4M /Wk 5

And the other trade paper tells us:

... “Hero” was on track to take in $8 million on Friday, then double that figure on Saturday and finish the weekend at about $34 million. That would give the Disney toon a 10-day total of about $110 million. ...

Big Hero appears to be dropping less than Interstellar, first weekend to second weekend.

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Breaking Off?

One more halt in the march to merger?

DreamWorks Animation’s merger talks with Hasbro have stopped, two days after Deadline reported that Jeffrey Katzenberg’s indie studio and the toymaker were far into negotiations to combine into what would be an entertainment power. ...

There had been a flurry of meetings and talks for the past couple of weeks, but we’re hearing that those discussions have come to an end. While it seems negotiations have likely ceased, it might be a situation of never-say-never, according to sources close to the situation. ...

Jeffrey wants a big "get" in merging DWA with another company. Like money. Like a high position in any resulting corporate structure.

Would Hasbro be a good fit with DreamWorks Animation? I guess that depends on how successful the resulting combined company turns out to be. And the only way to find that out, is to combine them.

The only thing I'm convinced of is that, sooner or later, DreamWorks Animation will get itself sold.

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The Month in Animation -- Part Deux

Herewith, Mr. Sito completes his month of history.

Important History Dates of November

Nov. 15, 1989 - Walt Disney's "The Little Mermaid" debuts.

Nov. 16, 1946 - The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium because nothing on it is Rare or Well Done."

Nov. 16, 1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip, where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it, is published.

Nov. 16, 1960 - CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59-year-old star had just completed the film "The Misfits", a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts “That dame is going to give me a heart attack!”



Gable had one after shooting, and on this day while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a second heart attack killed him. He wrote his own epitaph, but it was never used- "Well, Back to Silents."

[The physical stunts Gable performed on "The Misfits" probably hastened his heart attack, but the "stress" of Marilyn Monroe's absences and tardiness are overblown. Clark's contract for the picture was $750,000, 10% of the gross, plus overtime at $48,000 per week. The picture went way over schedule, and Clark Gable made piles of extra money. So, would you have been upset if Monroe delayed the picture by three weeks and you made an extra $144,000? Didn't think so.]

Nov. 16, 1990 - Disney’s feature film "The Rescuers Down Under" premieres. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer instead of using acetate cels and paints. ...

Nov. 17, 1978 - "The Star Wars Holiday Special", a two-hour variety show on CBS, with Harrison Ford, Beatrice Arthur and Nelvanas animated cartoon airs.

Nov 17, 1989 - Don Bluth's animated film "All Dogs Go to Heaven" premieres.

Nov. 18, 1928 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At Universal’s Colony Theater in New York, Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuts before a movie called "Gang War". This marks the first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's had been done, but they were held back when the sound experiment went ahead.

Nov. 18, 1985 - Bill Watterson’s comic strip “Calvin & Hobbs” debuts.Nov. 18, 1988 - Disney’s Oliver & Company releases.

Nov. 19, 1959 - Jay Ward's TV show “Rocky and his Friends” debuts.



Nov. 19, 2007 - Disney’s "The Enchanted" premieres.

Nov. 21, 2008 - Walt Disney’s film "Bolt" premiered.

Nov. 22, 1888 - According to Edgar Rice Burroughs this is the birthday of the boy who would become Tarzan.

Nov. 22, 1995 - Pixar’s "Toy Story" opens, the first all CG movie, and the first true CG hit.

Nov. 23, 1952 - Animator Fred Moore, who drew Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia" and the "Brave Little Tailor" died from injuries incurred in an auto accident in the Big Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles. He was 41.

Nov. 23, 1960 - The Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated, featuring over 1,500 names - but not Charlie Chaplin, who was banned until 1972 because of his alleged lefty political views.

Nov. 24, 1947 - THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST - 50 Hollywood moguls like Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and Dori Charey meet at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to formulate a group response to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) anti-commie hearings that were targeting Hollywood. Besides the heat from the feds, their stockholders were clamoring for them to “Get the Reds Out!” They agreed to enforce an industry-wide blacklisting of anyone refusing to cooperate with the HUAC Committee. Nothing was ever officially written down or published. If you were blacklisted, you suddenly were unable to find any work.

Nov. 23, 1963 - The very first episode of "Dr. Who" premiered on the BBC TV. William Hartnell played the first doctor. There have been twelve doctors since.

Nov. 24, 2010 - Disney’s "Tangled" opens.

Nov. 25, 1949 – “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the musical charts.

Nov. 25, 1997 – Pixar’s "A Bugs Life" and "Geri’s Game" premieres.

Nov. 25, 2009 - Disney’s "Princess and the Frog" opens.

Nov. 26, 1939 - The first Woody Woodpecker Cartoon, "Knock-Knock” released. [Titles looked like this:]



Nov. 27, 1924 - The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float" so they are called paradefloats. The huge balloons were added in 1927. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, sometimes in rural New Jersey.

Nov. 27, 1933 - Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Walt Disney's, writes to fellow animator Bill Tytla encouraging him to move to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon."

Nov. 27, 1936 - Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor" debuts.

Nov. 27, 2002 - Disney’s "Treasure Planet" opens.

Nov. 28, 1947 - Disney's "Chip and Dale" debuts.

Nov. 29, 1915 - In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything. This day John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon debuts. [Different Liar below, but you get the idea. --SRH]



(Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, creating the job positions of layout, background painter, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. After 1919 J. R. Bray shifted his studio’s focus from entertainment to technical and training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max and Dave Fleischer, and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.

Nov. 29, 1972 - Atari introduced Pong, the first mass-marketed interactive game.

