LAIKA Feature

Laika of Portland announces their latest animated feature:

LAIKA and Focus Features today announced production on their fourth collaboration, Kubo and the Two Strings. LAIKA President & CEO Travis Knight and Focus CEO Peter Schlessel made the announcement today. Mr. Knight, an Annie Award-winning animator, is making his directorial debut on Kubo and the Two Strings.

The new movie, from an original screenplay by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler (ParaNorman) is a sweeping, swashbuckling adventure set in a mythical ancient Japan. It is being brought to life at LAIKA’s Oregon studios via the company’s innovative 3D stop-motion and CG hybrid technique. In addition to directing, Mr. Knight is producing Kubo and the Two Strings with Arianne Sutner (ParaNorman). The all-star voice cast includes Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey and Charlize Theron; Academy Award nominees Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, and Brenda Vaccaro; and Art Parkinson, who plays Rickon Stark on Game of Thrones and who is providing the voice for the title character of Kubo.

In the epic fantasy, scruffy, kindhearted Kubo ekes out a humble living while devotedly caring for his mother in their sleepy shoreside village. It is a quiet existence – until a spirit from the past catches up with him to enforce an age-old vendetta. Suddenly on the run from gods and monsters, Kubo’s chance for survival rests on finding the magical suit of armor once worn by his fallen father, the greatest samurai the world has ever known. Summoning courage, Kubo embarks on a thrilling odyssey as he faces his family’s history, navigates the elements, and bravely fights for the earth and the stars.

The movie will open in theaters nationwide domestically on August 19th, 2016; as with the three previous LAIKA movies, Focus will release Kubo and the Two Strings in the United States and Universal Pictures International will release the movie internationally. It is the first movie in the new three-picture partnership between LAIKA and Focus. ...

We've been aware of the new LAIKA production for a while now; they've been staffing up and we've been reviewing a number of immigration visas for various non-citizens soon-to-be-working on the picture.

Boxtrolls, LAIKA's latest film, remains in release with a worldwide gross of $107,678,836.


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Weekend Foreign Box Office

Two animated features in the Big List ... and lots of live-action heavy with animated effects.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

The Hobbit #3 -- $105,500,000 -- ($355,627,210)

Night At The Museum -- $10,800,000 -- ($28,100,000)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $16,500,000 -- ($199,772,461)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- $9,300,000 -- ($639,726,689)

Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $7,600,000 -- ($100,801,511)

Big Hero 6 -- $11,500,000 -- ($272,041,423)

Paddington -- $10,000,000 -- ($60,000,000)

Interstellar -- $4,500,000 -- ($635,433,242)

Big Hero 6 has raked in close to $200 million domestically but is rolling out slowly beyond domestic shores. The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies has raked in $105.5 million from 59 foreign markets. Meantime Penguins has made almost 70% of its $200 million global take in foreign lands.

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On This Date ... A Long Time Ago

Since I've lately been on a trip aboard the wayback machine anyway, let's have Prez Emeritus Sito remind us:

Dec 21,1937 - Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" had its grand premiere at the Cathay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year, mostly with kiddie half-price matinee tickets. Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and the Warner team attended the premiere, and were inspired later to create the character Sniffles.

My favorite story was that of animator Shamus Culhane. As he walked up the red carpet he passed two autograph hounds behind the rope line. They pointed at him" Hey, is that somebody? Nah, that's nobody." This bugged him as he watched the show, but after the film ended to a thunderous standing ovation, he thought "Screw you bastards. I just did something that will be around long after you both are dead. I AM SOMEBODY!"

A bunch of years ago, I picked the brains of Disney old-timers about that momentous night. They told me:

"I was plenty nervous when 'Snow White' started that night at the Carthay Circle. All I could see was the mistakes in our animation. That opening sequence had been one of the first ones complete. But the audience was caught up by Snow White and the birds right away, and I relaxed." -- Ollie Johnston

"In the year and a half we worked on the picture, the advances in animation were phenomenal. Some of the first animation of the girl has never looked good to me. Her eyes squeegee all over her face. She moves badly. But by the time we did the last stuff, for instance the scene where she's baking the pie at the dwarfs' cottage, the animation is great" -- Frank Thomas

"[The audience] even applauded background and layouts when no animation was on the screen. I was sitting near John Barrymore when the shot of the queen's castle above the mist came on, with the queen poling across the marsh in a little boat. He was bouncing up and down in his seat, he was so excited. Barrymore was an artist as well as an actor, and he knew the kind of work that went into something like that." -- Ken O'Connor

Final thought: Tom doesn't mention it above, but Shamus Culhane (for whom Mr. Sito worked) is the only animator who animated on the first three "Golden Age" features. Shamus animated on Snow White, Pinocchio and Gulliver's Travels.

Pretty nifty hat trick.

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"a ended up the highest grossing feature on 1938. The film collected $9 million at the box office, which was then a record. t held the title for nineteen months, until "Gone With the Wind" filled houses at roadshow prices in 1940 and 1941, pulling down $22 million in the process. The Civil War picture remains the highest grossing movie of all time, when box office dollars are adjusted for inflation.

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Your American Box Office

The Peter Jackson movie seems to be doing well.

Weekend Domestic Box Office

1). The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (WB), 3,875 theaters /$16.1M Fri./ 3-day cume: $52M / Total cume: $86.4M/Wk 1 (Bowed Wednesday)

2). Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (FOX), 3,785 theaters /$5.9M Fri./ 3-day cume: $19.6M /Wk 1

3). Annie (Sony), 3,116 theaters /$6M Fri./ 3-day cume: $19.1M /Wk 1

4). Exodus: Gods and Kings (FOX), 3,053 theaters (0)/$2.3M Fri. (-74%)/ 3-day cume: $8M(-67%) / Total cume: $38.6M/Wk 2

5). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (LGF), 3,174 theaters (-557) /$2.2M Fri. (-41%)/ 3-day cume: $7.9M (-38%) / Total cume: $289.4M/Wk 5

6). Wild (FSL), 1061 theaters (+945) / $1.15M Fri. (+141%) / 3-day cume: $4M (+167%) / Total cume: $7M /Wk 3

7). The Penguins Of Madagascar (FOX), 2,717 theaters (-595)/ $944K Fri. (-37%)/ 3-day cume: $3.8M (-47%) / Total cume: $M / Wk 4

8). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 2,407 theaters (-369) / $929K Fri. (-29%) / 3-day cume: $3.5M (-41%)/ Total cume: $190.5M /Wk 7

9). Top Five (PAR), 1,307 theaters (+328) /$931K Fri. (-63%)/ 3-day cume: $2.9M (-57%)/ Total cume: $11.9M /Wk 2

10). Interstellar (PAR), 1,550 theaters (-701) / $720K Fri. (-52%) / 3-day cume: $2.7M (-51%) / Total cume: $171.6M / Wk 7

Penguins of Madagascar and Big Hero 6 appear to be neck and neck, except that BH6 has been out three weeks longer and has accumulated $187.8 million, while PoM has collected $62 million.

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This Date in Sixtiness

Prez Emeritus Tom Sito, who is the fount of most useful knowledge, says:

Dec 20, 1968- "My Pooh Bear, it certainly is a blustery day..."

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered on a bill with The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit. It won the oscar for best animated short, which was awarded posthumously to Walt Disney, who had died the year before. ...

This first of the Pooh featureless follows the Milne books closely, and is generally considered the best of the first three featureless, which were later combined into a feature.

Wooly Reitherman directs, and scripted by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Julius Svendson and Vance Gerry. The Nine Old Men animate Winnie and his cohorts with their usual skill and aplomb.


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The Newest Golden Age

There was the thirties and early forties version ... then there was the Disney Renaissance in the first half of the nineties.

And now directors Millers and Lord, directors of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie (among others), talk about the latest incarnation. ...

There are a lot more players in the animation game since the medium went to CGI. They talk about technical nuts and bolts of creating TLM after a short break and the start of a newer video. Click here to read entire post

At DWA TV

I motored to Glendale this morning and talked to staffers on three floors of the 'scraper that DreamWorks now occupies. There is a LOT of production (or should I say pre-production) going on. ...

All three floors re busy hives of activity. As one of the employees explained to me:

"It took awhile to get DreamWorks executives used to doing television. They had to adjust to not tweaking and micro-managing, there isn't time. But they get it now." ...

Another employee gave me a heads up about this new rollout ... that happened today:

... The Netflix series [All Hail King Julien] is a prequel, set at the time of Prince Julien's ascension to the lemur throne after his Uncle King Julien (Henry Winkler, continuing his productive late period) suddenly abdicates. In fact, he is throwing his nephew into the jaws of what he believes is a fatal prophecy, and planning to take back the crown after that dust settles.

