Restructuring

Now with Add On!!

The DWA Press Release:

/PRNewswire/ -- DreamWorks Animation (NASDAQ: DWA) is implementing a new strategic plan to restructure its core feature animation business to ensure the consistent and profitable delivery of the high quality films that audiences have come to expect from the studio. Following a full review of the business, the company will focus its feature production from three films per year down to two, maximize its creative talent and resources, reduce costs, and drive profitability.

Under the leadership of newly appointed Co-Presidents of Feature Animation Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria, the studio's core feature animation production will now focus on six specific movies for the next three years - one original film and one sequel each year - including Kung Fu Panda 3 (March 18, 2016), Trolls (Nov. 4, 2016), Boss Baby (Jan. 13, 2017), The Croods 2 (Dec. 22, 2017), Larrikins (Feb. 16, 2018) and How to Train Your Dragon 3 (June 29, 2018). Captain Underpants, which will be produced outside of the studio's pipeline at a significantly lower cost, is scheduled for release in 2017. The company's 2015 release, Home, will premiere domestically on March 27.

"The number one priority for DreamWorks Animation's core film business is to deliver consistent creative and financial success," said DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Katzenberg. "I am confident that this strategic plan will deliver great films, better box office results, and growing profitability across our complementary businesses."

The overall reduction of DreamWorks Animation's feature production output will result in a loss of approximately 500 jobs across all locations and all divisions of the studio. DreamWorks expects to incur a pre-tax charge of approximately $290 million in connection with the restructuring and related items. These costs are expected to be incurred primarily in the quarter ended December 31, 2014, with the remainder in 2015 and 2016. The plan will result in total cash payments of approximately $110 million incurred primarily in 2015. The restructuring plan is expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2015 and expected to result in annualized pre-tax cost savings of approximately $30 million in 2015, growing to roughly $60 million by 2017.

Conference Call Information
DreamWorks Animation will host a conference call to discuss today's announcement at 1:45 p.m. (PT) / 4:45 p.m. (ET) on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015. The call will be available via live webcast at www.dreamworksanimation.com. To join the conference call by phone, please dial (800) 230-1766 in the U.S. and (612) 332-0430 internationally and identify "DreamWorks Animation Restructures Core Feature Film Business" to the operator. A replay of the conference call will be available shortly after the call ends on Thursday, January 22, 2015. To access the replay, dial (800) 475-6701 in the U.S. and (320) 365-3844 internationally and enter 351097 as the conference ID number. Both the press release and archived webcast will be available on the Company's website at www.dreamworksanimation.com.

About DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation (Nasdaq: DWA) creates high-quality entertainment, including CG animated feature films, television specials and series and live entertainment properties, meant for audiences around the world. The company has world-class creative talent, a strong and experienced management team and advanced filmmaking technology and techniques. DreamWorks Animation has been named one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" by FORTUNE® Magazine for five consecutive years. In 2013, DreamWorks Animation ranked #12 on the list. All of DreamWorks Animation's feature films are produced in 3D. The Company has theatrically released a total of 30 animated feature films, including the franchise properties of Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Puss In Boots, and The Croods.

Additional Information
The Company is concurrently filing a Current Report on Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission describing the restructuring, as well as certain other charges that the Company expects to record during the quarter ended December 31, 2014. A copy of this Form 8-K filing is available on the Company's website at www.dreamworksanimation.com. ...

This explains why DreamWorks hasn't returned our calls.

The reductions referenced above are devastating for a lot of artists and technicians who've worked long and hard to make DreamWorks Animation a success. Even though PDI doesn't fall under a guild or IATSE contract, we're sorry to see the company's doors close. Pacific Data Images has been a northern California institution for years, and its absence will create yet another hole in California's digital effects/animation industry.

As for the rest of the restructure, we anticipate more down-sizing at DreamWorks Animation's Glendale campus, and a shift toward the Disney/ Visual Effects model: hire people for a project when needed, lay off people when they're no longer needed. Naturally, there will be core staff that gets retained, but from all reports, the days of guaranteed long-term employment are over.

(Re guaranteed employment: Three-year Personal Service Contracts were instituted at Disney Feature Animation by Katzenberg during the early '90s, and Jeffrey kept doing them after launching DreamWorks. Ed Catmull eliminated Personal Service Contracts altogether at Walt Disney Animation Studios years ago; our best guess is DWA contracts that guarantee a defined length of employment will also be gone.)

Every once in a while I get asked what working in the animation business is like. I always, "Well, it's a roller coaster. Up and up during the good times, then head-snapping drops during the bad." For DreamWorks Animation right now, one of the queasy drops is now in progress.

Add On: DreamWorks Animation has now called and told me the following:

1) There will be equal force reductions at PDI and Glendale (500 employees total; PDI is closing, and a number of employees will be offered positions at the Glendale campus. There will likely not be exactly equal numbers laid off from each campus.)

2) Employees being separated from DreamWorks Animation and Pacific Data Images will be paid an additional sixty calendar days of wages after layoff.

3) The company will be talking to DWA employees about the restructuring in the days ahead.

This is a rough time for company employees; if anybody needs information and/or assistance from TAG, please let us know.

Add On Too: In after hours trading, DreamWorks Animation stock is up 3.2%. Nothing succeeds like staff cuts.

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New VES Chair

The Visual Effets Society has elected a new chair.

Mike Chambers was elected chair of the Visual Effects Society board of directors, succeeding VFX supervisor Jeff Okun.

Chambers is an independent VFX producer and freelance VFX consultant, whose credits include The Dark Knight Rises and Inception. He is currently in postproduction on Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, and most recently completed work on Transcendence. ...

Several years ago, there was a move for the International Alliance (of which were a member) to work with the VES Society. Sadly, it didn't work out, but for a time hopes were high. Click here to read entire post

At DisneyToon Studios

But "At Walt Disney Animation Studios In A New Location" would be closer to the truth.

I was over there today, doing my rounds, spreading TAG joy. The building (which looks like a small cousin of Emeryville's Pixar) is in Glendale, and is now filled with a lot of feature animation staff, many of them busily working on a Theatrical Feature Which Must Not Be Named because (you know) Diz Co. hasn't announced the feature yet, even though news of its existence bubbles up in various places on the internet.

One artist said to me:

"We drew the long straw! Much better to be here than in the Tujunga Avenue building!" ...

What this gent is talking about is, now that the hat building is under interior renovation, different feature units have been shipped off to different Disney owned buildings in the Valley.

The majority of people were sent to what is actually on okay structure in a less-than-scintillating part of North Hollywood -- the wilds of Manufacturing Land on the west side of Bob Hope Airport's major runway. (And anybody who's anybody wants to live and work under the landing patterns of a metropolitan airport. Yes indeedy!)

But it isn't the building that's a problem. It's the down-scaleness of the neighborhood, and the lack of eating establishments. Ah, well. At least it's temporary.

But back to Disney-Feature-in-Glendale. Cubicles are now filled again with feature artists/technicians, and more cars are parked in the big lot in back of DTS. During the last half of 2014, most of the office spaces emptied out as Disney's home video business model was put on ice, projects were cancelled, and several waves of layoffs emptied out the Glendale studio.

But now, happily, the facility is in use again*, thanks to the remodeling that is starting on Riverside Drive.

* DisneyToon Studios is also occupied by Disney Educational and the DisneyToon shorts program, which is (last time I checked) still in business. But newer Direct-To-Video features? Not so much.

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Animation Resources

In 1982, UCLA design student Stephen Worth attended an event hosted by The International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood. There he spoke with the organization’s President, legendary cartoon Producer, Story Man and Voice Artist Bill Scott. At the meeting, Scott described his plans to create an “Animateque” - a research facility for animation professionals and students.

Steve never forgot that meeting. “The resources weren’t there to pull it off during Bill’s tenure as President of ASIFA-Hollywood. A few years ago, I realized that computers had made organizing educational material much easier. The concept of a “digital Animateque” excited me. After 20 years as an animation Producer, Stephen Worth decided it was time to give back to the muse. He went to work full time at ASIFA-Hollywood to try to build support for Bill’s concept of the Animateque. “The animation business is in dire need of inspiration and new ideas. The technology is just a tool. The artist is the one who creates. We need to invest in artists.”

In January of 2011, ASIFA-Hollywood informed Worth that regrettably they were no longer able to sponsor his project. Worth wasn’t willing to let Bill Scott’s dream end there, so he scrambled to create a permanent organizational umbrella for the collection. He established Animation Resources, a 501(c)(3) California non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and encouraging animation education. The core of Animation Resources’ offerings is Stephen Worth’s valuable research and curation efforts and the generous efforts of the dozens of dedicated volunteers who dedicated their time and energy to creating this resource.