Nov. 30, 2003 - Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he hired to run the company in 1984, Michael Eisner. So Roy built a successful grass roots stockholders' campaign “SaveDisney.com”. In 2005 Eisner was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

Birthdays: Steve Ditko, Gustav Tennegren, Osamu Tezuka, Jim Cummings, Ben Sharpsteen, Ed Rehberg, Bram Stoker, William Hogarth, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Sue Kroyer, Russell Means, Tracy Morgan, Rodin, Cecil B. DeMille, Shamus Culhane, Edvard Munch, David Brain, Will Ryan, Zhang Yimou, Bill Melendez, Daws Butler, Lorne Michaels, Martin Scorcese, Ted Turner, Chester Gould, Ming Na, Bill Kroyer, Rodney Dangerfield, Terry Gilliam, Scarlett Johanssen, Boris Karloff, Billy Connolly, Charles Schulz, Bruce Lee, Katherine Bigelow, John Stewart, Randy Newman, Ridley Scott, Henry Sellick.

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In and Around WB Animation

More Scooby on the Little Silver Disk.

After “Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania” sold well on homevideo platforms earlier this year, WWE Studios and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will reteam on a sequel that’s set to be released in the spring of 2016, Variety has learned.

The film will be produced by WWE Studios and Warner Bros. Animation. ...

I strolled through WB Animation the end of last week and there's a lot going on. Wabbit, a new Looney Tunes type offering, is in work and drawing a bit of inspiration from the Mickey shorts that Disney TVA launched successfully last year.

Teen Titans Go! is coming back for a new season (with storyboard artists coming back to get production rolling).

And of course there are the Warners' direct-to-video long forms. Even as Disney Toon Studios cancels plans for more Tinkerbells and lays artists off, Warners keeps making direct-to-video features.



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Small or Big?

The Gray Lady notes:

Walt Disney is a big studio built around smaller units: Marvel Entertainment, Pixar and the classic Disney animation shop, among others.

Now DreamWorks Animation appears on the brink of becoming Disney’s opposite: a small studio tugged in different directions by forces as varied as a giant toy company and the Chinese government. ...

I believe the game here is for Mr. Katzenberg to score a generous Pay Day as the company gets sold. The other goal? To keep running the studio and to branch out.

DreamWorks Animation won't remain a small independent studio much longer. Some bigger corporate fish will gobble DWA up.


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The Month in Animation

Time once again for President Emeritus Tom Sito's cartoon and movie history factoids.

Movie Sign Posts for November

Nov. 2, 2001 - Pixar’s "Monsters Inc." opens.

Nov. 2, 2012 - Walt Disney’s "Wreck-It Ralph" premieres.

Nov. 3, 1977 - Disney's "Pete's Dragon" starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons opens.

Nov. 3, 1981 - WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty comics like "Sally Forth". He drew EC Comics, the "Mars Attacks" series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that brought down upon him the wrath of the Disney legal dept. Hard living and deadlines took their toll, and Wally was suffering from a stroke and failing kidneys. This was the day police found his remains.

Nov. 5, 1937 - Walt Disney's silly symphony "The Old Mill" debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.

Nov. 5, 2004 - Pixar's "The Incredibles" premieres.

Nov. 8, 1966 - Doctors at St. Joseph’s hospital remove one of Walt Disney’s cancerous lungs and discover the contagion had spread to his lymph nodes. They determine he did not have long to live.

Nov. 8, 1973 - Walt Disney’s animated Robin Hood premieres.

Nov. 10, 1950 - Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" opens. It’s the first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

Nov. 10, 1953 - Disney’s short "Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom" is released. Legend has it that Walt was abroad when Ward Kimball pushed this experiment, created in the UPA style, to completion. When Walt first saw it, it was without credits. He turned to Kimball and said “Aren’t you glad we don’t do crap like that?” It later won an Oscar.

Nov. 10. 1969 - The children’s education show Sesame Street premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper. The show employed a lot of animators.

Nov. 11, 1992 - Premiere of Walt Disney’s "Aladdin".

Nov 12, 1937 - Alan Turing delivered his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidung’s Problem" at Kings College, Cambridge. In it he postulated on the ability to create a "universal machine"; that uses numbers to solve problems and could be reprogramable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.

Nov. 12, 1946 - Walt Disney's "Song of the South" opens.

Nov. 13, 1940 - Walt Disney's "Fantasia" premieres. As Walt put it, "This'll make Beethoven!" Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was "I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?"

Nov. 13, 1971 - Walt Disney’s "The Aristocats" opens.

Nov. 13, 1978 - Mickey Mouse got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Nov. 13, 1986 - Directors John Huston and Woody Allen join Martin Scorsese to denounce the fad promoted by Ted Turner of computer-colorizing classic Black & White films like the "Maltese Falcon".

Nov. 13, 1991 - Disney's animated film "Beauty and the Beast" opens. It’s the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Nov. 14, 1967 - Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sells out his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.

Nov, 14, 1998 – Pixar’s "A Bugs Life" premieres.

Nov. 15, 1881 - The American Federation of Labor (AF of L) formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to make the AFL-CIO that we know today.

Nov. 15, 1907 - The comic strip “Mutt & Jeff” debuted. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud” Fisher became a celebrity and negotiated the first large backend deal. He built an animation studio, but spent all the profits on partying with showgirls.

Nov. 15, 1926 - FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooks up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein.

Nov. 15, 1934 - Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

Nov. 15, 1965 - Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this time in Orlando Florida. ...

The second half of "The Month in Animation" on the morrow.


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Bixar

Said by a smart-ass commenter. Regarding this piece from Blizzard (the game company):



Out less than a week and 2,000,000 (and counting) sets of eyeballs have looked at it.

Overwatch is Blizzard's first completely new game unattached to a previous title in 17 years. Overwatch seems to follow the same template as Team Fortress 2's multiplayer fun fest. Character types follow into categories like fighters, defenders, tanks, and support, each balanced against each other in a kind rock-paper-scissors dynamic. ...

I have the feeling that Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and game cinematics are merging into one seamless entertainment experience. Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero 6 and Overwatch seem to be cribbing from each other.