As in the film, the lemurs are threatened by the fossa — the island's predatory cats. Although it's common enough in animated feature films, this is the rare short-form cartoon series in which the threat of violent death underlies the action.

It also makes for philosophy. Under Julien's uncle, the lemurs live in a state of soul-crushing silence, so as not to become targets; but once Julien takes over, he fires up the boom box, cranks up the bass and lets the rave begin. ...

I talked to a director who said it's been a challenge to find seasoned storyboard artists and storyboard supervisors because (as was related to me) "anybody with experience, and who's any good, is already working."

I confirmed that this was true, that things are tight all over, and I had visited a studio the day before where the supervising director said he was going to have "to build a crew from scratch" and he was dreading it. "Because the pickings beyond the studio walls are pretty slim."

This is a good thing for newer artists, because it makes it easier to break into the business. Lots of shows are getting produced, and lots more opportunities for a paycheck present themselves.

On the other hand (and there is always one of those), DreamWorks Animation's feature division continues to lay off artists as production schedules are rejiggered. An under-performing feature hurts. But (happily) the television product will be getting made for the next three to four years and should produce income streams far into the future.

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When Nick Toons Got Its Start

It commenced with one woman.

[Vanessa] Coffey began by producing an [animated] Thanksgiving special for Nick. At that point, the studio had only done animation once before, in the form of a Christmas special led by Ralph Bakshi. Soon, she started a dialogue with then-president Geraldine Laybourne and her team about recruiting original content.

Executives at the time were hesitant due to the fact that they didn't have the budget for bigger animation projects. Months of conversations and brainstorming later, Nick hired Vanessa as a consultant to look for original, creator-driven ideas. After testing pilots, they made Coffey vice president of animation, and assigned her to fill a 90-minute slot with three shows. ...

"Rugrats," "Ren & Stimpy" and "Doug" were each major successes, which can be fully credited with beginning Nick's golden age of cartoons. But not one of them came to her as a fully-formed idea. ...

But then, unpleasantness came. ...

... "That was the most amazing time in my life working on 'Ren & Stimpy,'" Coffey said, "But the situation with John was the most painful situation of my career."

The first six months came with playful disagreements regarding notes. As Coffey recalls, it was only after "Ren & Stimpy" aired with great ratings and garnered a college audience that Kricfalusi became difficult. "He turned," she said. "He said this on the phone: 'I'm the star. I'm making your network. It's all me.'"

Back in August, Kricfalusi expressed his frustrations. "I told her to think of it as though she got to play Santa. You don't give the kids presents that you want for yourself, do you? Kids don't want socks and underwear, they want toys and silly stuff," he said. "I thought to myself, 'Have you ever met a kid?' Who doesn't know that kids think rude things are funny?"

Coffey insists she was just doing what needed to be done to get the show to air. "I wasn't being a big bad executive," she said. "It was my job."

... Kricfalusi's behavior spiraled out of the realm of her patience and the legal terms of his deal with Nick. "Frankly, John was out of control," she said. In September of 1992, he and Nickelodeon parted ways. Kricfalusi insists he was not fired, though Coffey says simply, "He was in breach of contract for not delivering on time, disturbing content and not [being] within the budget." ...

I remember when the John K. kerfuffle went down. There were screams of outrage and anguish when Mr. Kricfalusi was dismissed from the show, but the series went on without him.

And John Kricfalusi went his own professional way. The lesson I draw from this? In conglomerateland, almost all cartoon creators are fungible. Unless your Steven Spielberg or Michael Bay, an executive can Deep Six you on forty hours notice.

I often tell newbies, "Learn to play well with others" (learned from cold, first-hand experience). Artists seldom get their way all or even three-quarters of the time, and it's useful to know this fact of life right out of the gate. If John Kricfalusi had owned the knowledge at the beginning of his Ren and Stempy career, perhaps he would have remained on board to supervise all of the R & S episodes, instead of just some of them.

Then again, maybe not.

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Hackery III

Or IV, or whatever. TAG's mother international says this:

NOTICE TO IATSE MEMBERS WHO ARE WORKING ON OR WORKING FOR SONY PICTURES

As you may be aware, Sony Pictures Entertainment ("SPE") experienced a significant IT systems disruption on Monday, November 24, 2014. The IATSE has been in discussions with the company since then to determine what risk our members may face regarding the potential disclosure of personal information and data.

SPE has determined that the cause of the disruption was a cyber attack. After identifying the disruption, SPE took prompt action to contain the cyber attack, engaged recognized security consultants and contacted law enforcement. SPE learned on December 1, 2014, that the security of certain personally identifiable information about its current and former employees may have been compromised.

SPE has made arrangements with a third-party service provider, AIIClear ID, to offer 12 months of identity protection services at no charge to potentially impacted current and former production employees of SPE or an SPE-affiliated company.

IATSE members should contact AIIClear ID directly to initiate the enrollment process and/or learn more about their services. ...

More info up there at the link. ...

In other hacking news, the terrorists win (again):

Paramount Cancels ‘Team America’ Showings, Theaters Say

Forget those plans by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and other theaters to run Team America: World Police in place of The Interview. The Austin-based chain says that Paramount has now decided not to offer South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2004 satire that focuses on Kim Jong-il, the late father of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Alamo says that the cancellation at its Dallas theater is “due to circumstances beyond our control” and says it will offer refunds to those who have already bought tickets. Cleveland’s Capitol Theater also tweeted that Team America “has been canceled by Paramount Pictures.”

Yesterday Sony pulled The Interview, which depicts an assassination of Kim Jong-un, after hackers threatened theaters that showed the film. ...

And there seems to be some teeth-gnashing at all this. Also teenaged girl type fear. (All due respect to teenaged girls).

As we watched one group be completely vilified, nobody stood up. Nobody took that stand. Now, I say this is a situation we are going to have to come to terms with, a new paradigm and a new way of handling our business. Because this could happen to an electric company, a car company, a newsroom. It could happen to anybody. ...

The truth is, you’re going to have a much harder time finding distribution [for controversial movies] now. And that’s a chilling effect. We should be in the position right now of going on offense with this. ...

So says George Clooney.

Nothing against Mr. Clooney, but Hollywood has always been cowardly. As novelist Raymond Chandler said seventy years ago, "The Hollywood big shots, they're terrified of losing all that fairy gold." Which of course explains why, in the fifties, studios and labor unions could be bullied by the House of Un-American Activities Committee and Red Channels into black-listing artists and writers who didn't toe the "True American" line as defined by HUAC and Red Channels.

The fear of losing big bucks; it's a fabulous motivator, no? What's one movie, more or less? What's a pack of lousy movie actors and writers?

North Korea and/or its agents are simply the latest bully boys to show up in show business's neighborhood demanding that a movie they don't like be pulled. It's not really much different than those earlier power brokers' demands that creators with impure thoughts be banished from the creative landscape. Seeing Hollywood get rolled by thugs with brass knuckles is as old as the movies.

The only thing different this time is the newer technology being employed.


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The Expanding Universe of Cable Animation

More cartoons on more platforms.

FXX is moving into latenight with an original animation block anchored by “Lucas Bros. Moving Co.” and “Stone Quackers.” ...

The heightened presence of animation on FXX is no surprise as the comedy-themed cabler was turbo-charged in September by the arrival of “Simpsons” reruns. Expanding into latenight animation has been a priority for FX Networks execs, no doubt inspired by the ratings garnered by Adult Swim’s out-there toons. ...

These new productions are part of Fox-News Corp. low wage partner ADHD, located in Hollywood, and using a lot of new artists. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. ...

The bad thing is, the newbies are underpaid and Fox happily keeps feeding ADHD work. TAG's job is to convince the crew that there's a road to higher (as in livable) wages. And quality benefits, they're good too.

Because, friends and neighbors, the animation business in Los Angeles is all of a piece. If Studio X starts paying skim milk wages to the artists turning out its shows, that puts downward pressure on salaries at other studios.

This is nothing new. Years ago, a Disney TV Animation timing director was collecting union wages at her home studio while picking up freelance work at a non-signatory company that was way under going rates. I didn't think there was much point in asking her to knock the behavior off (money is money, after all, and she was out to collect as much as she could), but I told her fellow directors what she was about. They weren't happy and talked to her. She wasn't happy that I had made an issue of it, and snarled at me to "mind my own business" on the phone.

But this is simple, really. If pay unravels at one place, the odds are higher it will unravel at other places. Econ 101.


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A Brief History of Pensions

Some members have inquired about new legislation out of Washington that impacts multi-employer pension plans (these are of the Taft-Hartley variety, of which the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan is one.)