To learn more about Animation Resources, visit their website at http://animationresources.org/

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The Snub

As The Guardian puts it.

It was the highest-grossing film of 2014 in the UK, holds a staggering rating of 96% “fresh” on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and has been widely praised as a pioneering example of how to mine movie gold from the most unlikely of corporate sources. But The Lego Movie still wasn’t good enough to make the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ list of nominees for the best animated film Oscar.

In one of the biggest snubs of this year’s award season, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s flamboyant tale lost out to Big Hero 6, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Boxtrolls, as well as Song of the Sea and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. ...

We need to get over "The Lego Movie was snubbed snubbed/screwed over/ignored" line of thinking. It's actually just simple math. A committee voted for the nominees. The votes were counted. And the top five nominees won.

Really simple.

Further, the votes were/are all subjective, held captive by the opinions/whims/prejudices of voting members. (Side note: This is why an animated feature will never, ever win a Best Picture Oscar. The voting members of the Motion Picture Academy, most of them working in live-action, would never allow such a thing to happen.)

My guess is The Lego Movie finished just out of the money. But it's only a guess. I don't know Best Animated Feature nominees' vote totals and I don't think it's particularly important. The Academy Awards are among the oldest, most "prestigious" gold trophies out there and actual movie makers create and vote on the different slates, but plenty of lacklustre films have bee nominated over the years, and too many iconic films have been left out. Just how seriously are we to take this exclusion? (We know which movie's going to win, right? How to Train Your Dragon 2 of Big Hero 6. Simple math.)

So is the Academy's overlook of The Lego Movie something to get upset about? Maybe a little. But certainly not a lot. After all, it's just another movie award*.


* More important than the Golden Globes. (Way more important.) Less important than the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Prime Time Animation

I was over at Film Roman today, and the crew is working away on the end of the currents season's orders:

"We have one more show in the cycle to do, then there's work on six holdovers for the next season."

The problem is, Fox hasn't yet announced it's actually doing another season, so it's possible the extra six shows are for naught. Hard to believe but some Film Roman artists are a wee bit ... uptight?

But I don't think there's much question that the Yellow Family will go on. ...

Because the ratings are holding up (though coming in way behind the big football game).

Sunday Night TV -- Ratings -- Share

8:00 - The Simpsons (#2) -- 1.2 -- 3.0

9:00 -- Family Guy (#2) -- 1.1 -- 3.0

9:30 -- Bob's Burgers -- 1.0 -- 2.0

With The Simpsons, I believe we'll see a multi-year pickup that will take the show to its 30th season.

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"Sundance" Animation

Deadline calls this



...an indie animated series. ...

... Animals. – about the downtrodden creatures native to Earth’s least habitable environment: New York City — bypassed the traditional development and was financed with private equity money. The creators were able to make the show exactly how they wanted on a timetable that suited them. ...

But it's really closer (I think) to an indie animatic. I've seen Disney animatics that were just as elaborate, if not more. Click here to read entire post

Speaking of DreamWorks Animation

The L.A. Times says:

... DreamWorks Animation plans a substantial number of layoffs, two people familiar with the matter said..

In a move to cut operating costs, the Glendale studio intends to significantly reduce the size of its workforce, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.

While the precise number of people who will lose their jobs has yet to be finalized, the number is expected to exceed the 350 layoffs that occurred in 2013 after the studio shelved production of the movie "Me and My Shadow."

Layoffs are expected to include animators, story-board artists and other production personnel and support staff at the studio's Glendale and Redwood City facilities, which employ about 2,200 workers. ...

Besides the Los Angeles Times, there have been the same kinds of articles here, here, and over here (among other places). ...

I've gotten a lot of calls from reporters after this story broke. What I've told them is

1) Last week, I started getting calls from DreamWorkers who were getting laid off;

2) The employees said there were other people getting laid off besides them, but nobody could tell me what the number of folks were.

3) Third parties (not DreamWorks Animation workers) have told me that upwards of 300 to 400 people will be let go over the next several months.

To date, I have no way of confirming number 3. I contacted DreamWorks Animation last week about the layoffs, but as of this writing I have not gotten a response from anyone acting in an official capacity. As more becomes known, we will pass it along. (And so will a plethora of newspapers and industry publications.)

Add On (Tuesday night): I continue to get phone calls regarding DreamWorks, but know nothing new. I called the studio today for info, but heard nothing back. And so it goes.

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Editing TV Cartoons -- Part II

In this second installment of "Film Editing TV Cartoons", Robert Birchard describes Disney Television Animation's rapid growth and growing corporate structure. ...

TAG Interview with Bob Birchard

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Mr Birchard tells of meetings that didn't start until company executives had entered the conference room in the right pecking order, and a bureaucracy that became steadily larger as the division gained more success.

Note: You'll find the complete interview on video (above). The audio version is divided in half: Part One ran on October 16th; Part Two runs here today.

Robert Birchard, besides being a crackerjack editor, is a writer and film historian of the first rank. For instance ...

Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

... Drawing extensively on DeMille’s personal archives and other primary sources, Robert S. Birchard offers a revealing portrait of DeMille the filmmaker that goes behind studio gates and beyond DeMille’s legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career DeMille's box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. DeMille had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, DeMille also created Westerns, realistic “chamber dramas,” and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies. He set the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanded absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians. ...

"Far and away the best film book published so far this year. . . . He [Birchard] had full access to DeMille's papers and records, and draws on this archival material like a true cinematic archaeologist." -- National Board of Review

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Corporate Dynamics

The Fool (not me) thinks DWA has work to do.

... Since 2012, [DreamWorks Animation] has taken an expensive writedown on at least one film each year. "Rise of the Guardians" did the damage three years ago, "Turbo" hurt results in 2013, and "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" whacked earnings last year -- nearly $160 million of writedowns for the three films. We'll find out whether investors can add "Penguins of Madagascar" to that list when the company reports results for its fiscal fourth quarter in a few weeks.

The low batting average for box office hits has crushed DreamWorks' stock, sending it more than 30% lower in 2014 and down nearly 50% in the past five years. ...

The DreamWorks management team has been talking about evolving the company into a "diversified entertainment giant" for years. Diversification is an important goal for any company. But it's even more critical here, when any one of DreamWorks' three annual movie releases has the potential to tank, bringing the entire year's financial results down with it.

The problem is that the company's other major business lines -- consumer products and television -- haven't stepped up their production. Last quarter, feature film revenue accounted for the same huge proportion of sales as it did a year ago, almost 80%. ...

I've been concerned for years about DWA's business model of "Make a hit movie. Repeat. Make a hit movie. Repeat. Make a hit ..." etc. It's a fine corporate dream, but it's a dream that's unsustainable.

The long-term solution: Get the company diversified, then find a corporate suitor and merge with some conglomerate or other. But another company paying a premium for DWA stock? Especially if the corporation isn't firing on all cylinders? In all likelihood, that won't be happening.

The short-term solution: A big, brassy new installment of the Shrek franchise, with songs and dancing.

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Your Foreign Box Office

American soldiers are on top this week. As for the rest ...

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

Paddington $4,000,000 -- ($154,287,000)

Night At The Museum 3 -- $17,800,000 -- ($284,673,106)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $16,300,000 -- ($306,190,248)

Hobbit 3 -- $9,800,000 -- ($803,137,115)

Into the Woods -- $7,300,000 -- ($140,295,669)

Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $10,900,000 -- ($250,055,030)

Big Hero 6 -- $7,200,000 -- ($428,289,530)

The DreamWorks Animation feature continues to frolic abroad.

... Penguins Of Madagascar hatched another $16.3M helped along by seven No. 1 openings for a cume of $225.64M. Brazil led with a huge $5.07M from 911 screens.

It's a mystery to me why the flick has so chrnoically under-performed in the U.S. of A., but what do you do? As for some of the other features out there:

Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb dug up another $17.8M this weekend, lifting the cume to $179.9M. ... The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies added a further $9.8M this frame with nearly 1.2M admissions from 6,701 screens in 62 markets. Germany continues to lead the pack of Hobbit faithfuls with $76.7M to date. ...

Japan keeps flocking to San Fransokyo with Big Hero 6 maintaining the No. 1 slot there for a 3rd consecutive frame that dropped only 25% from last weekend. The No. 1 Western release in Japan for five weeks, it’s earned $51.6M there. ...