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On How to Train Your Dragon 2

Director Dean Deblois and Producer Bonnie Arnold discuss the making of one of the better animated features of this year.



I'm still amazed that entertainment media dubbed HTTYD2 a "disappointment" within weeks of its release. The movie ended up making more money around the world than its predecessor, but less in the U.S. and Canada.

So, disappointment.


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DWA's Merger Mania

The trade papers tell us.

DreamWorks Animation is deeply engaged in two potentially game changing negotiations that could transform the company — including one with Hasbro to forge a family entertainment powerhouse to be called DreamWorks-Hasbro. The other talks are with Hearst to turn DWA’s AwesomenessTV into a joint venture.

We’re told that a DWA and Hasbro deal is at least 60 days off, if it happens. But the two companies are said to have agreed that Jeffrey Katzenberg would chair the combined operation. ...

Meanwhile, DWA is moving quickly on another potential deal with Hearst Publishing to form a joint venture involving AwesomenessTV. Hearst would pay $81.25 million for a 25% stake in the Internet video power with $56.25 million going directly to DreamWorks and $25 million used as an investment in ATV. The terms would value ATV at $300 million, double what DreamWorks paid for it in May 2013. ...

Last week I was at DreamWorks Animation, doing a 401(k) meeting and walking around the Lakeside Building, which sits between the Los Angeles River and Lake Katzenberg (actually a big pond with fish in it). One of the artists in the building said:

You know, I see people from other companies coming through here. And I've got this feeling that DreamWorks is going to be sold. ...

I answered that I calculated that DreamWorks Animation would be sold in the next two or three years.

Tops.

But I didn't think much about DWA doing lots of mergers, selling off chunks of its businesses to other entertainment companies, bit by bit. So maybe Jeffrey's corporation will be selling itself in slow motion.

Seems that's what might be happening.

Add On: The New York Times has its take:

In a deal that would be an unusual union of toy maker and an animation studio, Hasbro is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Under the current terms of the proposed deal, Hasbro would pay a mix of cash and stock, though an exact price has not been determined yet, this person said. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, is seeking more than $30 a share, a significant premium over his company's current stock price. ...

We'll see if this deal goes through ... or falls apart like the last one.

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The Sweet Siren Call of Free Money

Vancouver snares another VFX company.

... [M]ajor international visual effects firm Double Negative, with branches in London and Singapore, has chosen a key piece of recently vacated commercial office space for its new Vancouver branch operations in what amounts to one of the largest office deals in Mount Pleasant. ...

Vancouver marks its third office and first anchor in North America.

The Academy Award-winning VFX ... only recently inked a deal with Hungerford Properties to move into Radia Block at 149 West 4th Ave. The 47,000-square-foot space housed Mountain Equipment Co-op’s headquarters since the 1990s, but MEC vacated the office Oct. 24th. ...

[T]heir first project will be Disney’s Through the Looking Glass, for which they plan to employ between 100 and 150 staff. Holben said they plan to fill up their team with local talent.

“Part of the reason that we chose Vancouver is because there is a talent pool here already,” Dneg’s CEO Matt Holben said. “We’re expecting some organic growth over a period of time ...

You will notice that movie companies and their affiliates go where the tax subsidies are. If somebody wants to pay them to set up shop in the somebody's neighborhood, they are happy to oblige. And when the money spigot stops, they're off to interact with the next cash cow.

Lots of governments are getting out their check books in pursuit of higher tech jobs. At some point, the tax-paying citizens of this or that locality will figure out that the cost-benefit ratio is not high, at which point the subsidies will stop, and some studio exec might well pull the plug.

But in the meantime, let the quarterly profits roll!

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The Ever-Growing Cavalcade

One more Disney company announces a feature.

... Lucasfilm Animation is preparing to release its first non-Star Wars related animated movie, titled Strange Magic, a fairytale musical inspired by William Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. ...

Even though Disney is largely known for its animated musical films, the company’s animation studios have released mostly non-musical features in recent years — with the major exception of Frozen.

I guess Tangled, released way back in 2010, doesn't count.

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Official Announcements

As the press release says:

Fresh off the box office success of “Big Hero 6,” Walt Disney Animation Studios is unveiling the next wave of films it hopes will extend its recent hot streak.

The studio will field its fox-on-the-run film “Zootopia” on March 4, 2016, and and will sail the high seas adventure “Moana” into theaters on Nov. 23, 2016. ...

Now that the cat stamped "approved" is out of the bag, we can finally talk about projects that decorate the inside of the Hat Building and which, stupidly, I forget haven't been officially announced.

This leads to problems, Like, when I mention a title that is out there in Fan-land, and there are websites shouting about it all over the internet, invariably I get a phone call from Disney saying "We haven't officially announced this yet."

Which (whoops!) slips my mind. Because I see the name cropping up hither and yon, and figure (wrongly): "Okay, it's out and known now."

So I'm glade when the trades trumpet a press release that announces and animated feature. It means I can stop walking on eggs.

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One More From Wes

Mr. Anderson, it is said, has more animation up his sleeve.

... Over the weekend, [Wes] Anderson appeared at the Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival to introduce a screening of Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold of Naples—a film he’d only seen a few weeks previous. Nonetheless, he said the film, which consists of six vignettes sharing only the setting of Naples, was an influence on his next project, with the added twist of stop-animation. ...

So what we'll we have here? A hybrid stop-motion feature, like Ray Harryhausen used to make? Or will it be a sequence of live-action, then a dream sequence of stop motion, followed by live-action ... etc.

Hard to know until the movie is getting made.

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Better Net

What the WGAw said:

... “Reclassification of broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service recognizes that the open Internet works just like the phone lines and will allow the FCC to institute the strong rules the president calls for — no blocking, no throttling, increased transparency and no paid prioritization,” says WGAW President Chris Keyser. “The policies outlined by the president will prevent a few online gatekeepers from picking winners and losers and will allow creativity, innovation and free speech to flourish.” ...