The short answers:

Yes, some multi-employer plans, particularly manufacturing pension plans centered in the mid-west, could see some payout reductions to current participants under 75.

But no, this new legislation shouldn't affect the MPIPP, because our plan has 85-90% funding. (Those mid-west plans are drastically under-funded, unlike the MPIPP.)

But let's dig a little deeper into this pension thing. ...

Bloomberg has a succinct summary about pensions in the U.S. of A.:

... The U.S. is almost unique in its reliance on private, company-sponsored pensions instead of comprehensive, government-sponsored benefits.

Private pensions emerged in the late 19th century in what was then the most important U.S. industry: railroads. In 1877, striking railroad workers protesting wage cuts brought the country to a standstill. Workers clashed with state militias; dozens died in the ensuing violence. ... And in 1880, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad instituted a private pension plan for its employees; it eventually would cover 77,000 workers. ...

In the succeeding decades, corporations in other industries followed suit. Invoking the spirit of welfare capitalism, they unilaterally introduced pensions, health and disability insurance, and other perks in a rather overt attempt to woo workers away from unions. The programs became so widespread that in the 1920s, many unions protested against such benefits. ...

Private pensions flourished until the Great Depression, when many corporations went bankrupt, as did their benefit programs. But they soon revived, along with the economy. Between 1939 and 1946, the number of U.S. private pension plans went from 659 to 9,370. ...

The growth of private pensions in the postwar era also reflected a shrewd triangulation on the part of the business community. Business leaders wanted to check the further expansion of what is now derided as "big government." They also wanted to curb the power of unions. Pensions and other benefits such as health insurance enabled employers to achieve both goals. ...

Private pensions are now a vestigial presence in American work life, replaced by defined-contribution plans such as the 401(k). In the last 15 years, the portion of the U.S.’s largest companies offering defined-benefit pensions to new workers has fallen to 24 percent from 60 percent. ...

The changes in the spending bill, which could permit cuts to multiemployer private pensions for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the 10 million workers in such plans, are framed as a necessary measure to preserve the solvency of the PBGC. But on a deeper level, this step is a harbinger of the ultimate demise of a private pension system that has outlived its usefulness to the business community.

The drumbeat today is to demonize employees who still have livable pensions ("Hey now, aren't those people greed-heads? Why should they have nice monthly checks while you don't?") so that other working stiffs are angry about it.

I look forward to the day when few have any kind of significant retirement and everyone works into their eighties ... because that's when Social Security kicks in.


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When I Met Jeffrey

It was heart palpitation time.

... At two o’clock the Basil story crew stood tensely in the second-floor hallway of 2-D, waiting for Jeffrey’s arrival. At two after two he came striding down the hall, shook hands with everybody, and I launched into my spiel about a detective mouse in London, his arch enemy Ratigan, and the nefarious plot to take over all Mousedom.

Mr. Katzenberg listened with laser-like intensity. I managed to avoid mangling the plot or muddying up the characters. ...

1985. Jeffrey was the dynamo from Paramount Pictures. And I thought (silly me) that I would be going places in my Disney career.

I was so young then. And so wrong. ...

And we'll call this "Self Aggrandizement II". But it's late and I can't think of anything else to put up.


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Cartoon Ratings

For Sunday last.

SUNDAY NIGHT RATINGS
Show -- 18-49 rating -- audience (millions)

8:00 p.m.

#1 -- Football Night -- 4.1 -- 12.39m
#2 -- Simpsons -- 2.0 -- 5.02m
#3 -- Undercover Boss -- 1.7 -- 8.92m

9:00 p.m.

#1 -- Family Guy -- 1.5 -- 3.15m
#2 -- Barbra Walters -- 1.4 -- 7.78m

9:30 p.m.

Bob's Burgers -- 1.3 -- 2.54m

It's always a confusion why the show with the most viewers, Barbara Walters for example, isn't the winner.

But to own the "old people" audience is almost like having corpses goggling at the flatscreen. You need to have the high-value, 18 through 49 demographic.

Add On: And then there are the cable ratings:

Compared to the same time period in 2013, [Cartoon Network's] total day delivery grew by strong double digits, with kids 2-11 up by +33%, kids 6-11 by +39% and kids 9-14 by +22%. Early prime delivery also increased among kids 2-11 & 6-11 by +10% and among kids 9-14 by +7%. ...

Adult Swim programming – including telecasts of Family Guy, American Dad! and Robot Chicken – accounted for 27 of the top 50 telecasts on basic cable for the week among adults 18-34 and 24 of the top 50 with men 18-34, both more than any other network. ...

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Elf Momentum

The trades tell us:

... Thanks to Warner Bros. Animation, “Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas,” a one-hour special that airs Dec. 16 on NBC at 8 p.m., with Jim Parsons voicing the titular character originated by Ferrell in the 2003 pic.

Animation house Screen Novelties, which specializes in stop motion, created the TV version. “Warners thought doing it in stop motion would be cool, given the art’s historical ties with Christmas specials,” said co-founder Seamus Walsh (above, center).

The studio also may have been swayed by the success of 2012’s “A SpongeBob Christmas Special,” which Screen Novelties created for Nickelodeon. ...

Stop motion will never die, so long as their are television Christmas specials (and Henry Selick).


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My Miscalculation

SO today the trades say

... DreamWorks Animation shares are down about 5.9% in mid-day trading after Stifel analyst Benjamin Mogil slashed his forecast for its latest film Penguins of Madagascar and projected that it will end up losing $49 million vs. his previous prediction for a $15 million loss. On Friday B. Riley’s Eric Wold also lowered his estimates, and predicted a write-off for the quarter. ...

AND Cartoon Brew goes

... Penguins of Madagascar hit an ignominious milestone: on Friday, its 17th day of release, its domestic gross was surpassed by the Rise of the Guardians, the notorious DreamWorks underperformer that was released at the same time in 2012. Adjusted for inflation, the Penguins audience is even smaller than Guardians’s audience. ...

Therefore my calculation of $105-$135 million in domestic grosses looks a teensy bit off.

The picture isn't going to hit a multiple of four (4) in the U.S. of A., which means DreamWorks Animation has some long thoughts to wade through. Penguins was shifted (in part) because wise studios heads thought it would perform better running up to Christmas than in March 2015.

Egads.

Every studio has its ups and downs. Disney went through a rough patch at the turn of the century where it created very few films that connected with the public. At the same time, DreamWorks had a large and stable staff turning out one money-maker after another. And now it's Walt Disney Animation Studios that's on a roll, while DWA isn't achieving lift-off with the majority of its releases.

When you're around animation for a while, you understand that the studios in the industry are much like pistons in an engine: one of them is up while another is down, it's just the way he business seems to be. The difficulty is, DWA isn't part of a monster conglomerate like its competition. And that spells TROUBLE, right here in L.A. city.

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Christmas in December

Another day, another Oswald.

A 1927 Disney Christmas cartoon thought to be lost was discovered in Norway, Agence France reports.

"Empty Socks," Disney's first Christmas, was found during an inventory of one of the facilities of Norway's National Library. The film starred Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to Mickey Mouse. ...

Thought a rabbit, Oswald is a close cousin of Mickey.

And five will get you twenty that Diz Co. soon buys this flick for a princely sum. Then they'll add some bells and whistles and copyright it.


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Goodbye, Mr. Taylor

Another major animation talent departs. From Animation Scoop:

... [A]nimator and director Robert Taylor passed away last Thursday, December 11th, from complications due to COPD. He was 70 years old. Taylor is perhaps best known for directing The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974) - a sequel to the first X-rated animated feature Fritz the Cat - as well as Hanna Barbera's Heidi's Song (1982).

Taylor began his career in 1966 co-directing Mighty Heroes and Sad Cat with Ralph Bakshi at Terrytoons. Taylor had worked with Ralph Bakshi in various capacities (layout, design, animation) on a number of his animated features, including Heavy Traffic, Hey Good Lookin' and Wizards. He went on to work in later years as an animator, story man, layout artist, producer, screenwriter and director on various animated TV shows for Disney (Bonkers, Goof Troop), Hanna Barbera (Scooby Doo, Superfriends) and Klasky Csupo (Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats).

One of his many projects was the unreleased Hanna Barbera feature Rock Odyssey (1987). It was an adult skewing history of pop music, narrated by a jukebox (Scatman Crothers). Though Hanna and Barbera get co-director credit, it's known that Taylor actually headed the project.

His daughter has released this information: "His memorial service is open to any and all that knew him or followed him in his life. His service is Saturday, December 20th at the chapel at Oakwood Cemetery in Chatsworth, CA. It is a beautiful location and he shall be buried there immediately following the service. The ceremony starts at 10:00 am. I know my father would have loved his friends and colleagues to attend this special event and celebrate his life. If you cannot attend, I thank you for knowing him and being with him there in spirit."