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Your American Box Office

Prospective weekend totals look good for Mr. Eastwood.

1). American Sniper (WB), 3,555 theaters (+3,551)/ $29.1M Fri. (+18,537%) /3-Day:$66.8M (+11,427%)/4-Day:$75.4M /Total cume: $78.8M/ Wk 3

2). The Wedding Ringer (Sony), 3,003 theaters/ $6.9M Fri./ 3-Day: $20.5M/ 4-Day: $23.8M /Wk 1

3). Paddington (TWC), 3,303 theaters / $4.8M Fri./ 3-Day: $19.3M / 4-Day: $24.1M /Wk 1

4). Taken 3 (Fox), 3,594 theaters (0)/$4.3M Fri(-71%). / 3-Day: $14.5M (-63%)/4-Day: $17.3M /Total cume: $66M/ Wk 2

5). Selma (Par), 2,235 theaters (+56) / $2.49M Fri. (-34%)/ 3-Day: $9.1M (-19%)/4-Day: $11.2M /Total cume: $28.8M / Wk 4

6). Into The Woods (DIS), 2,758 theaters (-75) / $1.7M Fri. (-31%)/ 3-Day: $6.8M (-29%)/4-Day: $8.9M /Total cume:$116.7M / Wk 4

7). The Imitation Game (TWC), 1,611 theaters (+45) / $1.8M Fri. (-14%) / 3-Day: $6.4M (-11%)/4-Day: $7.7M /Total cume: $51.3M / Wk 8

8). The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (WB), 2,220 theaters (-1182)/$1.3M (-47%)Fri./ 3-Day: $5.2M (-44%) /4-Day: $6.7M /Total cume: $245.9M/ Wk 5

9). Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (FOX), 2,437 theaters (-934) / $975K Fri. (-40%) / 3-Day: $4.3M(-35%)/4-Day: $5.7M /Total cume: $106.7M / Wk 5

10). Unbroken (UNI), 2,602 theaters (-699) / $1.2M Fri. (-51%)/ 3-Day: $4.1M (-49%)/4-Day: $4.8M/Total cume: $109.1M / Wk 4

11). Blackhat (UNI), 2,567 theaters / $1.4M Fri./ 3-Day: $4M/4-Day: $4.8M / Wk 1

For the cuddly bear picture, Mojo projects:

Paddington took third place with an estimated $4.66 million. That's just below last year's The Nut Job; if Paddington follows that movie's trajectory, it will wind up with around $25 million by Monday.

The partially-animated Night at the Museum has held up remarkably well after a (relatively) slow start.


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Batman Rollout

Warner Bros. isn't going to leave the super-hero field wide open to Marve/Diz Co. Therefore ...



Movie #23 from the WB of Animation: Batman vs. Robin based on "Batman: Court of Owls."

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Walt Peregoy - RIP

Goodbye, Mr. Peregoy.

Prez Emeritus Tom Sito writes:

The wonderful Walt Peregoy has left us.

One of the last great designers on 101 Dalmatians. He was fun to be around. He ran counter to the image of that disney artist " Aw-shucks, gee-whiz" gentility. A real salty dog, whose language could make a sailor blush, which is probably why he was not interviewed more.

But he was proud to be a Disney artist, proud of his achievements, and demanded respect for his talent. He encouraged other young artists not to feel bad or be intimidated because they had talent. If you're good, dammit, let the world know,

RIP Walt, a well deserved rest.

I knew Mr. Peregoy as a kid (he came to my folks' house quite a lot) and he never changed: feisty, outspoken, highly opinionated, that was Walt.

Like for instance here. And here. Also here.

When I walked into Walt's house four years ago to record the interchange directly above, I hadn't seen Mr. Peregoy in years and didn't know what to expect. But I found out real fast.

I had been in his sunny den for all of ninety seconds. We exchanged pleasantries, I snapped on my recorder, and off Walt went.

You can hear the results for yourself.

I was doing a lot of interviews with animation artists right then, all of which are still up on line. Mr. Peregoy's Q & A, hands down, is the one that has elicited the most reaction and comment these past four years.

Listen to ten minutes of it, you'll understand why.

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At Disney-Tujunga

And what the hell is "Disney-Tujunga", you ask?

Has the Mouse moved up to the small Crescenta Valley community below the Angeles Crest? Where bikers, and those who can't afford to live in La Canada, frolic?

Actually, no. It's a large Diz Co.-owned building west of the Bob Hope Airport (the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena flight facility) on Tujunga Avenue in North Hollywood. I was there for the first time today. ...

The neighborhood is a long way from the Ranch District of Burbank, the location of the Hat Building. Disney-Tujumga sits in the middle of an industrial area with lots of movie supply warehouses, car repair shops, and other lower-rent establishments you would expect to find clustered near one end of an airport runway.

The Disney building is actually pretty nice. It sits behind fences and a guard shack, and houses Disney Imagineering, storage areas, and now Walt Disney Animation Studios. The staffs for two upcoming features began moving in a couple of weeks back, and a productioneer told me there is room for upwards of 400+ people.

Disney-Tujunga is on two floors. (The building is two-story, so kind of makes sense, no?) There aren't a lot of enclosed offices, but plenty of wide open floor-space and airy cubicles. There don't appear to be many eating establishments nearby, but nobody voiced discontent over this reality. As one person said, "It is what it is. We have nice jobs." There were food trucks out in the parking lot.

Walt-Disney-Animation-Studios-On-Tujunga-Avenue will probably be in existence for the next eighteen to twenty-eight months. The setup will continue while the Hat Building on scenic Riverside Drive is getting refurbished. Features will also have a unit or two (but smaller) at DisneyToon Studios in Glendale, though there's a lot less space over there, so more production action will take place in North Hollywood.

Artists and administrators will be working at the Hat through the entire renovation, just not a whole lot of them. Hopefully drifting dust will be kept to a minimum.



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2015 Afternoon of Remembrance

* click image for larger view

The Animation Guild will be hosting the 2015 Afternoon of Remembrance on Saturday, February 7th starting at 12:00pm in the Guild's meeting hall. The event is open to anyone who wishes to attend.


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Editing TV Cartoons - Part I

Robert Birchard, speaking at Cinecon.

TAG Interview with Bob Birchard

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Roberts S. Birchard has been an editor of television cartoons for almost forty years. In the early eighties, he broke into the animation business at a studio called Hanna-Barbera, and soon moved on to DIC Animation (where he found the hectic schedules and tight deadlines to be an interesting challenge). Bob was the supervisor of DIC's editorial department, but seven-day workweeks eventually wore him down a bit, and he jumped to a small, embryonic outfit named Walt Disney Television Animation. ...

In its early days (which would be the middle of the 1980s) Disney TVA was a small, tight-knit organization getting its feet wet with The Gummi Bears and Duck Tales as it navigated a new world of television syndication. As Mr. Birchard describes it, small-screen cartoons were a product that the Disney Company wanted to get right, and a lot of time and money was spent delivering a quality product.

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The Golden Reel Nominees

There might not be reels involved in editing anymore, but the Motion Picture Sound Editors still hand out shiny statues.

"Birdman," "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" are among Wednesday's nominees for the 62nd Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards in feature film.

Nominated for sound editing -- sound effects and foley in a feature film: "American Sniper," "Birdman," "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "Fury," "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Interstellar" and "Unbroken."

Vying for sound editing -- dialogue and additional dialogue recording (ADR) in a feature film: "Birdman," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "The Imitation Game," "Still Alice," "The Theory of Everything," "Unbroken" and "Whiplash."

Nominees for sound editing -- sound effects, foley, dialogue and ADR in an animated feature: "Big Hero 6," "Book of Life," "The Boxtrolls," "How to Train Your Dragon 2" and "The Lego Movie." ...

This time of year, there is one awards bash after another: SAG, Oscars, Golden Globes, Annies, the list seems endless.

The Motion Picture Sound Editors is an honorary society that's been around for 51 years. They've been awarding prizes for Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR for long-form cartoons since 1989.

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Animation Guild Housekeeping

We've been getting a smattering of concerned phone calls from member because the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan has been sending out a statement that starts:

"NOTICE TO INTERESTED PARTIES"

1. Notice to:
All present employees eligible to participate in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan and the Motion Picture Industry Individual Account Plan. ...

And so on. ...

But what the MPIPHP failed to put in with the statement was a note explaining:

"This is a document the IRS has us send out to participants in the Plan every year. It's routine. Nothing that's a big deal. THERE IS NO ACTION REQUIRED ON YOUR PART. THIS STATEMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. SO RELAX."