I know damn well that the big players want to monetize the internet for their own advantage. And I know damn well that they will lobby furiously, slinging greenbacks as they go.

But letting the holders of the main trunk lines enrich themselves because they're big, is a bad idea.

Like the Writers Guild of America told us.

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Straight from the Video Game

... to movieland.

... [Director Duncan] Jones was on hand at the Anaheim Convention Center with "Warcraft" visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer to hype the upcoming film from Legendary and Universal Pictures. They were later joined on stage by "True Blood" and "Pacific Rim" actor Rob Kazinsky, who was wielding a replica of the behemoth Doomhammer weapon. Kazinsky is playing the orc warrior Orgrim in the film.

"We have so many special effects," said Jones. "It's 'Avatar' and 'Lord of the Rings' at the same time." ...

So it's another animated feature disguised as a live-action movie with flesh-and-blood actors.

Warcraft, the Movie rolls out in Spring 2016.

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International Box Office

There's lot of animation at the top of the Big List. Some of it is 100% pure, some is embedded in the live-action movies.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Interstellar -- $80,000,000 -- ($132,151,453)

Big Hero 6 -- $7,600,000 -- ($79,200,000)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $17,300,000 -- ($464,066,517)

Dracula Untold -- $6,400,000 -- ($202,583,855)

And the trade press tells us:

... Interstellar was seen by 10.7 million folks across several continents this weekend, who shelled out an amazing $80 million on over 14,600 screens. Warner Bros., which is handling foreign on the Christopher Nolan space odyssey, is banging the drum that the film’s returns are on par with Gravity. ...

Big Hero 6 racked up an estimated $7.6 million in its third weekend from 17 territories. Russia has the motherload of the foreign take counting $18.2 million from Big Hero 6’s $23 million overseas total (worldwide stands at $79.2 million). Big Hero 6 also holds the record in Russia as being the second biggest Disney-Pixar toon release of all-time. No. 1s were hit in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia. ...

Universal’s Dracula Untold didn’t just suck blood, but dollars, flying past the double century mark with an estimated worldwide take of $202.6m. Dracula counted $6.4m off 5,200 in 61 territories with an overseas B.O. of $147.7m. ...

The Book of Life was filled with lots of money, counting $3.5m off 2,522 in 17 holdover markets for a running estimated foreign take of $35.2m. ... [World cume: $79,715,000]

The Boxtrolls took the crown for being the highest grossing Laika film ever internationally, counting a cume of $51.6m and catapulting the stop-motion-CGI film past the $100 million mark. ... [World cume: $100,460,159]

Happily, there seems to be no shortage of enthusiasm for animated movies around the globe. I guess people haven't hit their "I'm tired of this cartoon stuff" threshold.

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Sequelitis (Yet Again)

The Atlantic magazine grouses.

... The announcement of Toy Story 4 is yet another example of Pixar’s disturbing descent into sequel-itis. For the studio’s first 15 years, it declined to make sequels for any of its films except Toy Story. Since then, it’s hardly seemed capable of making anything else. Apart from Brave, we’ve had Cars 2 and Monsters University. The Good Dinosaur, as noted, hasn’t been able to make it to theaters at all, and who knows when or if it will.

The future slate looks still grimmer in this regard. Again, first the good news: Next year we should see Pete Docter’s Inside Out, which sounds like the best bet for classic Pixar magic in half a decade. (Docter directed arguably the studios most underrated feature, Monsters Inc., and arguably its best, Up.) And Toy Story 3’s Unkrich is working on a movie based on the Dia de los Muertos that does not yet have a release date.

... And the bad news: Every other upcoming Pixar feature that’s been announced is a sequel. Finding Dory in 2016, Toy Story 4 in 2017, and (as yet unscheduled) The Incredibles 2 and (brief shudder) Cars 3. For those keeping track at home, that’s a total of four announced sequels and two announced non-sequels. It’s tough to think of a more conspicuous advertisement that the creative wells at Pixar are running dry.

What the Atlantic is actually complaining about is A) Large Corporations are money-making entities, and B) Time doesn't stand still.

Pixar, at the beginning, was a small, struggling studio totally dependent on Steve Jobs' deep pockets and its production deal with Disney. It didn't have a catalogue of features (it hadn't been created yet) so no way could it make sequels. And the Pixar staff was utterly focused on getting the first feature launched, then the second, then the third. ...

Twenty years on, Pixar is a cog in the Disney profits machine, it has a long list of winning movies, and its talented artistic crew is focused on more than just the next feature. The studio makes sequels because it can, and because there is pressure from the mother ship to keep older titles alive.

Toy Story 4 is without doubt an example of Disney's desire for sequels, but so what? Toy Story 3 was a hit with both critics and audiences, so please tell us how this is an example of creative wells running dry.

There's only one solid indicator of empty wells: a boring, predictable movie. Few Pixar movies (we'll exclude the Cars franchise) meet this criterion.

Lastly, no studio stays on top forever. Crew members change, and so do public tastes. Disney Feature Animation was a spent force a decade ago; now it can do no wrong. DreamWorks had sixteen money-makers in a row, then hit a rough patch.

The only studio that has remained a commercial powerhouse through everybody else's ups and downs is Pixar. The Emeryville facility has yet to turn out a box office dud, but still gets accused of losing its mojo by over-the-hill monthlies. So it might be wiser to accuse Pixar of creative wimpishness at the point where its box office takes a nose dive.

Just a thought.


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Two In The Big Ten

The Book of Life is #10 in the Box Office Derby. And #1?