Our condolences to Bob's family. Three score and ten is too soon to leave.

President Emeritus Tom Sito adds:

... Bob was a mainstay of many top TV series at Hanna Barbera and Disney. Goof Troop, Rugrats, Ducktales, Flintstone Kids, GoBots, and many more. One of those solid, reliable studio artists who got your shows done. He also created the feature films Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat and Rock Odyssey. When I was freelancing storyboards for Kaye Wright at H&B in the 80s, on every show I picked up Kaye would give me a Bob Taylor and Alex Lovy storyboard as an example of what to do. ...

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The Global Box Office

For the latest three days, your animated and VFX extravaganzas:

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Cumes)

Hobbit: ... Five Armies -- $117,600,000 -- ($117,600,000)

Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $18,800,000 -- ($74,700,000)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- $16,000,000 -- ($611,398,249)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $14,700,000 -- ($175,538,709)

Interstellar -- $11,400,000 -- ($621,799,576)

Paddington -- $11,000,000 -- ($45,000,000)

Big Hero 6 -- $3,900,000 -- ($253,525,009)

The trades tell the tale:

“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” was the one film to rule them all at the foreign box office this weekend, picking up a massive $117.6 million. ... Sliding in at number two on the foreign charts, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” earned $18.8 million from 6,096 screens in 27 markets. ...

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1″ and “Penguins of Madagascar” were the third and fourth highest-grossing films overseas, picking up $16 million and $14.7 million, respectively. The “Hunger Games” sequel has earned $611.4 million worldwide, while the “Madagascar”spinoff has picked up $175.5 million. ...

Fifth place finisher “Interstellar” blasted past $600 million globally last week. The space adventure earned $11.4 million overseas, pushing its worldwide total to $621.8 million. ...

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Martha Sigall, RIP

We have lost a bright link to animation's past. Someone who was there near the beginning, when a small studio in Hollywood turned out whacky, black-and-white cartoons that are still watched ... and laughed at ... around the world.

Martha Sigall, who worked alongside Clampett, Jones and Freleng (among numerous others) went to her rest today. She was ninety-seven years old.

As I wrote three years ago when I interviewed her:

During the depths of the Depression, Martha Sigall was a neighborhood kid who ran errands for artists at a small animation shop who worked at light boards. Little did she know that it would lead to a half-century career creating cartoons. The studio was in some small buildings in Hollywood and owned by a man named Leon Schlesinger. Martha painted her first cels before she was in high school, and took a full-time job in the business when she turned nineteen.

By then, Schlesinger and his staff were headquartered in a larger building that came to be known as "Termite Terrace." ...

Martha went on from there, ending her journey today.
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The Unionizing Thing

As somebody who lives inside organized labor, this is heartening:

Federal officials unveiled new rules on Friday that will streamline and simplify the union election process, a reform long sought by labor unions and fiercely opposed by businesses.

Among other changes, the rules issued by the National Labor Relations Board will limit some of the litigation that can precede a union election, making it harder for parties to stall or drag out the process. The reforms will also allow unions to file election petitions and other documents via email, and they will require employers to provide unions with the email addresses and phone numbers of workers eligible to vote.

Many employers favor the older, slower election process, as it gives them more time to dissuade workers from unionizing. The reforms announced Friday have long been discussed and debated, and businesses have argued that they would infringe on the businesses' free speech rights and lead to "ambush" or "quickie" elections. ...

Employers favor the "slower election process" because it's a way of running out the clock ... and doing a little one-on-one with employees. (An employer can't say: "You vote to go union and we're closing the company!" But an employer can say: "Gee Bill, we know how you and the others feel about going union, but honest to Gosh, we just don't know what we're gonna do if good old Slave-Grind, Inc. has to go under a union contract.")

You may have noticed that in our charming corporatist state, the land of Socialism for Mega Banks and the rich, Free Enterprise for the poor, that unionized work-places comprise a much smaller percentage of corporate America. This trend has been going on since I graduated from college, and we now have about 14% of the work-force under the wing of guilds and unions, about the same ratio we had a century ago.

Entertainment unions are outliers here in Freedom's Land. They still represent a large part of motion picture and television workers, even as other areas of employment slip away. The Animation Guild has had some momentum on its side these past few years, as we've organized a number of non-union cartoon studios in Los Angeles.

The new rules will help TAG and other labor unions secure better wages and benefits for people they strive to represent, which is a good thing.

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Your Domestic Box Office

On Friday, there were two American animated features in the Top Seven Features in the U.S. of A. and Canada.

Domestic Top Ten -- Friday

1) Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $8,625,000

2) Hunger Games: Mockingjay Uno -- $3,790,000 ($267,988,000)

3) Top Five -- $2,500,000

4) Penguins of Madagascar -- $1,570,000 -- ($53,109,000)

5) Interstellar -- $1,570,000 -- ($162,790,000)

6) Horrible Bosses Too -- $1,475,000 -- ($40,446,000)

7) Big Hero 6 -- $1,3919,000 -- ($180,571,000)

8) Dumb and Dumber To -- $796,000 -- ($80,157,000)

9) The Theory of Everything -- $737,000 -- ($15,360,000)

10) Wild -- $475,000 -- ($1,348,000)

Penguins should waddle through the holiday season in good order, but it's going to end up with a Koch Calculator multiple of 3.7-4.2 after all is said and done. And the trade papers tell us:

The Bible epic “Exodus: Gods and Kings” will bring down reigning box-office champ “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” and win this weekend with a three-day opening of around $25 million. ... That easily outpaced Lionsgate’s young adult blockbuster, which has been No. 1 for the past three weekends, and DreamWorks Animation’s holdover “Penguins of Madagascar,” which took in $3.8 million and $1.5 million respectively. ...

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Recruitment.

Not.

Sony Emails Reveal Failed Efforts to Recruit ‘Lego’ Directors to Run Animation Unit

Stolen emails from Sony Pictures reveal the studio tried and failed last summer to recruit Phil Lord and Chris Miller to take over its animation division.

The emails from the hacked documents, obtained by Variety, show studio toppers Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton looking to animation “to turn the studio around.” They hoped to install a Pixar-style “brain trust” of filmmakers at the top of Sony Pictures Animation. Lord and Miller were being courted to head that group; other names being floated included Brad Bird. ...

Michael Lynton wrote to Pascal and pointed a finger at Sony Pictures Digital president Bob Osher, who oversees Sony Animation and Imageworks. Lynton implied that Osher would have to be fired. Pascal responded that Osher’s “cost savings stuff” at Imageworks was “amazing.”

I've been going through Sony Pictures Animation and parts of Imageworks (non-union though it is) for the past decade. And I've been listening to the complaints of artists for almost as long as the studio has existed. Regarding Bob Osher:

"He's clueless." ... "Osher is not really interested in taking the division anywhere creatively, he just wants to suck up to Amy [Pascal]. ..." "We were set to have a screening on a [developing] project, and he cancelled the screening at the last minute because he hadn't gotten an e-mail he thought he should have gotten and was ticked off about it." ...

To be fair to Mr. Osher, management persons before him haven't gotten rave reviews from story artists or designers either. Bob Osher is just the latest top-kick about whom artists complained when I walked through the doors. Some of it you can chalk up to the general belly-aching that always ricochets around cartoon studios, but a lot of it was more than that.

Sony Pictures Animation started off semi-promisingly with Open Season, but things slid downhill after that. The division used to have a director on board named Chris Buck (Frozen), but he's long gone. It used to employ one of the best story persons in the business, a man named Ed Gombert, who story-directed the features Aladdin and The Croods, but SPA cut him loose. Many other talented animation veterans have also departed over the course of time.

I chatted to Lord and Miller when they were developing Cloudy With Meatballs, and immediately picked up that they were bright, funny, upbeat guys. New to animation, they were brought in to work on Cloudy after other development efforts had fallen flat. Amy Pascal (I was told) believed in the project, and thought there was a way to "lick it"; Lord and Miller found the correct route. (Pascal isn't a stranger to animation; she headed up Turner Feature Animation in the long-ago nineties.)

Talking to Lord and Miller, it was pretty clear they were iffy about hanging around after the picture was done. Other employees told me neither of them cared much for management.

More recently (and happily) Sony has brought in Genndy Tartakovsky, but is Genndy alone going to turn Sony around? Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks used to occupy the same Culver City campus; now Imageworks is a wee bit farther away in Vancouver. How that helps Sony's animated features to be better, I don't know. Certainly it will make them less expensive to produce, for the Canadians are throwing around lots of free money. But will that help them to be hits?