Etcetera.

To let you know, the Animation Guild's 401(k) Plan is going through the same rigamarole that the bigger Motion Picture Industry plan is. The Feds are reviewing it because that's the standard practice.

And it happens every year.

On a slightly different subject, the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan is doing well. It now has

$8 billion in total Plan assets.

Investments are allocated to bonds, stocks, "alternative investments" and real estate. Recent returns are

4.8% -- Defined Pension Plan

5.2% -- Individual Account Plan

The returns over the past twenty years have been north of 8%.

There are 43,000+ people who participate in the Plan, which has been in existence since the early 1950s.

Hope you find the above helpful.

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And the Nominees Are ...

These six from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

Best Animated Feature

Big Hero 6
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya

And the front-runners would be How To Train Your Dragon and Big Hero 6 for all the obvious reasons:

Big Hero is from a monster conglomerate named Disney. (On the other hand, Frozen won last year and the Academy usually doesn't go to the same well in successive years.)

How To Train Your Dragon 2 picked up a Golden Globe for "Best Animated Feature", will likely win an Annie (maybe?), and DreamWorks hasn't won a "Best Animated Feature" statuette in a while.

I don't think you can rule out the other nominees, but the academy's voting members are tilted toward the major California animation studios, and I think it's foolish to pretend otherwise.


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Animation News Links

The animated feature titled Avatar II happening in '17:

Director James Cameron said Wednesday that writing three "Avatar" sequels is such a complex job he's delaying the first new film a year and it will now be released in late 2017. ...

No tall blue people animated feature for another two years. ...

* * * * * * *

Re The Simpsons' C. Hebdo tribute:

"Simpsons" executive producer Al Jean said the idea started last Thursday when one of the show’s original producers, James L. Brooks, suggested making a statement in defense of free speech.

“We looked online and saw the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ posters and thought the ideal person to hold the flag would be Maggie, who doesn’t speak,” Jean said.

Longtime director David Silverman was in charge of crafting the image. ...

* * * * * * *

What to expect with Toy Story 4:

"Toy Story 4" is pencilled in for 2017, with John Lasseter and company getting very excited about the story they've dreamt up, ... a love story. Just like "Toy Story 3's" prison break, that means a genre that we haven't really seen the series tackle before. That could mean that Barbie and Ken are back, or that we're going to see a "Before Midnight" style drop-in on Mrs Potato Head, but perhaps "Toy Story That Time Forgot" points elsewhere.

(Rashida Jones of Parks and Recreation is one of the writers on TS4.)

* * * * * * *

Lastly, movies are moving:

... Disney has pushed the release of its Jon Favreau-helmed redo of "The Jungle Book" out of 2015. The 3D pic with an all-star voice cast including Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba and Johansson had been set for October 9 but now will open April 15, 2016. It trades dates with "The Finest Hours", the Chris Pine-Casey Affleck-Eric Bana ocean-rescue tale, which now will arrive October 9.

The moves put the 3D "Ghost In The Shell" into an as-yet-unoccupied slot and pits "Pete’s Dragon" against the Lionsgate comedy "Bad Grandpa", Sony’s raunchy toon "Sausage Party" and Universal’s thriller "Spectral". The live-action/VFX "Jungle Book" will face off with Universal sequel "The Best Man Wedding" and Sony’s kids-book adaptation "Goosebumps". ...

You will note that there are a LOT of animated (or partial animated) features bumping other animated features.



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Prime Time Cartoons

As always, Fox has the night-time animation market to itself.

... On FOX, The Simpsons earned a 2.0 adults 18-49 rating, down from last week's football inflated 4.7 adults 18-49 rating. Brooklyn Nine-Nine garnered a 1.5, down from last week's football-boosted 3.0 adults 18-49 rating. Family Guy earned a 2.0, down from last week's 2.8, adults 18-49 rating. Bob’s Burgers notched a 1.6, down from last week's 2.0 adults 18-49 rating. ...

The Simpsons is still pulling in solid ratings; the rumor around the artists' cubicles? There are negotiations upstairs to take the Yellow Family all the way to thirty seasons.

Makes sense to me. Let's see if the rumor becomes reality.

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Shadow's Prospects

Back from the nearly cancelled?

Though Dreamworks Animation and 20th Century Fox previously removed the CG and hand-drawn animation hybrid Me & My Shadow from their official release schedule, we understand work on the film was still underway as recently as the last couple of months of 2014. ...

To give a bit of history on Shadow: the movie was in development in 2011, when Mark Dindal was developing the feature from an idea by one J. Katzenberg. Mark started work on the picture in 2010.

I saw some of the early art and test animation, and it looked promising. Different. Mark was nice enough to sit down for a TAG blog interview when he was slammed with work on the film (we talked in a DWA conference room and cut the session short when he had to get to a meeting); seven months later he had departed the project due to creative differences. (From accounts these were actual, 24-karat creative differences. Not the fake press release kind designed to cover a firing.)

Alessandro Carloni, a DWA veteran, has been listed as director of Me and My Shoulder for some time. There was a long stretch where not much work was happening on Shadow; reamWorks staffers told me there was a skeleton crew and the word was out and about that the picture would most likely die a quiet death in its crib.

Now Film Divider and others say that's not the case, and I hope it's true. I haven't paid close attention to MAMS's current status, but the picture always struck me as a different kind of project and definitely worth making.

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Seven Reduced to One

Lawsuits, it seems, are being consolidated.

A motion to combine all legal filings went unopposed by embattled studio [Sony}.

A California federal judge has approved a motion to combine seven class action lawsuits filed by Sony Pictures employees into one. ... The suits came after November’s studio hack, that dumped thousands of personal employee documents on filesharing sites including their medical records, social security numbers and emails.

“Consolidation will eliminate duplication of effort and make litigating the case more convenient and efficient for the parties and the Court,” the papers read. Sony, referred to as SPE, did not oppose the ruling.

There are also wage suppression lawsuits being wrestled with, so it's not a happy season for Sony.

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Get your tickets to the Day At The Races!

* click image for a larger view

The 2015 IATSE and MPTF Day At The Races will be held on Saturday, January 31st. The Day At The Races is a family oriented fund raising event benefiting the Motion Picture Television Fund (MPTF). The MPTF has provided a safety net of programs and social services to the entertainment community for almost 100 years.

See the video made from last year's event.

Get your tickets on MPTF's Day At The Races Page. Your ticket buys admission, parking, a lunch buffet and access to the racing, raffles, silent auction and children's activities.

Join fellow members and their families in an afternoon filled with fun and frivolity that helps to keep MPTF the charity organization that keeps Hollywood "Taking Care of it's Own".

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Comic Book New-Comers

The rival conglomerate across town won't be sitting on its Spandex while Marvel sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

Mark Pedowitz, speaking at the Television Critics Association, remarked on plans to expand with even more DC Comics themed programming. When asked about the possibility of an Atom spinoff starring Brandon Routh, Arrow executive producer Greg Berlanti said that the network is in "very early talks on a very general idea that we haven't gone deeper on yet." ...

Ah, but it ain't just about the live-action. ...

Vixen is going to join Arrow and The Flash on the CW this Fall...just not in the way we might have expected. The former Suicide Squad and occasional Justice League member is getting an animated series on CW Seed, the network's home for digital only series. Vixen (Mari Jiwe McCabe) has the ability to mimic animal powers, and her Suicide Squad background should make for an easy introduction into the Arrow-verse. ...

Marc Guggenheim told Comic Book Resources that the Vixen animated series is a six-part origin story, set in Detroit. He promises that since animation doesn't have the kind of budgetary restrictions that live-action TV does, they will have "a much larger production value" to work with. ...

Warner Bros./D.C. has had a bit more success, comparatively speaking, with animated caped heroes than it's achieved in the live-action universe*. But then, it's had a long head-start against the Diz Co. up-and-comers.

* Not counting the Christopher Nolan pictures.

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Newest Marvel Animated Hybrid

The super heroes frolic.



The last Avengers raked in over a billion dollars. Undoubtedly the Mouse expects big things from #2.

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The Empires Strike Back

The Mouse and Associates aren't taking the wage suppression lawsuits in a recumbent position.

Just over a month after the trio of class-action lawsuits against Disney, Sony, DreamWorks Animation and other animation studios were consolidated into a single complaint, some of the heavyweight defendants in the alleged anti-poaching and wage-fixing case have struck back – on several fronts.