Domestic Box Office Top Performers

1). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 3,761 theaters / $15.8M Fri. (includes $1.4M late nights) / 3-day est. cume: $56M – $59M+ / Wk 1

2). Interstellar (PAR), 3,561 theaters / $16.5M to $18M Fri. (includes $2.7M Thursday) / 3-day est. cume: $52M-$53M / Total cume: $54.2M (includes $2.15M previews) / Wk 1

3). Gone Girl (FOX), 2,224 theaters (-610) / $1.8M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $6M/ Total cume: $145M / Wk 6

4). Ouija (UNI), 2,680 theaters (-219) / $1.9M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $5.7MM / Total cume: $43M / Wk 3

5). Fury (SONY), 2,834 theaters (-479) / $1.6M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $5.5M / Total cume: $69M / Wk 4

6). Nightcrawler (OPRD), 2,766 theaters (0) / $1.6 Fri. / 3-day est. ume: $5.5M (-44%) / Total cume: $19M / Wk 2

7). St. Vincent (TWC), 2,455 theaters (-97) / $1.6M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $5.3M / Total cume: $27M+ / Wk 5

8). John Wick (LGF), 2,152 theaters (-437) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $4.1M / Total cume: $34M+ / Wk 3

9). Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (DIS), 2,381 theaters (-515) / $900K Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $3.6M / Total cume: $59M+ / Wk 5

10). The Book of Life (FOX), 2,166 theaters (-628) / $650K Fri. / 3-day est. cume: $3M+ / Total cume: $45M / Wk 4

My prediction? Big Hero 6 breaks the $200 million barrier before its run is over. The Kock Calculator (c) would indicate a multiple of 4X opening weekend, which would carry it to something around $220-$240 million.

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An Award ... and Threat of an Award

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes gets a VFX trophy ...

The visual effects on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes topped last year’s Oscar winner Gravity, to win the feature VFX category at the 9th annual Hollywood Post Alliance Awards, Thursday at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. ...

The eligibility period for the HPA Awards runs from September to September, which is why some of last year's Oscar winners and nominees competed against this year's hopefuls. ...

And we find out this. ...

... Fox, Apes’ studio, is currently campaigning for star Andy Serkis to get an Oscar nomination for his motion capture performance as Caesar.

Please ... please ... please somebody tell me this ain't so.

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Let's Marvel at Disney

One more red hot opening:

Disney’s “Big Hero 6″ has taken the lead spot at this weekend’s box office, heading for a finish as high as $66 million — enough to top a still-impressive launch in the $56 million range by Paramount’s “Interstellar,” according to Friday estimates.

Early numbers show both titles performing up to lofty expectations with “Interstellar” winning Friday with $20 million, followed by around $18 million for “Big Hero 6.” Saturday projections were showing “Hero” jumping to $28 million with “Interstellar” coming in around $22 million.

The lowest estimates for “Big Hero 6″ were coming in between $55 million and $60 million so the race could turn out to be a nail-biter by the end of the weekend. ...

Looks to me like audiences have grown weary of cartoons.

Not.

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First Thirty are the Hardest

There was, apparently, some back-patting being done at the midweek.

The mood was jovial and nostalgic at Wednesday’s Disney Television Animation’s 30th anniversary fete at Burbank’s Walt Disney Studios’ main theater.

The event, hosted by the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) and Disney’s official fan club D23, featured an enlightening panel discussion moderated by D23’s Jeffrey Epstein with the studio’s award-winning creative talent: Bill Farmer (the voice of “Goofy”), Paul Rudish (executive producer of “Mickey Mouse” cartoon shorts); Jymn Magon (writer of “Duck Tales” and “Darkwing Duck”); Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh (co-executive producers of “Phineas and Ferb”); Rob LaDuca (executive producer of “Jake and the Never Land Pirates”); and Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle (co-creators/executive producers of “Kim Possible”). ...

I was working in Disney Feature Animation when Disney tVA got launched.

It was the middle of 1984, and starting the division (which was Michael Eisner's brain wave) made perfect sense. Lots of money was being made by other studios in TV animation. There was no reason that Disney, the king of cartoons, shouldn't jump in and do the same.

Except some people in feature animation thought it was a terrible idea that destroyed the Disney legacy of quality animation. (My friend Chuck Richardson, who worked in Disney publicity, dug up an old Saturday Evening Post article that quoted Disney saying he had no desire to get into TV animation. "I turned out crude shorts back in the twenties," Walt said. "I have no desire to go back to doing animation like that."

But Michael Eisner did.

The purists weren't happy, but the division was profitable from the get-go. Gummi Bears, Duck Tales and a plethora of other series were being turned out hand over fist. The division expanded, then expanded again.

Ten years after it started there were forty writers on staff, and lots more production board artists. Disney Television Animatino was housed on the main lot and off the main lot in multiple buildings in three different Valley cities.

Today Diz TVA lives in two buildings in Glendale and Burbank, and cranks out solid animation performers that make the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates steady profits.

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Commerce

Never under-estimate the power of major box office.

Pixar Animation is returning to its most successful franchise, "Toy Story," for a fourth movie, to be directed by the studio's chief creative officer, John Lasseter.

Walt Disney Co., which owns Pixar, said Thursday during an earnings call that the latest incarnation of "Toy Story" will be released June 16, 2017.

Lasseter told The Times that "Toy Story 4" will be a love story and will pick up where "Toy Story 3" left off, when Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the series' toy chest of characters were handed down to a little girl named Bonnie. ...

And actually I think doing another Toy Story is fine, as long as there's a story and as long as it's entertaining.

The squeamishness about true artistes never doing sequels is silly anyway. It's really a myth that's never been true, but people believe what they want to believe. Even Walt did a Three Little Pigs sequel.

The difference between making yet another Princess musical, or one more funny animal movie, or Toy Story IV is minimal. (If IV does a billion dollars in gross receipts, trust me, Mr. Lasseter will find yet another story that Pixar "really wants to tell" and we'll be watching Toy Story V before too long.)