What amazes me most about the Variety article above is: I've been going into Sony Pictures Animation like forever, and the complaints and morale issues have smacked me in the face year in and year out. (Note the smacking here, here, here and here. And I was being diplomatic in these blog posts.)

If a union thug like me, ambling through the Spa/Imageworks campus every few months, can pick up on the general unhappiness, what drugs was management taking to miss it?

(And so you don't think I'm just a dour Sony basher, note this.)


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Your Box Office Forecast

The Mojo predicts a small drop for Penguins.

Forecast (Dec. 12-14)

1. Exodus - $29 million
2. Mockingjay - $11 million (-50%)
3. Top Five - $8.2 million
4. Penguins - $7.1 million (-35%)

To date, Penguins of Madagascar has collected $153,432,709 worldwide. It doesn't look as though it will turn into a blockbuster, and how Home performs (it's due out early next year) is anyone's guess.

DWA thought Penguins was the stronger yuletide offering; I wonder if any DreamWorks execs are second-guessing the decision?

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Cashing In

DWA sells a holding at a profit.

DreamWorks Animation may have had some trouble with potential deals that leaked before completion, but the company struck one on Thursday involving AwesomenessTV, an online media company.

The Hollywood studio said that it sold a 25 percent stake in the venture to Hearst for $81.25 million.

The transaction values two-year-old AwesomenessTV at about $325 million, significantly more than the $33 million that DreamWorks Animation paid for the company last year. ...

When you pick up 100% of something for $33, and sell a quarter of it for $81.25, you have made a killing.

The trick for Jeffrey Katzenberg is to hang on to assets that increase in value, while building cash reserves to finance new hit movies. Maybe the partial sale of a hot corner of a subsidiary will enable him to do that.

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Moving To A New Location

DreamWorks Animation reconsiders the release date of a franchise.

DreamWorks Animation has moved the release of “Kung Fu Panda 3″ to March 18, 2016, leaving its previous Dec. 23, 2015 date, where “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is expected to dominate.

Disney will release “The Force Awakens,” directed by J.J. Abrams, on Dec. 18, 2015. ...

The new date for “Kung Fu Panda 3″ means that DWA will need to find a new birth for “Boss Baby,” also dated for March 18, 2016.

It's always a fine idea to shift a tentpole away from a monster juggernaut, which (let's face it) this new Star Wars movie is.


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Globs of Gold

The Globe nominees are out; you'll find them here.

But let's get real about this award. The show is good fun, and the stars and big shots turn out in force to participate in the televised festivities. But the Golden Globes are a total and complete joke, chosen by stringers for the foreign press.

It's been this way since the Globes beginning during World War II. Seventy-odd years later, Hollywood likes to pretend that the little trophies are significant in some way, but they're not. Except maybe that reality doesn't matter, because if everybody acts like the Globes are a Big and Important Deal, then by grab, they ARE a big and important deal.

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Comedy Spidey

The Sony hacking hasn't been a good thing for Sony ... or the nerves of its current or former employees. But some of the hacked e-mails have been interesting, especially for people in Cartoonland:

Sony Pictures has considered partnering with Marvel and producing an animated comedy as it looks to revamp its big screen strategy for “Spider-Man.”

Details of the discussions are contained in e-mails to and from Sony’s motion picture chief Amy Pascal, which were released on the Internet by hackers this week.

The e-mails reveal extensive discussions between executives at Sony and Marvel owner Walt Disney, all the way up to their respective chief executives Kaz Hirai and Robert Iger. ...

As of late November, executives were planning a “Spidey summit” for January to discuss future plans. Among projects in development are an animated Spider-Man comedy that would be produced by Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the team behind “22 Jump Street” and “The Lego Movie,” as well as previously disclosed Spider-Man spin-offs focused on villain team Sinister Six, super-foe Venom, and women from the webslinger’s life. ...

I fully expect months of surprises as new caches of information are put out there by the people who hacked Sony's data. I fully expect lots of news stories in the near and middle future as small, bright bombs continue to go off.

But for how long the explosives will be detonating, that's the question.

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Suppression and Freedom

The wage suppression involving animation and visual effects artists has been in the news a lot, and Disney/Pixar Animation chief Ed Catmull has been at or near the center of the alleged collusion between various Hollywood and San Francisco cartoon studios keeping salaries of nine-to-fivers down.

The above is pretty well known at this point, an old story that's gone the rounds and come back again, nothing fresh to chew on. But earlier this week I was talking about the subject to a former Disney employee and a new wrinkle cropped up. It went like this ...

Former Employee: When Disney Animation had personal service contracts, back six or seven years ago, management had us come into meetings. And Ed Catmull explained how they were doing away with PSCs because they thought it would be better for all us Disney employees not to be tied down.

Hulett: I remember. People at Feature Animation asked me about it. I said it was just a way for the studio to save money. Employees wouldn't be locked into automatic raises in personal service contracts every year, wouldn't be focused on raises because they'd be "at will" and more concerned about keeping their jobs.

FE: There was something else. Ed told us without the PSCs, everybody was free to go work someplace else if they got a better gig. The company wouldn't stop people from moving on. But the companies out there were talking to each other and keeping wages down, so how could anybody go get a higher-paying job? And Ed knew about this when he was talking to employees. When he was pushing the "free to get a better deal" thing.

ME: Imagine that. ...

Management dissembling. Alert the media.


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The Next Pixar

With parallel command centers not meshing well.



Not a sequel. Not the usual animated feature subject matter and format. Is there a story here?

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New Cash Streams for Entertainment Conglomerates

It appears the worldwide web isn't always the enemy.

... In the first nine months of this year, consumer spending on digital purchases of theatrical new releases climbed 88% over the same period in 2013, according to DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group. That’s a growth rate more than five times faster than consumer spending on digital formats overall (including all electronic sell-through, streaming and video-on-demand).

Electronic Sell Through arguably moved into the mainstream last year, when consumer spending on digital purchases of movies and TV shows topped $1 billion for the first time. In 2014, EST spending crossed the $1 billion mark by the end of September, putting $1.5 billion within reach for the year, fueled by consumer demand. ...

Jason Spivak, exec, VP digital distribution, for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. He says family films “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2” and “Heaven Is for Real” have been digital standouts for the studio. ...

“Three of the five top-selling new release EST titles of all time are family (films), including ‘Despicable Me 2,’ which is Universal’s largest EST title by a wide margin — selling well over five times what the first ‘Despicable Me’ sold a few years ago,” says Michael Bonner, exec VP, digital distribution, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. ...

“The overall growth of digital this year is very exciting, and we have had some breakout successes, including ‘Frozen’ becoming the best-selling digital title of all-time” in the U.S., adds Janice Marinelli, prexy, Disney/ABC Home Entertainment and Television Distribution. ...

You will note that animated features and effects-heavy live-action movies take up an increasingly large part of digital downloads, as well as other formats.

Frozen isn't just breaking records with movie box office and internet delivery. It also frolics in the shrinking market of little silver disks:

"Frozen" Home Video Revenue

Domestic DVD Sales $148,645,885

Domestic Blu-ray Sales $143,320,697

Total Domestic Video Sales $291,966,582

Interesting thing about older technologies: They often become less robust when newer distribution pipelines come along, but they seldom vanish altogether.

After all, we still have plays on the Great White Way, even with digital downloads and home flat-screens.

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Diversifying

DreamWorks Animation morphs some more.

DreamWorks Animation is set to launch a TV channel featuring kids and family programming in 19 Asian countries sometime in the second half of 2015.

The channel will represent DWA’s first foray into operating its own TV network in any part of the world. ...

HBO Asia, based in Singapore, will manage affiliate sales and marketing, as well as technical services, for the channel, with larger markets expected to launch first.

Original content won’t be created specifically for the channel.

Instead, the network will consist of a combination of original shows produced for partners like Netflix, as well as pre-existing and new series based on Classic Media’s library of character that were developed for European markets and air in syndication. ...

DWA is positioning the branded network as having more original content than any other kids’ channel in the region. ...

The company has figured out it won't survive and prosper using the old format of "Produce a hit film ... produce another hit film ... produce another hit film" (etc.) Because the old format doesn't work too well anymore.

The Netflix deal enables DWA to create a lot of product without having to worry if it's going to be a hit or not. Now it has to figure out how it expands its global reach and its cash flow in new media ventures.

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Your Cartoon Cable Ratings

They explain why there's so much television animation work.

... Last Monday's episode of TBS's American Dad! averaged 1.3 million viewers in Live + 3 delivery, with 949,000 adults in 18-49 and 550,000 adults 18-34. For the season-to-date, American Dad! is averaging a reach of 4 million viewers per episode for its premieres on TBS, encores on Adult Swim and multi-platform plays. ...