The first line of attack is a dense filing in federal court late last week by the studios seeking to have the amended class action from digital artists David Wentworth, Robert Nitsch Jr. and Georgia Cano dismissed “in its entirety with prejudice” (read it here). The primary thrust of their argument is that the statute of limitations has expired on the trio’s claims. ...

It's not surprising that Our Fine Entertainment Conglomerates are responding to the lawsuits alleging wage suppression with Uzis blazing. Freezing forward movement on the case or ... better yet ... shutting the suits down would be a good thing.

So they're taking a multi-pronged approach: 1) The suits are untimely ("Hey, good try, but the statutes of limitations has kicked in!"). And 2) The wage disputes should have been arbitrated, per the plaintiffs Personal Service Contracts.

By and by, we'll see which way Judge Koh rules.

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The Gaston Phenomenon

The things that go viral ....



This went up on YouTube January 2nd. My wife, who is all-knowing and all-seeing regarding Le Internet, pointed the video out to me three days later.

Hardly anybody had looked at it at that point. Only 3.5 million people.

So now here we are on Day 9, and the damn thing has 8,115,693 views. I find this intriguing because there appears to be a whole YouTube subset of Gaston (Disney World version) of which the citizens of the World Wide Web canNOT get enough.

It's gratifying that it's tied (albeit distantly) to one of my favorite animated features, but there is truly no accounting for taste.

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The Globes' Best

The best animated feature is ... How to Train Your Dragon II.

And director Dean DeBlois thanks the out-going Bill Damaschke and incoming Bonnie Arnold (by happy coincidence the producer of the feature). As Jeffrey K. looks on.

Well-deserved win.

Add On: Mr DeBlois talks about HTTYD2:

...What was your process in constructing this successful sequel?

It comes from a general allergy to sequels and the sense that they often feel so unnecessary and lack the integrity of the original. I pitched the idea of a trilogy with a larger architecture to it, where threads that were set up in the first film would be carried forward in the second and paid off in a very finite way come third. ...

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World Box Office

Animated movies continue to rake in coin.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

Night at the Museum -- $46,200,000 -- ($248,123,488)

The Hobbit -- $21,800,000 -- ($781,817,487)

Into the Woods -- $7,600,000 -- ($120,571,929

Exodus: Gods and Kings -- $15,000,000 -- ($231,752,105)

Big Hero 6 -- $12,600,000 -- ($408,958,958)

Unbroken -- $5,700,000 -- ($115,602,305)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $9,000,000 -- ($287,777,626)

Paddington -- %6,500,000 -- ($120,000,000)

As an entertainment journal notes:

... Big Hero 6 has become the 8th Walt Disney Animation Studios’ title to cross the $400M threshold at the global box office, with $214M domestically and $195M internationally for a total $408.96M. ...

Fox’s Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb unearthed $26.72M in its first China week. The final installment of the franchise opened in the Middle Kingdom last Sunday and played on 3,887 screens reaching the No. 1 spot and outpacing the last Night At The Museum by 287%. ...

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies entrenched for another $21.8M in 65 markets this frame. The international total is now $545.3M with China yet to go. ...

Paddington has already had successful runs in different overseas markets and now unspools stateside.

PoM has had solid openings overseas, and the pic should have global earnings over $300 million by the end of next weekend, and a couple of weeks after? It should pass Rise of the Guardians' $307 million total. Sadly, Penguins hasn't been a barn-burner in the U.S. and Canada; this, also sadly, is impacting the worldwide accumulation, but what can you do?

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At the Autry

Gene's Museum once again hosted the Animation Guild's holiday (post-holiday?) party on Friday night. ...

Downstairs and upstairs spaces, early on.

Somewhere between nine hundred and twelve hundred people showed up for the festivities, and as usual at these events, guild members (and friends) partied in the galleries, in the central hallways, and out in the large exterior courtyard, visiting with old friends and catching up.

We were uptight about a rainstorm sweeping in. Happily, no water from the sky spattered the Animation Guild's annual party. ...

A view of the lower party space from the museum's central stairway ...

Hulett and President Emeritus Tom Sito at the Autry's front entrance ...

Tom thought this shot was Kubriquesque. The photographer, executive board member Bronnie Barry, thought it was what happens when no flash is used.

So why do we have a "holiday party" on January 9th? Mostly to avoid the Christmas and New Year's crush. And it gives everybody something to look forward to after the holly, lights and tinsel get taken down.


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Box Office of America

Liam Neeson owns this three-day stretch.

Box Office -- January 9-11

1). Taken 3 (Fox), 3,594 theaters /$14.7M Fri. / 3-Day: $38.6M /Total cume: $38.6M/ Wk 1
*includes $1.6M Thursday sneak previews

2). Selma (Par), 2,179 theaters (+2,157) / $3.8M Fri. (1,595%)/ 3-Day: $11.75M(+1,758%)/Total cume: $14M / Wk 3

3). Unbroken (UNI), 3,301 theaters (+111) / $2.495M Fri. (-66%)/ 3-Day: $8.23M(-55%)/Total cume: $101.6M / Wk 3

4). The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (WB), 3,402 theaters (-473)/$2.38M (-71%)Fri./ 3-Day: $8.61M (-60%) /Total cume: $235.7M/ Wk 4

5). Into The Woods (DIS), 2,833 theaters (+295) / $2.36M Fri. (-68%)/ 3-Day:$8.68M (-54%)/Total cume:$103.8M / Wk 3

6). The Imitation Game (TWC), 1,566 theaters (+812) / $2.025M Fri.(-31%) / 3-Day: $7.04M (-9%)/Total cume: $40.3M / Wk 7

7). The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (Relativity), 2,602 theaters / $1.782M Fri. (-77%)/ 3-Day:$5.4M (-64%)/ Total cume: $22.9M / Wk 2

8). Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (FOX), 3,371 theaters (-431) / $1.59M Fri. (-73%) / 3-Day: $7.33M(-49%)/Total cume: $100.2 / Wk 4

9). Annie (Sony), 2,856 theaters (-310) / $1.02M Fri. (-78%)/ 3-Day: $4.34M (-61%)/ Total cume: $78.8M / Wk 4

10). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (LGF),2,063 theaters (-442) / $1M Fri. (-66%)/ 3-Day:$3.78M (-50%)/Total cume: $329.6M/ Wk 8

Big Hero 6 has slipped out of the Top Ten to #11, and will likely end with a total accumulation of $218 million by the end of Sunday.

Penguins of Madagascar at #13 will probably reach $80 million at the end of the weekend. And Boxtrolls (#34), still in 131 theaters, will hit $51 million in the next few days.


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DreamWorks Animation Downgrade

Stock analysts continue to believe DWA is in for rough sledding.

Zacks lowered shares of Dreamworks Animation Skg (NYSE:DWA) from a neutral rating to an underperform rating in a report released on Friday. Zacks currently has $20.00 price objective on the stock.

Zacks’ analyst wrote, “DreamWorks performed encouragingly in the third quarter of 2014 reporting higher-than-expected revenues as well as earnings. The company’s third-quarter 2014 earnings (excluding special items) of $0.10 per share handsomely beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.04. Higher-than-expected revenues led to the earnings beat. Despite such an impressive show, the company’s movie business is still battling high volatility. Mounting marketing costs, limited number of film releases, stiff competition from large production houses and overdependence on its Feature Film business continue to act as headwinds for the company. ...

The studio has the same challenges that it's owned from the beginning: When the bulk of your revenue is dependent on each film being a hit, and one or more films under-perform (as some invariably will), the stock will ricochet around a lot.

This is why Jeffrey is keen to sell DWA to a larger entity. DreamWorks won't have to live and die on it slate of films. But it's good that the company continues to diversify with more merchandising, television, and amusement parks. They're all smart moves to make, and it's good to be making them.

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Rod Taylor, RIP

He was primarily an in-front-of-the-camera actor, but he had the lead voice role in one of Disney's finest animated features.

Rod Taylor, the Australian-born actor who starred in George Pal's adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," then decades later made a memorable swan-song appearance as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," died Wednesday. He was 84. ...

Taylor made his feature starring debut in 1960 sci-fier "The Time Machine" portraying a fictionalized Wells, who invents a time machine in Victorian England and travels to the distant future. The next year he voiced the lead canine, Pongo, in Disney's "101 Dalmatians". ...

Mr. Taylor was no any kind of a "name" when he was cast as Daddy Dalmation. He'd been a supporting actor in movies and television during the fifties, and was a thirty-year-old thespian looking for his big break. He found it with The Time Machine, but it's Dalmations from '61 that is a more iconic film.