These things are all movies of a type, and each of them successful. They all get made because people enjoy watching them ... and studios are in the business of making money. (You do a super hero movie that cleans up, you do ANOTHER super hero movie. Or a singing and dancing animated cartoon, whatever.)

Addendum: Late at night, I screw up posts. (Hell, early in the morning, I screw up posts.) But everything is now fixed.

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Record Highs

Disney. I hear tell it's doing well.

“Our results for Fiscal 2014 were the highest in the company's history, marking our fourth consecutive year of record performance,” says CEO Robert Iger

The Walt Disney Company reported a record $48.8 billion in revenue for 2014, up 8 percent from a year-ago period.

The company's quarterly earnings came in on par with expectations with 89 cents per share on revenues of $12.39 billion. ...

I bet Disney would do almost as well without the wage suppression thingie.

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Crossover

MacFarlane-Groening aren't the only ones cross-pollinating. ...



There is also Groening-Groening. ...

And the tub-thumping for Sunday's Very Special episode continues apace.


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At Disney TVA

I spent a chunk of my afternoon at Disney TVA - Yahoo, not to be confused with Disney TVA Sonora.

(Disney Yahoo is in Media Center North, a block from the Burbank/Bob Hope Airport. Disney TVA Sonora is Television Animation's mothership, located in Glendale near (coincidentally) what used to be Grand Central Airport ... which vanished decades and decades ago). ...

Disney TVA Yahoo has a lot of development going on. Although The 7D remains on hiatus, Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Sophie the First are going strong. Jake is likely in its last season, while Sophie the First has a lot more episodes in its future.

Penn Zero: Part Time Hero continues in work, as does newcomer Lion Guard.

Guard had a bunch of cool decorations in its section of the building; an envious staffer on another show said: "How come they've got money for all that neat stuff?"

Another employee said: "We had money in our budget for wall hangings too. We just spent it on other things."

Ah.

I received a lot of questions about other work going on around town, also questions about the Vanguard 401(k) and the oncoming Roth component. Artists know there's a continuing wave of cartoon production in town, and they want to know who's doing what. (I mentioned that Cartoon Network has new shows ramping up.)

It's always useful to know where different life rafts are floating if you have to jump ship. ... Or get pushed overboard.

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The Contenders

Late, as usual, in getting this up. But better late than not at all.

And the features under consideration for a Little Gold Man are ...

“Big Hero 6”
“The Book of Life”
“The Boxtrolls”
“Cheatin’”
“Giovanni’s Island”
“Henry & Me”
“The Hero of Color City”
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”
“Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart”
“Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return”
“The Lego Movie”
“Minuscule – Valley of the Lost Ants”
“Mr. Peabody & Sherman”
“Penguins of Madagascar”
“The Pirate Fairy”
“Planes: Fire & Rescue”
“Rio 2”
“Rocks in My Pockets”
“Song of the Sea”
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”

Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles qualifying run. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules before they can advance in the voting process. At least eight eligible animated features must be theatrically released in Los Angeles County within the calendar year for this category to be activated. ...

Twenty. A nice, round number. I'm old enough to remember when, if you got twenty animated features in a five-year period, you were lucky.

Times change.

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What Molly Said

Sent by a constant reader.

... Companies are not loyal to you. Please never believe a company has your back. They are amoral by design and will discard you at a moment’s notice. Negotiate aggressively, ask other freelancers what they’re getting paid, and don’t buy into the financial negging of some suit.

I’ve cobbled together many different streams of income, so that if the bottom falls out of one industry, I’m not ruined. My mom worked in packaging design. When computers fundamentally changed the field, she lost all her work. I learned from this. ...

Don’t be a dick. Be nice to everyone who is also not a dick, help people who don’t have the advantages you do, and never succumb to crabs in the barrel infighting. ...

Never trust some Silicon Valley douche-bag who’s flush with investors’ money, but telling creators to post on their platform for free or for potential crumbs of cash. They’re just using you to build their own thing, and they’ll discard you when they sell the company a few years later. ...

Judging from her picture, Molly is young. But Molly is wise. It took me forty-plus years to absorb and process the lessons Molly already knows.

Many artists hope and believe that a company or power-individual will lift them up, help them, save them. This happens, I think, because many artists focus on their art, and all the energy and passion they pour into it leaves them open, vulnerable, and childlike in other areas.

Like, for instance, dealing with sharp operators in business. Lots of creators just don't want to wrestle with the business crapola. They want to put their time and intellect into what engages them. This is understandable, but (sadly) wrong.

Because artists need to know the basics of protecting themselves, and how not to get fleeced. For that they need a base-line knowledge about earning a living in today's fine, corporatist state. When they do, they have a fighting chance or surviving.

The days of a paternalistic workplace are way back there in the rear-view mirror. And the paternalism was mostly a mirage anyway.

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Why So Many Cartoons Are Made

Because creators of animation see (and so aim for) this:

... How To Train Your Dragon 2 completed its run in U.S. theaters before the third quarter began. But, thanks to a strong international box office performance, the movie is still racking up revenue.

And that's just the beginning for sales tied to Dragon 2: The film was recently launched into the digital home entertainment market, where it jumped to the top of the download list on Apple's iTunes store. Management also expects more than $60 million in consumer product sales tied to the franchise through next year. ...

The reason so many cartoons (of all types) get created year by year is that so many cartoons make so much money. And keep making it.

But these are the big, high-budget, high profile American cartoon features. There are also the second tier features from Spain, South America, Europe and Africa that cost from $10 to $45 million and make neat, tidy profits without major releases in the U.S. and Canada.

The fact is, animation has become the most reliable and profitable segment of the film industry, and that's why so much of it gets made in 2014. We are way past the era where cartoons were a small, sleepy side show to the real movie business. Animation has become more mainstream than mainstream movies. Sometimes the reality of it is hard to get your head around.

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Crowded Competition

Artists ask me (with amazement) why animation is roaring the way it is. Variety catches wise.