Cartoon Network dominated all television networks among targeted kids and boys on Thursday Night (6-8 p.m.), with its performance increasing delivery among all kids/boys 2-11, 6-11 & 9-14, ranging between 49% and 90%. The new episode premiere of original series Teen Titans Go! (6 p.m.) ranked #1 for the day among kids and boys 2-11/6-11, while original series Regular Show (7:30 p.m.) won the day among kids/boys 9-14. ...

there's been a steady expansion of television work over the last few years. Our fine entertainment conglomerates discover, to their delight, that there's a new wave of kids coming along, and fresh appetites for new series and newer characters. We've got more television production -- even with the competition of Canada and its subsidies -- than we've ever had.

How long will it continue? Only the Shadow knows, and he's not telling the rest of us.


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What Mark Kennedy Said

Straight from the Temple:

... Jon Stewart (host of "The Daily Show") ... talked about former Daily Show cast member Steve Carell's role in the film "Foxcatcher". Jon said something along the lines of "What makes Steve so good is that he finds the moments in scripts that no one else realized were there".

We've been talking a lot at Disney about what makes a good story artist, and it can be hard to define what makes a story artist so good at what they do.

Drawing is important, as is a sense of staging and acting, and all the other things that a good story artist needs to know … but there's also a hard-to-define "X factor" that some board artists seem to have. I think it's along the lines of what Jon Stewart is saying about Steve Carell.

A good board artist knows how to "plus" and elevate an idea. A good board artist can improve on any idea that they're given by finding little moments of entertainment and opportunities to exploit the character's personalities, without getting off track from moving the overall story forward. These are the things that directors at Disney seem to find the most valuable in board artists, and they are the hardest things to describe or to teach people. ...

I think it's the ability to find the essence of what a scene or sequence is about. A character's reaction to something. A comedy bit that reveals character.

Some board artists have it instinctively. Others acquire the talent through hard work, and trial and error. Still others never get the knack for plussing a scene at all.


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More About Hackery

The release of chunks of Sony corporate data keeps coming.

Fake names also used by Jessica Alba, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Tobey Maguire during film shoots to protect privacy are among list revealed. ...

The hack exposed personal information — including salaries and home addresses — of current employees and those who stopped working at Sony as far back as 2000 when the information was leaked to various news outlets and over BitTorrent ...

We continue to get inquiries about Sony's personal info leaks, but we're not the ones with much in the way of information. Maybe these folks:

... Experts point to several signs of North Korean involvement. They say there are similarities between the malware used in this attack and a different cyber blitz against South Korea. Both were written in Korean, an unusual language in the world of cyber crime. ...

Sony is now getting around to communication with its workers:

... Sony sought to calm its jittery employees, announcing in an internal memo that the F.B.I. would visit its Culver City, Calif., lot on Wednesday for security briefings.

In a companywide email sent on Monday afternoon, Michael Lynton, the studio’s chief executive, told staff members that the F.B.I. had dedicated “senior staff” to the global hacking investigation, which has been described by cybersecurity experts as “unprecedented and highly sophisticated.” Sony employees over the past week have seen their Social Security numbers, performance reviews, salaries, home addresses and passwords shared with the world. ...

This definitely a fuster of the loudest cluck.

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Dismissal

One less cartoon lawsuit:

The claims against the major toon studios of anti-poaching deals and secret wage-fixing agreements aren’t going away, but DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Sony Pictures Animation, Digital Domain, Imageworks, Pixar, Lucasfilm and others soon will have a little less of a legal battle to deal with. After filing a class action of his own on November 20, animator Van Phan today told his lawyers he wants his complaint dismissed as soon as possible.

“It was never my intent nor would I intentionally agree to be lead plaintiff in this new class action,” says the layout artist. “I thought I was opting in to a pre-existing suit. I didn’t do my due diligence and I made an incorrect assumption,” he told me today, referring to the previous three class actions and now consolidated class action of digital artists Robert Nitsch Jr. David Wentworth, and Georgia Cano. Not that Phan was in the dark about what was being done in his name by a team of lawyers from three different firms. “I did get a copy of the compliant a few weeks ago and I read it, but I just skimmed it,” Phan admitted. It was only when the Madagascar and Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs animator read my story of late last week on his complaint that he more clearly comprehended what he had gotten himself into.

“I got the phone call from the lawyers, there was money on the table,” the animator says of how he got involved in any legal action in the first place. “I now see I misunderstood.” ...

The lesson here: Read, don't skim. Click here to read entire post

Worldwide Movie Grosses

Penguins of Madagascar, despite its under-performance across the fruited plain, lands at #2 the global list.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- $31,600,000 -- ($560,526,831)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $23,500,000 -- ($144,090,536)

Interstellar -- $22,800,000 -- ($434,400,000)

Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $23,000,000 -- ($23,000,000)

Paddington -- $13,000,000 -- ($15,000,000)

Big Hero 6 -- $4,000,000 -- ($240,348,239)

Big Hero 6 hasn't rolled out in a lot of foreign markets yet, but Penguins is (are?) making a splash in various part of the globe:

Penguins of Madagascar marched to $23.5 million from 50 markets for an international total of $94.5 million and worldwide cume of $144.1 million. ... Overseas, the spinoff opened in another eight territories over the weekend, including the U.K. ($2.4 million). It stayed No. 1 in Russia and Italy, as well as enjoying strong holds in Germany and Spain. ...

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The Leakage

There's been a lot of commentary about Sony's hacked data. It's crappy that personal information and Social Security Numbers of thousands of employees got released; on the other hand it's enlightening for showing how studios/conglomerates really operate.

... Contained in the same [hacked] document were details of [Bob] Osher’s recent restructure of Imageworks, Imageworks Interactive, Colorworks and Post Production -- a move that reduced staff by 230. Osher's move to outsource much of the company’s special-effects work was controversial in VFX world.

“Because of Bob’s extraordinary focus on cost management, Imageworks is expected to generate $7M in EBIT (before restructuring) in FY15 despite a 30% reduction in revenue,” the letter states. ...

This pretty much confirms (if confirmation was needed) that studios do what they need to do increase profits, and the soothing company memos to employees saying "There will be no further layoffs" or "We're paying competitive rates" are pretty much flapdoodle.

But then, they always have been. My longtime joke that "Employees should start looking for other work when managers come downstairs to assure everyone that 'their jobs are safe'" is as true as it's ever been. The hacked information from Sony simply underscores the trueness.

One more point: The Guild has gotten concerned e-mails and phone calls from ex-Sony employees about leaked data. The Guild received screen shots of lists of former ImageWorks employees with a "MPIPHP" designation beside their names. (This is the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan, jointly run by unions and industry companies).

One caller said, "This can't be right, we weren't in the Plan because we were non-union. Was somebody skimming?"

I had no answer other than to tell them to check with Sony and the Plans, because they shouldn't have had contributions made, so I have no idea what the acronym next to their name even means.

Further, I don't know where the list that was sent to us comes from. It might be a screen shot of hacked Sony files, it might be something else. (And I'm not going to be downloading anything to check. First because I'm a Luddite and second because I don't want to get messed up in this fustercluck.)

Lastly: The IA communicated to TAG and other production locals that Sony informed them the company is still investigating the extent of the corporate hacks and so hasn't sent communications about the digital thefts to many employees (even though employees, present and past, are clamoring for information about what info was taken.)

The IATSE's communication happened before the last round of released information from the hacker(s), so what Sony does next week or next month is anyone's guess.

Right now Sony ain't saying.


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Your American Box Office

Early reports for the animated feature occupying the Top Ten List:

... Disney sees $1.8M for Big Hero 6 and Fox sees $2.38M for D’Works Animation’s Penguins, but matinees should push the latter to No. 2 for the weekend. ...

Through Friday, Penguins of Madagascar has collected $40,871,000 while Big Hero 6's earnings total $171,229,000.

PoM's foreign take is $29,000,000 more than domestic totals. Big Hero 6 now owns a worldwide gross of $228,129,000.