Mr. Taylor was never a super-star, but he had a long and prolific career. In a profession where brief bankability ... or no bankability at all ... is the norm, the fact that he worked for sixty years is impressive.

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Renewal

Comedy Central might take away, but Fox is in a giving mood.

... On Thursday, Fox announced that the Emmy-winning animated series Bob's Burgers will return for a sixth season. Season six will consist of an additional 22 episodes. The renewal marks the first major pickup for Fox under network chairmen Dana Walden and Gary Newman. ...

As another entertainment journal notes:

Despite largely flying under the radar, getting fraction of the attention fellow Fox animated series The Simpsons and Family Guy are getting, Bob’s Burgers has quietly reached a milestone very few broadcast series achieve — a sixth season. ...

Bob’s Burgers has not been a ratings hit of the size of The Simpsons and Family Guy but has developed a loyal following despite frequent time slot moves. This past fall, it held 100% of its season premiere rating in Week 2. The series also has been a critical darling, recently landing an Annie and and two WGA nominations, and has been a favorite of Fox and 20th Century Fox TV brass. ...

The BB writers and artistic staff work in Bento's Burbank studio. Congratulations to everyone involved! Top to bottom, the crew works hard ... and deserves its success.

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Charlie II

Not enough that artists get gunned down:

... [W]hile glorifying [the French magazine] Charlie Hebdo, outlets are simultaneously thumbing their noses at the cartooning industry.

Outlets quickly aggregated and storified the responses of cartoonists, usually by embedding tweets, without contacting artists to obtain rights. (Two notable exceptions: Medium’s The Nib and Fusion’s Graphic Culture are only publishing work with permission, and they're both paying for what they publish.)

It’s a natural evolution of the digital media landscape, where explainers and roundups are king. This process is also unethical. Cartoonists, especially those who work in the journalism space, are often on the front lines of cultural conflict. They receive threats of physical harm and are often freelancers. They often make very little money for hours of hard work. ...

Full disclosure here, I haven't checked to see if Erin Polgreen's representations above are correct. But assuming they are, this pretty much fits the historical norm. Down through time, cartoonists have often been abused and exploited. And even when they are paid, they're usually underpaid. The killings just take the abuse to a new, horrifying level.

Add On: This might be what Erin P. is talking about. Hopefully, the Wall Street Journal has cleared and paid for the cartoons.

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The BYU Shorts

Jeff, the all time super ultra mega fighter turbo champion, takes great pleasure crushing the opposition beneath his sandals like so many discarded potato chips. After many long days searching the internet he finds, at last, a worthy foe.

Brigham Young University has had a going animation program for a while now, and they've put up a batch of shorts at the well-loved Vimeo. You can see it here, along with the remaining dozen.

Owned will (likely) have resonance with males in what's now called "the key demographic". Click here to read entire post

Moving Past Animation

Richard Bazley is like a lot of animation talents I've known. A love of drawing propelled him first to commercials, then to a smash animation/live-action feature produced by Steven Spielberg, and after that to Los Angeles and the hand-drawn, long-form entertainments Pocahontas, Hercules and Iron Giant.



Richard worked as a supervising animator for both Disney and Warner Bros., but found (as others did) that changing technology required new skills. He learned Maya for Osmosis Jones, and those skills carried him through a string of live-action and CG features.

Today, Mr. Bazley focuses on live-action projects, with occasional forays into animation. The shifting currents of the cartoon business have carried him a long way from the sunlit shores of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Pocahontas.

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Brickleberry Ends

Comedy Central series wraps after three seasons.

Brickleberry, executive produced by Comedy Central star Daniel Tosh, was an unlikely success when it debuted in 2012, airing behind Tosh’s highly rated Tosh.0 on Tuesdays. Its strength has been young male viewers, with the toon winning its slot among men 18-24 for the first two seasons. Brickleberry’s third, and now final, season ended its run on November 18.

Brickleberry, created/executive produced by Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, revolved around a group of dysfunctional park rangers at a second-tier national park. Brickleberry, executive produced by Comedy Central star Daniel Tosh, was an unlikely success when it debuted in 2012, airing behind Tosh’s highly rated Tosh.0 on Tuesdays. Its strength has been young male viewers, with the toon winning its slot among men 18-24 for the first two seasons. Brickleberry’s third, and now final, season ended its run on November 18.

Brickleberry, created/executive produced by Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, revolved around a group of dysfunctional park rangers at a second-tier national park. ... The series was produced by Fox 21 TV Studios, with Bento Box executing the animation.

A couple of months ago, a Bento Box staffer* told me the series was pretty much over:

... Fox is trying to move the show to another network, but nobody holds out a lot of hope that will happen. I think it's over. ...

I was sworn to secrecy, and promised to keep my yap shut and typing fingers quiet, which I did. I break minor animation stories from time to time, but not when I'm to asked not to. I'm a union rep, not a news person. (Mostly.)

* I earlier referenced a supervisor, which was in ERROR. It was a Brickleberry person NOT a supervisor.

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The Attack on Cartoonists

... today in Paris:

Masked gunmen attacked the Paris offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 12 people before fleeing.

French security forces launched a major manhunt in the capital after the gunmen fled the scene of the attack, The Guardian reported. Police are searching for two brothers from the Paris region and another man from the northern French city of Reims in connection with the attack, a police source told Reuters.

The attackers stormed Charlie Hebdo's Paris newsroom during an editorial meeting and began firing indiscriminately, police and prosecutors said. Witnesses told police that the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the prophet," according to Agence France-Presse. Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corinne Rey said the gunmen spoke to her in fluent French and claimed to represent al Qaeda. The gunmen called out some of the victims' names, she told Reuters.

A video, apparently filmed by an onlooker outside the office, shows two gunmen dressed in black, firing automatic weapons down the street and shouting "Allahu Akbar." ...

French media named four CH cartoonists among the dead: Stepahne Charbonniere, Cabu, Georges Wolinksi, and Bernard Verlhac.

So you know where TAG stands on this:

No human being who exercises the God-given right of free expression should be murdered for expressing an opinion or viewpoint that another part of humanity dislikes or even finds repugnant. The killing of French cartoonists and magazine staffers today was both cowardly and disgusting, and the Animation Guild stands with the French people in denouncing this act, and sends its heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims.”

-- The Animation Guild, Local 839, IATSE

Add On: Deadline has published the statements of entertainment unions (including the Animation Guild) regarding the murders of French cartoonists.

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Amazon, Content Provider

An attorney reminded me this morning how Microsoft's stab at doing original programs didn't achieve lift off. Not so for this internet giant.

Amazon's first pilot season of 2015 will premiere on Thursday, Jan. 15, in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, it was announced Tuesday.

The slate of 13 shows includes ... four animated shows and two live-action programs. The animated shows include Buddy: Tech Detective (created in part by Fraggle Rock, The Magic School Bus and Angelina Ballerina writer Jocelyn Stevenson); Sara Solves It, an animated musical from Curious George and Arthur executive producer Carol Greenwald and Blue's Clues and Wishenpoof! writer Angela C. Santomero with animation production handled by DHX (Inspector Gadget); and Nikeo and the Sword of Light, based on the motion graphic comic by Imaginism Studios, which worked on character and concept designs for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Men in Black 3. ...

The last couple of years has seen an explosion of small-screen cartoons. Disney, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. and Viacom are all creating more product. Hasbro continues in the game, and while DreamWorks Animation is cutting back on feature staff and feature output, it is going pedal-to-the-metal with half-hour television (and will be for the next few years).

Amazon is now in the race, competing with Netflix and others. This is a good thing, because you can never have too much animation production.

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Class Action

It gets stickier for Sony.

A former software engineer at [Sony Pictures] has filed the latest class-action lawsuit over the hack, claiming that his personal information “may have been compromised as a result of the security breach.” Anastasio Garcia Rodriguez, who worked at Sony Pictures from February 2011 to May 2013, claims the info obtained by the hackers “includes at a minimum his Social Security number, immigration information and visa, and passport information.” ...

First thought: It will be challenging for plaintiffs to convince a jury that Sony “failed to exercise reasonable care in the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of IT security procedures, infrastructure, personnel, and protocols”.

There's going to be a raft of experts testifying that Sony was prudent, but the Korean government used extraordinary measures to get Sony's data (and what the hell is a company supposed to do?).

If this lawsuit reaches class-action status, and a jury hears it, I'm not convinced the plaintiffs will necessarily prevail. It might not be an easy leap over the "reasonable care" barrier.