... [T]he list of [animated feature] submissions is increasing because other countries are realizing the value of Oscar recognition in this category, where there is far less competition than in the foreign-language race, which this year received 83 submissions. Countries repped in animation’s list of 20 include France, Ireland, Japan, the U.K. and Latvia.

And Hollywood is more prolific than ever. Fox distributed five of the films (“How to Train Your Dragon 2,” “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” and “Penguins of Madagascar” from DreamWorks Animation, plus “Rio 2″ from 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky and “The Book of Life,” Reel FX Animation), and Disney accounted for three (“Big Hero 6,” Walt Disney Animation; and two from DisneyToon Studios and Prana, “The Pirate Fairy” and “Planes: Fire and Rescue”).

Animated films are often a studio’s heaviest hitters. Just three films this year brought in $1.5 billion at the global box office: “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” “Rio 2” and “The Lego Movie.” ...

It's not just features that are animation profit centers.

Small screen animation -- cable, broadcast, internet -- is going great guns. L.A. studios are hiring, Texas studios are hiring, Georgia studios are hiring.

The reasons are clear enough if you care to look: there are fortunes to be made in merchandising and licensing and endless re-runs from evergreen properties. Because the cash flows from animated half hours go on forever (just ask the heirs and assigns of William Hanna and Joe Barbera.)

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Sony and Seibert

The trades tell us:

Budding animators will get the chance to get their shorts funded by Sony Pictures Animation under a just-launched incubator project with the YouTube channel Cartoon Hangover, which is part of Fred Seibert’s Channel Frederator online multi-channel network.

Sony and Cartoon Hangover are launching GO! Cartoon to capture up-and-coming talent and give them a pipeline into Sony’s animation operations. The incubator will pick a dozen creators from online submissions, with Sony financing a short by each to appear on the GO! Cartoon channel. At least one will be turned into a limited series for the channel, said Sony Pictures Digital Production President Bob Osher. ...

The new arrangement echoes what Seibert and Osher did while working at Turner Broadcasting Networks two decades ago. Then, Seibert was courting up-and-coming talent through Cartoon Network showcases for their one-off shorts, and compiling them into anthology shows that later spun off into series.

Osher credited the Cartoon Network incubator programs with uncovering future stars such as Genndy Tartakovsky, the animation wizard behind ’90s- and ’00s-era hits such as Dexter’s Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. More recently, Tartakovsky was director of Sony animated feature Hotel Transylvania and its upcoming sequel. ...

The thing about Fred is, he's an entrepreneur, creating new companies, partnering with YouTube, striking alliances with various entertainment conglomerates.

Adventure Time, one of Mr. Seibert's properties incubated at Nickelodeon under its shorts program, became a hit for Cartoon Network when Nick put AT into turn-around.

Fred was a pioneer in television cartoon development back in the early nineties, where Hanna-Barbera had an open-door policy toward animation artists who aspired to be creators of their own shows. The shows developed at H-B in the early nineties jump-started Cartoon Network a few years later.

That same incubation process is still working for Fred Seibert on-line. (Same technique; different pipe-line). Now it's up to the Animation Guild to organize this blossoming work.

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TAG 401(k) News

So I was in a long Animation Guild 401(k) Plan trustee meeting today, and we now have some newer bells and train whistles which will be rolled out in coming months. ...

After discussion, Plan trustees voted to add a Roth 401(k) piece to the TAG Plan. This will mean that participants will have the option to contribute wages into a Roth account. Unlike traditional 401(k) accounts, employees will pay taxes on Roth contributions, after which those contributions will be free of taxes evermore.

Not all studios will necessarily participate in the TAG Roth 401(k), but we're hopeful that most of them will. (Roth 401(k)s came into existence in 2006 and have been rolling out slowly since then. Today over half the 401(k) Plans in the country own a Roth component.)

You'll find answers to various questions regarding Roth 401(k)s at this handy government website. A number of people have wanted this option for some time; we're happy that we'll soon be able to provide this new option.

From Vanguard:

-- An important benefit of the Roth 401(k) is the strategy known as "tax diversification".

-- Just as investors hedge the risks of stocks by holding bonds, so participants can hedge the risk of uncertain future tax rates by holding both Roth and pre-tax savings.

-- While this strategy can be attractive to high earners, it may also be useful for participants at any income level who are on track for replacing a high percentage of their income.

-- The Roth 401(k) may also make sense for participants saving at the maximum and for participants paying a low rate o tax today.

-- A second benefit of the Roth 401(k) is the ability to increase the effective value of retirement savings by pre-paying retirement taxes today.

Adoption Statistics

-- 52% of eligible Vanguard plans have elevated Roth 401(k).

-- Average participant adoption by plan is 13%.

The TAG Roth 401(k) will be kicking in during the first half of 2015.

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TEN - A Magical Collection by Ten Fab Females

*click image for larger view

Gallery 839 November 2014 Art Show
November 7 - 28

Opening Reception: November 7
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Gallery 839
1105 N Hollywood Way, Burbank, CA

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The Power of Second Bananas

The media notes:

... Though they were relatively minor — but pivotal — characters in "Madagascar," the penguins proved to be comedic superstars. Not only were they featured in the sequels, they also starred in their own popular Nickelodeon series, "The Penguins of Madagascar." ...

So after portraying a comedy sideshow in multiple animated features, after toplining the TV show, why not headline a movie? Especially when it looks to open almost as big as Christopher Nolan's space movie? ...



Then there's Minions, coming out next year, starring the short yellow scene stealers from the Despicable Me features. Most of Hollywood's green eyeshade types estimate that the spin-off will rake in big bucks and even bigger merchandising.

So how can it miss, especially with all the free marketing? (Note the last five seconds, now viewed by 28 million eyeballs on-line):



Lastly, there is Puss in Boots 2, destined to be on a theaters screen near you in 2018. The first outing made $555 million at world turnstiles, so it makes sense that there will be a second.