And the list:

1). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (LGF), 4,054 theaters (-97) /$6.65M Fri. (-73%)/ 3-day cume: $22.8M (-60%)/ Total cume: $258M/Wk 3

2). The Penguins Of Madagascar (FOX), 3,775 theaters (11)/ $2.36M Fri. (-77%) / 3-day cume: $10.6M (-58%)/ Total cume: $49.1M / Wk 2

3). Horrible Bosses 2 (WB), 3,400 theaters (+25) / $2.5M Fri. (-60%)/ 3-day cume: $8.6M (-44%)/ Total cume: $36M / Wk 2

4). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 3,168 theaters (-197) / $1.7M Fri.(-78%) / 3-day cume: $7.6M (-60%)/ Total cume: $177.1M /Wk 5

5). Interstellar (PAR), 3,028 theaters (-38) / $2M Fri. (-70%)/ 3-day cume: $7.1M (-55%) / Total cume: $158M / Wk 5

6). Dumb and Dumber To (UNI), 3,086 theaters (-44) / $1.1M Fri. (-67%)/3-day cume: $3.7M (-57%)/ Total cume: $77.4M /Wk 4

7). The Theory Of Everything (FOC), 826 theaters (+24) / $754K Fri.(-61%) / 3-day cume: $2.6M (-48%)/ Total cume: $13.6M / Wk 5

8). Gone Girl (FOX), 1,205 theaters (+31) / $410K Fri. (-59%)/ 3-day cume: $1.4M (-43%)/ Total cume: $162.8M / Wk 10

9/10). Birdman (FSL), 738 theaters (+28) / $297K Fri. (-60%)/3-day cume: $1.1M (-41%)/ Total cume: $18.9M /Wk 8

Having animated features at the 2nd and 4th positions isn't too shabby. Then there are the live-action features that are heavily laced with animated effects.

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VFX Contestants

For the Little Gold Man.

Academy Award Short List -- Visual Effects

Captain America

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Godzilla

Guardians of the Galaxy

The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies

Interstellar

Maleficent

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

Transformers: Extinction

X-Men: Days of Future Past

And I haven't the foggiest which title above might win.

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Self-Aggrandizement

When Walt Disney died, the studio went into a creative lockdown. The mantra "What Would Walt Do" comforted the old-timers, but it shackled the up-and-comers who wanted to take big risks on new approaches to animation.

Into this sleepy studio walked Steve Hulett, whose father Ralph had been an artist at the studio for nearly four decades. Hulett was hired as a storyman during a transitional time in the company's history, when Walt's spirit was receding and Hollywood kingpins Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg were taking over.

Hulett takes you into the sometimes dark Disney heart of power, politics, and the cult of personality. ...

So what the hell is this?

It's the book and kindle version of the memory exercise I wrote twenty-odd months ago, part of which has unspooled chapter by chapter on Cartoon Brew. Some people have wanted it in book form, and now here it is.

I commenced scribbling chunks of Mouse when I was on a cut-rate cruise in the Fall of 2012. (You can only walk windy decks for so long). I wrote on yellow note pads because I didn't have a computer, and I kept at it until I had a bunch of pads filled. I had no idea what I was going to do with the mass of words I had put down, but it was a satisfying way to revisit my youth.

When I had most of the piece written, I started putting the results up on TAG blog. By and by I got asked by Cartoon Brew if it could run them (I said yes), and then I received a message from Theme Park Press wondering if they could publish the whole thing as a book. (Again I said yes).

As chapters materialized on-line, director John Musker sent me e-mails filled with witty commentary and some badly-needed corrections. I asked him if he would write a foreword to the book, and to my amazement he said "Sure". He also provided caricatures of Pete Young and Yours Truly. I'm both grateful and indebted to him for everything he's done.

Lastly. Along with tales of the Disney Feature department during the eras of Ron Miller and Eisner/Katzenberg, the book contains interviews with a half-dozen Disney old-timers (Ward Kimball and Ken Anderson among them), and biographical sketches of Disney staffers who labored in the animation vineyards in the 1970s.

We now return to the usual TAG blog posts.

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Wage Coordination

But not necessarily in a good way:

... The latest amended suit filed by attorneys from the law firm Cohen Milstein adds Blue Sky Animation — maker of the hit films Rio and Ice Age — to a list of defendants which includes Dreamworks Animation, Disney, Image Works, Sony Animation and several other studios. Blue Sky, based in Greenwich, Connecticut, is a subsidiary of Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox.

Blue Sky reportedly contacted Pixar to discuss “our sensitive issue of employee retention,” after which Pixar’s head of Human Resources contacted her counterpart at Blue Sky, Linda Zazza, “to assure her that we are not making calls to their people or trying to poach them in any way.”

It’s remarkable that, five years after the DOJ began its investigation into wage fixing in the technology industry, we’re only now learning about how deep the cartel reached across the Hollywood animation studios. ...

We continue to get calls about from animation employees studios that (allegedly) suppress wages. Where appropriate, we refer them to lawyers in various large cities.

And I've been asked by members if I think that studios coordinate with each other, if they manipulate the salaries they pay. I always respond "Yeah, sure. I don't think it happened very much in the 1990s, but it happens a lot now."

Can I prove this? Can I hold up a smoking gun? Before the depositions of some animation executives were made available to the general public, the answer was "No." Today, of course, the answer is different. Now the answer isn't "Does this kind of stuff go on?" but "How widespread is this stuff?"

Month by month, we get clearer answers.

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Box Office Prediction

The Times tells us ...

... Second place will be a battle between 20 Century Fox’s animated film “Penguins of Madagascar,” the spinoff of DreamWorks Animation’s "Madagascar" franchise, and Disney’s “Big Hero 6.”

Tracking suggests "Penguins of Madagascar" could pull in up to $13 million in its second weekend. ...

Penguins has just under $38 million now, so a $13 million weekend will run it up over $50 million.

Meanwhile, Big Hero 6 is closing on $170 million in the U.S. and Canada.

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Only One Solution

More Shrek.

... [DreamWorks Animation] got into the computer-animation game early and captivated audiences with a series of four "Shrek" films between 2001 and 2010. All of those films were blockbusters, delivering more than $200 million in domestic box office sales each—sufficient to earn profits even with monster-sized budgets.

Unfortunately, even the best film franchises don't last forever and DreamWorks hasn't been able to find a replacement. Not one of the studio's films has topped the domestic box office gross of $239 million attained by "Shrek Forever After" in 2010, according to industry research firm Rentrak. ...

So why does the franchise have to end? I'm being serious here. Pixar is doing Toy Story 4 after announcing that #3 "completed the tale" and was, really and truly, The End. Completion. Finito.

Yeah, hm hm.

When a feature pulls down over a billion dollars, whether it's The End or not, a way will be found to keep the ball rolling down the magic highway lined with gold. And some flapdoodle will be released about how "Hey now! We just found a new and really compelling story that just has to be told! So we're doing another one!"

Of course they're doing another one. There's one point two billion reasons (with George Washington on them) that one more movie should be produced (and why, as an aside, I confidently predict that there's a Frozen II in everyone's future). So my advice to Jeffrey K.? Get a couple of development crews humping on new ideas for another Shrek feature. Let four or five of your best board artists and directors gin up a half-dozen fresh plots. Let them draw up some beat boards.

Then choose the storyline that grabs you, and call up Mike Meyers, Carmen Diaz and Eddie Murphy. Let them know the old team is back in business. This isn't art we're talking about here, but commerce. DreamWorks needs a hit, a big hit. And if Diz Co. can reignite a forty-year-old chestnut like Star Wars, can pump new life into Toy Story twenty years further on, then Shrek can be brought back to life.

I mean, you want to hike DWA's stock price up thirty percent, or don't you? What are you waiting for?

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Disney Frolic

The Mouse touts its cable winners.

'Star Wars Rebels' and 'Gravity Falls' Power Disney XD to Its Biggest Month in Primetime in Its Over 15-Year History in Boys 6-11 and Its #3 Month Ever in Boys 6-14 and Boys 2-11

Fueled by original animated series “Gravity Falls” and “Star Wars Rebels” – the network’s Top 2 series of the month across-the-board – Disney XD recorded its #1 month in Primetime in the channel’s history in Boys 6-11 (136,000/1.1 rating) and its #3 month of all time in Boys 6-14 (174,000/1.0 rating) and Boys 2-11 (164,000/0.8 rating).

Disney XD out-performed Nicktoons by double-to-triple digits across the board: Total Viewers (+23% – 417,000 vs. 339,000), Kids 2-11 (+23% – 230,000 vs. 187,000), Boys 2-11 (+22% – 164,000 vs. 134,000), Kids 6-14 (+49% – 238,000 vs. 160,000), Boys 6-14 (+49% – 174,000 vs. 117,000), Kids 6-11 (+43% – 183,000 vs. 128,000) and Boys 6-11 (+43% – 136,000 vs. 95,000). ...

On a related note, I visited Disney's Hat Building this week and found most everybody boxing up personal and work items for the move to Disney Toon Studios in Glendale and another structure west of the Bob Hope Airport in Los Angeles ... because interior demo of the Hat Building will commence soon. One Hat Building resident related:

The DTS [DisneyToon Studio] building is nice, but the other place? By Bob Hope Airport? It's pretty much a warehouse. It used to be occupied by Walt Disney Imagineering and the Disney Company owns it. People aren't going to have a lot of room over there. And the heating and air-conditioning will be a challenge. ...