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Japanese Blockbuster

To nobody's surprise.

Disney’s “Big Hero 6” climbed atop the Japanese box office for the peak New Year’s holiday period. Released in Japan on Dec. 20, the picture recorded $5.6 million on 505,000 admissions on Jan. 3-4 .

By Jan. 4, its 16th day on release, its cumulative total had risen to $34.6 million on 3.36 million admissions, the second fastest box office pace for a Disney animation, after “Frozen.”

Given the setting, protagonist and subject matter, this isn't a surprise.

Walt's place has itself one more winner.

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Prez Emeritus Tom Sito's "Month in Animation History"

As he does each month, Mr. Sito (animation veteran and college professor) gives us the happenings that occurred in Cartoonland (and lands adjacent) during January. ...



Jan 3, 1977 - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne file papers to form the Apple Computer Company. Within two weeks, Ron Wayne sold his third of the company to Jobs and Woz for $800. He thought he’d get stuck with the bills when their little company went belly-up.

Jan 4, 1946 – Terrytoons’ The Talking Magpies debuts; the first Heckle and Jeckyl cartoon.

Jan 4, 1956 - Walt Disney has lunch with his old competitor Max Fleischer, now retired.

Jan 5, 1896 - Josef Pulitzers’ New York World begins printing the Sunday Yellow Kid comic strip with a yellow color on his shirt. (The strip gave the name to the sensationalist tabloid press 'Yellow Journalism".)

Jan 6, 1945 - First Pepe Le Pew cartoon Odorable Kitty premieres. When the Warner’s producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, hears the plans to do a short about a skunk he thunders: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will like a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion: "Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" The short won an Oscar.

Jan 6, 1962 - Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent premieres. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show. “So Long Kids, Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.”

Jan 7, 1894 - The Sneeze, the first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer W.K.L. Dickson, premieres.

Jan 7, 1929 - With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster starts drawing the Tarzan comic strip.

Jan 9, 1914 - John Randolph Bray files patents on the principles of film animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even tries to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years. When Bray died in 1977 at age 107, Animator Michael Sporn called young animator Tom Sito and said “Well, I guess we’re all allowed to animate now. It’s in public domain!”

Jan 9, 1939 – Walt Disney hires Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin. He quits after two fruitless years, and leaves so angry he writes a children’s book called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. (An early vice president of the Screen Cartoonists Guild, he also joined the Mouse House to help unionize the studio. After a stint at Screen Gems, in 1945 Frank Tashlin went to Paramount’s live-action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.)

Jan 12, 1995 - Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen announce the name of their new partnership will be DreamWorks SKG.

Jan 12, 2004 - Disney closes down their Orlando animation studio.

Jan. 13, 1930 - The Mickey Mouse comic strip first appears in US newspapers. Walt Disney himself writes them, Ub Iwerks pencils and Winn Smith inks.

Jan. 13, 1979 - Russian animator Yuriy Noshteyn’s’ Tale of Tales premieres.

Jan 14, 1964 - Hanna & Barbera's The Magilla Gorilla Show premieres.

Jan. 15, 1936 - THE DGA FORMS - Several Hollywood directors including Lewis Milestone, Ruben Mamoulian and William Wellman meet at King Vidor’s house and pledge $100 dollars each to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later the Director’s Guild of America. It was a risky thing to do, previous attempts to form a directors union were broken up with threats of perpetual blacklisting. Final recognition and contracts were signed by President Frank Capra in 1940. One provision insisted in the contract was the director’s credit be the final name in the opening titles before the movie began. And so it remains.

Jan 16, 1954 - THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kevfauver chairs a U.S. Senate subcommittee to study juvenile delinquency. They conclude that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books. The probe is sparked by the publication of a book called The Seduction of the Innocent. It charges (among other things) that Batman & Robin are gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounge around all day in silk pajamas with no women! Despite testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines 350 comic book companies, including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label, are driven out of business. The strict comics-code is established. The comic book industry, which has been selling one million books a month, never regains that level of prosperity in the US again.

Jan 17, 1929 - Popeye first appears in the "Thimble Theater" comic strip.

Jan 17, 1949 - The Goldbergs, a radio comedy show about a Jewish family in the Bronx, moves to television and becomes the first true TV sitcom. The show ends when star Jean Muir is accused by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of being a Communist.

Jan 18, 1952 - The Animation Guild Local 839, IATSE is chartered. Originally named the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists, charter signatory members include Disney legends Milt Kahl, Les Clark, John Hench and Ken Anderson.

Jan 20, 1938 - Pioneer animator Emile Cohl dies while headed for the Paris premiere of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Cohl is so poor that the electricity in his flat had been turned off, and candles had ignited his beard.

Jan. 21, 1992 - Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Jan 24, 1961 - Warner Bros. voice actor Mel Blanc suffers an auto crash at the Dead Man’s Curve section of Sunset Blvd near UCLA. He lingers in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brings him around is to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replies in character:” Ehhh … fine, doc!”

Jan 25, 1961 - Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians premieres.

Jan 26, 1934 - Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn buys the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie.

Jan 27, 1926 - Englishman John Logie Baird demonstrates his televisor system- the first true television image.

Jan 28, 1930 – WARNER BROS. CARTOON - Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signs a deal with several unemployed Disney animators. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for The Jazz Singer. The home of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and more ... is born.

Jan 29, 1959 - Disney's Sleeping Beauty opens. The Disney animation staff reaches its highest number to finish the production. After the film, the studio undergoes a massive layoff dropping from 551 to just 121. People employed since the 1930s are pink-slipped. Two painters commit suicide. Staff levels don't return to the late '50s level until 1990.

Jan 30, 1963 - MIT Grad student Ivan Sutherland published his thesis project: Sketchpad, the first animation software. He created it on a declassified Cold War computer originally used to track Soviet missiles. For the first time, a computer can draw lines instead of just crunching numbers.

Jan 30 1961 – Hanna-Barbera's The Yogi Bear Show premieres.

Jan. 31, 1999 - Seth McFarlane’s Family Guy premieres. (And gets canceled after a couple of years before being relaunched after becoming a hit on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" ... also selling a hell of a lot of DVDs. -- Hulett)

Jan. birthdates: B. “Hap” Kliban, J.R.R. Tolkein, Hayao Miyazaki, John Lasseter, Gustav Doré, James Stewart Blackton, Genndy Tartakovsky, Wilfred Jackson, Phil Mendez, Dave Pruiksma, TinTin, Charles Adams, Roy E. Disney, Pres Romanillos, John Sibley, Jack London, Hal Roach, Max Sennett, Jules Feiffer, Ross Bagdasarian Sr., Frank Miller

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Spirit of Melendez

Blue Sky Studios published a new Peanuts trailer ...




And what strikes me is how well it captures the Bill Melendez approach to the Schulz characters, even as it wraps its arms around CG images.

The universe of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy has always lent it self well to half-hour story-telling, so it'll be intriguing to see how the long-form works on the big screen, coupled with CGI.

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Foreign Box Office

From our friends at Rentrak and elsewhere. You got your CG live-action features, you got your cartoons.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

Hobbit 3 -- $52,500,000 -- ($722,866,968)

Night at Museum 3 -- $26,000,000 -- ($182,125,652)

Exodus: Gods/Kings -- $31,500,000 -- ($203,724,102)

Penguins de Madagascar -- $23,000,000 -- ($271,590,971)

Big Hero 6 (but actually #1) -- $20,200,000 -- ($378,668,220)

Paddington -- $12,500,000 -- ($105,000,000)

The journals of movie-making tell us:

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies continued to wage war on the international box office with $52.5M in its 4th frame. Showing at 13,900 dates in 65 markets, the Orcs, Elves and Dwarves have now amassed $502.1M. ... Exodus: Gods And Kings grossed $31.57M from 51 markets — besting last frame’s $30.9M performance. That’s largely down to six new markets which included Russia. ...

Night At The Museum, Secret Of The Tomb, picked up 26M from 6,680 screens in 56 markets in its 3rd history lesson. That’s a healthily small holiday drop from last week’s $31.2M. ... Penguins Of Madagascar spied their way to another $23.1M this market, in yet another example of how extended release patterns benefit these DreamWorks Animation titles. ... Big Hero 6 opened in Taiwan this weekend where it posted $1.9M, the second highest all-time debut weekend for an animated release and biggest ever for a Disney Animation studio title. ...

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Some Rise ...

... while others step down.