The use of second and third bananas isn't new, of course. Disney still gets good mileage out of Captain Hook and Smee in its far-flung empire.

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"Wall" - the Gray Lady's Review

The New York Times weighs in:

Cartoon Network’s new 10-episode series, “Over the Garden Wall,” isn’t quite like anything else on television, but it’s a little bit like a lot of things you’ve seen. Guessing at what has influenced its creator, Patrick McHale, is one of the pleasures of watching it. ...

What Mr. McHale seems to be after, with his grist mill and pumpkin farm, his soundtrack of original songs in various nostalgic styles and his retro designs — the mill owner’s Abe Lincoln ensemble, the teapot Greg wears on his head — is a kind of whimsical neo-Americana. It has the look of a dark fable but the mood of a fairy tale. ...

So the show rolls out tomorrow and continues through the week. And if America embraces the characters and concepts, there will no doubt be more episodes beyond the original set.



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Foreign Box Office

The global totals:

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Cumes)

Dracula Untold -- $12,400,000 -- ($188,958,945)

Big Hero 6 -- $4,800,000 -- ($10,900,000)

Guardians of the Galaxy -- $4,100,000 -- ($765,068,537)

The Boxtrolls -- $3,500,000 -- ($96,361,537)

But one of the bigger stories is about a different hybrid animated feature:

... “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” rocketed past the $400 million mark globally after debuting in first place in China.

Thanks largely to a warm reception in the People’s Republic, “Ninja Turtles” topped foreign charts with a $34.7 million haul. China made up the lion’s share of that figure with $26.5 million, but the Paramount Pictures release also racked up $2.3 million in the United Kingdom, $2.3 million in France and $1.6 million in Germany. Its total stands at $434.6 million globally. ...

Who knows? The amphibians might hit $500 million before we know it. And Guardians Of The Galaxy shoved ahead of Maleficent to become 2014’s No. 2 movie in the worldwide queue.

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Spidey

The trades report:

... Producer and head writer John Semper Jr. gathered up his cast for a reunion panel Saturday for a discussion 20 years in the making. He's previously avoided talking about the series Spider-Man: The Animated Series, but said he'll dedicate the next year to honoring its memory. ...

Semper revealed that the cast (including J. Jonah Jameson himself Ed Asner) has agreed to reunite for an upcoming project they plan on using crowdfunding to finance. The animated project would be titled Rocket Men, which would harken back to retro-pulp style of something like The Rocketeer. ...

There have been numerous incarnations of Spider-Man, the animated character. He was a cartoon in the 1960s, and a cartoon in most of the decades since. He's been done as a CG and traditionally-drawn super-hero. Most recently he's been a mainstay on Disney XD as Ultimate Spider-Man, produced at Film Roman (in Burbank) rather than Marvel Animation (in Glendale).

Separate and apart from Spider-Man: The Animated Series (referenced above), the question of another season for Ultimate Spider-Man has cropped up.

A few weeks back, nobody I talked to knew if there would be more episodes ordered ... or if those episodes would be done at Film Roman. But at the end of last week, one of my spies and stoolies (who admittedly might be wrong) said that one more season was going to happen and it would be produced at Film Roman.

Here's hoping.

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Weekend B.O.

One animated feature in the Big Ten.

Weekend Movie Totals

1). Nightcrawler (OPRD), 2,766 theaters / $3.05M Fri. (includes $515K late nights) / $5.5M Sat. (80%) / $3.2Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $11.7M to $12M / Wk 1

2). Ouija (UNI), 2,899 theaters (+41)/ $3M Fri. / $4.6M Sat. (50%) / $2.7M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $10.4M (-47%)/ Total cume: $34.5M/ Wk 2

3). Fury (SONY), 3,313 theaters(+140) / $1.9M Fri. / $3.8M Sat. (100%) / $2.4M Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $8M to 9M/ Total cume: $60.5M / Wk 3

4). John Wick (LGF), 2,589 theaters / $1.8M Fri. / $3.6M Sat. (100%) / $2.3M Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $7.7M to $8M (-45%)/ Total cume: 28.2M/ Wk 2

5). Gone Girl (FOX), 2,834 theaters (-272) / $1.8M Fri. / $3.4M Sat. (90%) / $1.8M Sun. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $7M+ / Total cume: $135.3M/ Wk 5

6). Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (DIS), 2896 theaters (-221) / $937K Fri. / $3.7M Sat. (300%) / $2.2M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $6.9M / Total cume: $54.1M / Wk 4

7). St. Vincent (TWC), 2,552 theaters (+270) / $1.6M Fri. / $3M Sat. (80%) / $1.8M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $6.5M/ Total cume: $18.3M / Wk 4

8). The Book of Life (FOX), 2,794 theaters (-319) / $1M Fri. / $3.1M Sat. (200%) / $2.3M Sun. (-25%) / 3-day cume: $6.4M / Total cume: $38.7M / Wk 3

9). The Judge (WB), 1,942 theaters (-668) /$929K Fri. / $1.8M Sat. (100%) / $1.1M Sun. (-40%) / 3-day cume: $3.8M / Total cume: $40M / Wk 4

10). Dracula Untold (UNI), 1,913 theaters (-451) / $758K Fri. / $1.1M Sat. (45%) / $715K Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $2.5M / Total cume: $52.5M / Wk 4 ...

Forbes notes the darker aspects of this particular box office weekend:

... Hollywood does not like it when Halloween falls on a Friday. The reasons should be obvious, but let me just ask: How many of you ditched your family’s trick-or-treating plans or your friends’ Halloween party so you could go to a movie last night? ...

Halloween falling on a Friday is scary for movie theaters and terrifying for movie studios except for horror films, which is why there wasn’t much action on the horizon. Also of note, since the would-be holiday season starts over the first weekend in November, the last weekend in October is often the proverbial “calm before the storm.” ...

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