I wouldn't know about these things, but the staffer has been through the building with other employees, so I guess he's up on his work space issues. As another artist said: "They tell us we'll be off-site fifteen months. People who end up over near the airport will probably be happy to come back to the Hat."

A veteran I talked to about the move said: "Whatever the Imagineering building is like, it can't be any worse than the buildings on Flower Street, when we left the lot in the eighties. Those places were dumps."

Having been in the Flower Street facilities back in the day, I can't disagree.


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World Corporatism

The Guardian shares with us some splendid news.

George Osborne makes announcement of credit, from April 2015, to help companies looking to make programmes in the UK

... George Osborne announced the tax break for live-action children’s programming in the government’s Autumn statement on Wednesday. ...

The help for production companies looking to make live-action children’s shows in the UK follows a similar and successful credit scheme for high-end dramas. “We will help one area of television production that has been in decline, with a new children’s television credit, alongside our new animation credit,” said the chancellor. “The government will introduce a new tax relief for children’s television programmes from April 2015.”

The government said the relief would be available at a rate of 25% on qualifying production expenditure. ... The incentives could lure more investment from US children’s TV powerhouses such as Disney and Viacom, which owns brands including the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, as well as new digital players such as Netflix and Amazon. ...

Ah, yes. British Conservatives are following along behind Georgia Republicans and California Democrats, shoveling Free Money into the hungry, open mouths of our fine, entertainment conglomerates.

You can rail against Free Money for the undeserving poor. And you can curse the idea of Food Stamps. But the dole is really going on everywhere across the planet, and the entities who get the lion's share of the handouts aren't the riffraff who work for tiny wages. The bulk of our national treasure goes for ...

Price supports for big corporate farms.

Free money for Big Banks.

And of course foreign and domestic subsidies for corporations making movies and TV shows.

Per Subsidy Tracker 2.0, the Walt Disney Company (just to pull a random name out of the hat) has been awarded $381.5 million in government subsidies in recent years. And that airplane company named Boeing, up at the top of the Subsidy Tracker list? It's gained a grand total of $13,174,075,797. (That's 13 billion, if you have trouble counting all the commas.)

I long ago stopped wringing my hands about government welfare. Politicians scream about welfare chiselers living in the inner city, but few Democrats or Republicans dwell on the S & P 500 CEOs being showered with greenbacks, so I really don't know what all the hoo ha is about. $59 billion is spent on garden-variety welfare programs, while $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies.

Where's the politicians' outrage about that?





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American in the Middle Kingdom

This doesn't happen often.

Edward E. Frumkes, former Warner Bros. president of international theatrical distribution and marketing, has joined China’s Shanghai Hippo Animation Corp. as president of its international division.

It is highly unusual for wholly owned Chinese companies to install a Westerner in a top management position rather than in a customary figurehead role. Therefore the Frumkes hire is potentially transformational for Hippo as the company grows its animation business and expands into technology services for the entertainment industry and beyond.

Frumkes, who has been living in China for approximately a year, says Hippo is looking to tap his experience and skillset as the company scales up its production capacity and seeks strategic and financial partners. ...

What's of interest here is that an American movie exec is moving from live-action to animation.

Usually it's the other way around.

There are, I think, two explanations. An animation gig is what Mr. Frumkes could get, or he sees animation as the hot sector of Movieland, and so went for a job where there is growth, high profits, and a future.

Or maybe Hippo just offered Ed Frumkes a bucket of money to sign on, and so he did.

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Going the Indie Route

Not the normal route for developing an animated feature.

... Four years ago, Scott Sava wrote a full-length screenplay for “Animal Crackers,” which is the story of a family who inherits a rundown circus and a magical box of animal crackers that changes characters into the animals they have eaten.

He was unsuccessful in shopping the story and often told he was “just a comic book guy,” so Sava secured the funding from a studio in Spain that he had worked with for 10 years, to make a short film. ...

Sava has since received offers from every major studio including Warner Bros., Disney, DreamWorks and Sony, who are all interested in distributing the film. He and his producing partners have yet to make a final decision.

“But we have the financing,” Sava said, “so we can make the movie." ... Sava will co-direct the film with animator/director Tony Brancroft ... while he’s co-written the most recent draft with Dean Lorey (”Arrested Development”). ...

The feature will be produced in Spain, and released in 2016. It's tough for independent animated features to get traction in the marketplace, but you never know. Sooner or later, an indie could turn into a hit. So it might as well be this one.

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One Big Suit

And we don't mean the double-breasted kind.

Sony probably didn’t need any more bad news after last week’s brutal hacking that made the studio work like it was 1954, but it got some today.

While not altogether unexpected, the three class-action suits over alleged anti-poaching and wage-fixing deals by Sony, Disney, DreamWorks Animation and other animation studios have been consolidated into one big complaint. This amended filing in federal court by lawyers for digital artists David Wentworth, Robert Nitsch Jr. and Georgia Cano now delivers a potential powerhouse legal punch to the toonsters.

“The conspiracy deprived Plaintiffs and other class members of millions of dollars in compensation while the films they produced generated billions of dollars in revenues for Defendants,” says the trio’s filing (read it here), which seeks a jury trial. Like the previous suits, this one seeks reclassification to a class action that could grow to thousands of members who worked at the companies from 2004 onward. ...

Over the last two contract cycles, the studios have told us they needed wage relief. Wage relief. WAGE RELIEF!

Silly us, we thought that they meant wage minimums. But seems like it must have been all wages they were talking about.


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Renewal Time at Diz TVA

The Dwarfs get a second season.

... Disney XD has renewed its animated series “The 7D,” which takes a comedic look at the Mouse’s magnificent seven as they serve Queen Delightful and her kingdom and fend off attacks from bumbling villains Grim and Hildy Gloom. ...

I watched show-runner Tom Ruegger and his crew (many of them alumni from Warner Bros. Animation) develop The 7D over a loong period of time at TVA's studio near Bob Hope Airport. Diz Co. tests the bejeebers out of potential cartoon series before launching them. They like to know what they're getting, so testing and focus groups are the rule of the day.

A lot of 7D artists were waiting for this pick up. I know they'll be happy that it's finally arrived.


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Million Dollar Babies

Deadline tells us:

Here’s the latest development in the ongoing Sony Pictures Entertainment hacking ordeal:

The salaries of the company’s 17 execs who make at least $1 million a year apparently have hit the Internet. A spreadsheet was emailed out today that purports to list what SPE’s top brass pull down; it’s topped by SPE Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Co-Chairman and Motion Picture Group Chairman Amy Pascal, both checking in at $3 million per.

Sony Pictures Television President Steve Mosko is next at $2.8 million, followed by Columbia Pictures President Doug Belgrad with $2.35 million, the only other exec making north of $2 million. ...

Free enterprise, f*ck yeah!

We got a call today from a former employee of Sony Pictures Imageworks. He told me that his employee data has been compromised, and that files showed that were hours going from Imageworks to the Motion Picture Industry Health and Pension Plan.

I told him I didn't think that was possible, since Imageworks is non-union. But I suggested he'd better check with MPIPHP to find out what was going on. (Maybe hours were reported from Sony Pictures Animation by mistake?)

It seems a lot of Sony employee information could have been compromised. The question is, how much has salaries and financial records been thrown out there, and who, exactly, has been damaged? No way of knowing completely, but it looks like it involves a cast of thousands, including the Top Dogs.



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The (Inevitable?) Meme

No prizes for guessing what it is.

... By almost any measurement — box office, stock market, public image — it’s been an annus horribilis for the DreamWorks Animation chief and the studio he built.

The company’s latest big screen venture, “Penguins of Madagascar,” stumbled in its U.S. debut last week, earning $35 million over the five day Thanksgiving holiday. It had been expected to earn between $45 million to $48 million. In response, shares of DreamWorks plunged more than 9% on Monday morning. ...

Over the past year, DreamWorks Animation’s stock price has fallen steadily. It kicked off the year trading at $35.30 and opened Monday at $22.35. ...

For almost any animation company, the business of making cartoons is a roller coaster.

It was for Walt Disney Productions right before World War II. And right after.

DreamWorks Animation struggled right before it went all CGI, all the time. (Remember Spirit? Road to El Dorado? Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas? You have a problem when your $60 million production only makes $80 million worldwide).

Even John Lasseter isn't immune. He rightfully takes bows for exec producing Frozen, but he was also the honcho for Planes: Fire and Rescue, which opened at #3 earlier this year with an unspectacular first weekend of $17.5 million.

So let's remember, boys and girls, that the stinkeroo fairy visits almost everyone, sooner or later. I seriously doubt that "Here Lies John Lasseter, the director of Cars II" gets engraved on the big marble tombstone.

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