DreamWorks Animation announced today that it has appointed two veteran producers, Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria, as co-presidents of feature animation. In their new roles, Arnold and Soria, respectively the lead producers behind the studio’s How to Train Your Dragon and Madagascar franchises, will oversee creative development and production for DreamWorks Animation’s theatrical releases. Between them, they have produced eight films at DreamWorks that have grossed more than $3.5 billion globally. As part of this transition, chief creative officer Bill Damaschke will step down from his position. ...

Left unsaid in the press release is whether Mr. Damaschke will remain with the company, but I would tend to think not. When you're the head creative person (not counting J. Katzenberg) and the recent slate of pictures has failed to perform up to expectations, someone must be slipped the axe ... and then, to demonstrate good form, that someone needs to exit quietly.

And that's usually the person at or near the top of the pyramid. I imagine, in due course, that Mr. Damschke will be announcing future plans.

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Just Leave It the F*ck Alone

Your 401(k) thought for the day: When we shifted from Mass Mutual to Vanguard last summer, most everybody's money got moved into Vanguard Retirement Funds, which provide wide diversification over different classes of assets.

But the trick isn't dumping your money into balanced portfolio, it's not screwing around with it after the dough lands there.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett is known for advising others to hold a conservative portfolio.

"My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund," he wrote to shareholders of his company Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year.

New data from investment adviser SigFig leads to a similar conclusion.

After analyzing portfolios held by 325,000 users, the robo-adviser found something interesting: The most successful investors in the group were also the least active. ...

But it's not just the SigFig research. There is also this from Financial Advisor Mike O'Shaughnessy:

"Fidelity had done a study as to which accounts had done the best at Fidelity. And what they found was ... they were the accounts of people who forgot they had an account at Fidelity."

So I guess the best advice we could give you: Put your money in a balanced, low-cost mutual fund, then blank out on having it there for twenty or thirty years.

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A Hand Drawn Animated Feature

Of Latvian descent.



Rocks in My Pockets was completed a year ago, but is just now getting a rollout in the U.S. of A. It's been doing the festival circuit, and is pretty clearly a movie that will likely travel to various art houses before its theatrical release morphs into home video. The movie arrives at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Monday.

An animated feature in which director-animator Signe Baumane explores the roots of the depression that afflicts women in her family, starting with her Latvian grandmother. ...

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Your American Box Office

Big Hero 6 clings to the bottom rung of the Big Ten:

Weekend Box Office

1). The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (WB), 3,875 theaters $8.27M Fri. (-47%)/3-Day: $22.18M (-46%)/Total cume: $221M/Wk 3

2). Unbroken (UNI), 3,190 theaters (+59)/$7.5M Fri. (-39%)/3-Day: $21.09M (-31%)/Total cume: $90.8M/Wk 2

3). Into The Woods (DIS), 2,538 theaters (+98)/$7.47M Fri. (-39%)/3-Day:$18.65M (-40%)/Total cume:$91.7M/Wk 2

4.) The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death (Relativity), 2,602 theaters /$7.39M Fri.*/3-Day: $15.15M/Total cume: $15.15M/Wk 1 (includes $1.5M from Thursday night sneak previews)

5). Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (FOX), 3,802 theaters (-112)/$6.11M Fri. (-17%)/3-Day: $15.95M (-21%)/Total cume: $91.45 /Wk 3

6). Annie (Sony), 3,166 theaters (-31)/$4.85M Fri. (-20%/3-Day: $12.22M (-26%)/Total cume: $73.4M/Wk 3

7). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (LGF), 2,505 theaters (-288)/$2.99M Fri. (-15%)/3-Day:$7.7M (-23%)/Total cume: $324.1M/Wk 7

8.) The Imitation Game (TWC), 754 theaters (+7)/$2.86M Fri. (-1%)/3-Day: $8.3M (+4%)/Total cume: $31M/Wk 6

9). The Gambler (PAR), 2,494 theaters (+16)/$2.465M Fri. (-28%)/3-Day:$6.8M (-25%)/Total cume: $28.1M/Wk 2

10). Big Hero 6 (DIS), 1,913 theaters (-152)/$1.87M Fri. (+13%)/3-Day: $5.3M(+6%)/Total cume: $211.8M/Wk 9

Meantime, Penguins of Madagascar has fallen to unlucky #13 and has yet to crack $80 million in domestic box office. It collected $755,000 less than BH6, even though it's been in release a much shorter time it's playing in 328 fewer theaters, and making less money in each of them.

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Retaliation

The States strike back.

U.S. Spies Say They Tracked ‘Sony Hackers’ For Years

American spies have detailed dossiers on the North Koreans who the U.S. says were behind the Sony attack. But the still-secret evidence likely won’t convince skeptics.

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies for years have been tracking the hackers who they believe to be behind the cyber attack on Sony, according to current and former American officials. And during that long pursuit, U.S. agencies accumulated still-classified information that helps tie the hackers to the recent Sony intrusion.

The Obama administration announced a round of sanctions against North Korea Friday, and explicitly said the measures were in retaliation for the “destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.” ...

Of late, there have been stories saying things like "Oh, this deal wasn't really North Korea doing the hack, it was disgruntled employees.", and generally saying the guvmint had this baby wrong.

I've never bought the "angry employee" scenario because it just doesn't add up. I mean what kind of employee destroys whole data systems and threatens to blow up theaters showing a low-brow comedy because they got laid off?

Attila the Accountant?

No, Korea is the most likely suspect because it had motive, means, and made its opportunity. And the other stories don't make nearly as much sense.

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Engelhardt and Parrish

Two Disney animators (also TAG members) expound on Big Hero 6.



What astounds me about BH6 is, even as production time shrinks, the quality of the animation remains high. Another animator explained to me last Fall that the crew really moved footage on this feature, putting in a lot of long weeks to get the project screen-ready by the release date.

Big Hero 6 is now north of $207 million domestically, with a worldwide accumulation of $327,352,220.

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What Mr. Kennedy Said

... about soundtracks and music.

... The right music can make the difference between a moment working and not working. As an illustration of how true this is, check out this youtube video of the final scene of "Star Wars" with the score removed. This went viral a few months ago, but for those of you who haven't seen it, take a look. ....

Star Wars' music was a throwback to the scores of big-budget adventure films from the thirties and forties. Then, Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold often did the honors. Note how Mr. Korngold punches up this action sequence (and imagine how an audience would react to all the action, as well-choreographed and nicely shot as it is, without the music):



When I was in elementary school, I devoured old Warner Bros. films that ran on local television during the weekends. They enthralled me, and I wasn't sure why. Later I figured out that a lot of it had to do with the music.

Decades later, the dynamics of blockbuster films haven't changed a hell of a lot. Much of the reason Frozen became such a monster hit was because of the songs and score.

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Cartoon Ratings

The animated half-hours, they hold up well in prime time.

The Simpsons come in a strong second behind televised football, Family Guy performs well in its time slot, with Bob's Burgers a couple of notches behind. ...

Who watches what:

Broadcast Ratings -- Share -- Viewers

8:00 -- Football Night -- 11 -- 11.16m
The Simpsons -- 7 -- 5.61m
Revenge -- 1 -- 1.94m

9:00 -- Family Guy 4 -- 3.08m
Revenge -- 1 -- 1.53m

9:30 -- The Mentalist -- 4 -- 8.48m
Bob's Burgers -- 3 -- 2.52m

The Simpsons, as seen above, still pulls in viewers a quarter century after original launch, maybe because they keep pushing envelopes and using fresh faces:

'The Simpsons' Judd Apatow Script Will Air In 2015 After Being Written 25 Years Ago

... Most writers in Hollywood have a litany of spec scripts lying around that never went anywhere. However, [Judd Apatow] ... mentioned his “Simpsons” script in an interview a few years ago that was read by Al Jean, of The Simpsons executive producers. ... [Al Jean] told Apatow that now was the time to make his dusty spec script happen.

Apatow submitted the script for the episode -- titled "Bart's New Friend" and set to air Jan. 11 -- when “The Simpsons” had only aired its first six episodes. It focuses on Homer being the subject of a botched hypnosis act. He’s left thinking he’s a 10-year-old boy and immediately befriends his son, Bart. The family has difficulty getting Homer to return to normal because he's enjoying being a kid. ...

“The reason I brought up the 'Simpsons’ episode is because I realized ... that everything I had ever written was the premise of the first thing I had ever written,” said [Apatow] “All of my stories are about people trying hard not to grow up.” ...

Simpson artists sometimes wonder aloud how long the series will run. I tell them, thirty years at least. But I could be wrong. It will probably run thirty-five.


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