World Box Office

The international grosses of things animated.

Foreign Weekend Box office -- (World Totals)

Minions -- $10,900,000 -- ($1,043,800,000)

Ant-Man -- $10,000,000 -- ($383,690,000)

Terminator Genisys -- $11,500,000 -- ($435,879,703)

Inside Out -- $7,100,000 -- ($734,419,280)

Jurassic World -- $2,700,000 -- ($1,650,500,000)

Pixels -- $3,200,000 -- ($194,049,314)

Ted 2 -- $4,700,000 -- ($201,284,830)

Fantastic Four -- $3,500,000 -- ($155,645,511) ...

The trades inform us of the worldwide doings:

... This is the 3rd weekend in a row for Terminator: Genisys to hold the No. 1 spot, taking $11.5M from seven markets for an international tally of $346.3M. China delivered the dragon’s share of that with $11.4M at 4,300 locations. ...

Minions added $10.9M in 57 territories for a total of $714.2M overseas. The worldwide total is now $1.044B. Turkey was a No. 1 opening and a Universal best for an animated film. ...

Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man crawled into Korea and grew with $9.2M, a great result for the superhero pic. It’s the best Marvel Cinematic Universe bow for a first installment there. ...

Inside Out took its bag of tricks to Greece this frame and bowed to the biggest opening day ever for a Pixar film. Disney also notes that the pic has surpassed director Pete Docter’s own Up to become the 4th highest-grossing Pixar movie of all time globally. ...

Ted 2 rose in Japan, ascending the No. 1 slot with a weekend gross of $2.4M for a 9-day total of $10.7M. The full frame saw $4.7M in additional coin in 45 territories for a total of $120M. ... Pixels is closing in on $200M worldwide with a weekend of $3.2M and an international coin slot filled with $120.7M. ...

Shaun The Sheep, which Uni acquired for Spain and Latin America, opened in eight territories for $975K, lifting the Universal total to $4.4M. ...

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Back In Viacom-Owned-Characters Land

Time to exploit the catalogue.

... Nickelodeon cartoon series of the ’90s are making a return in the biggest way possible.

Sources exclusively confirm to The Tracking Board that Paramount Pictures is in the early stages of developing a massive live-action/animated crossover film featuring characters from hit ’90s Nick cartoons.

Rugrats, Angry Beavers, Hey Arnold!, Rocko’s Modern Life, Ren and Stimpy, and more are coming together for what’s being pitched as a Justice League or Avenger’s-esque team-up film called NICKTOONS. ...

Paramount is currently in discussions with different writers, looking for the perfect scribe to tackle a project balancing such immensely beloved properties. ...

And the beauty of it? Viacom doesn't have to go and negotiate rights with Disney, Warners, Universal (etc.) because the conglomerate will be using characters it already controls.

The ugliness is, these live action-animated cavalcades don't always hit a home-run. Or even a double. For every Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam, there is a Cool World (Brad Pitt be damned) and Back in Action.

So we extend best wishes and Happy Box Office to our friends at Nick/Paramount/Fleischer Studios, Inc. And may the feature you're now contemplating make five times its production budget, and may the marketing of related merchandising go on until 2067.

At least.

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Harry Shearer

... talking about network radio (and Mel Blanc and Jack Benny), Katrina, and the early days of The Simpsons.

Mr. Shearer also talks about his recent negotiations (and holdings-out) with Fox regarding the voice-acting gig as a cast member of The Yellow Family.

... "Talent is good, luck is better, but nothing beats sheer, brute persistence." ...

"Get into show business because you have to do it, not because you think it would 'be nice'."

H/t - The Big Picture and Barry Ritholtz.

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Weekend Box Office

The movie cavalcade gallops through the Labor Day Weekend.

Domestic U.S. Box Office

1). War Room (SONY), 1,526 theaters (+391) / $2.33M (-47%)/ 3-day cume: $8.97M (-21%) / 4-day cume: $11.9M / Total cume: $27.2M / Wk 2

2). Straight Outta Compton (UNI), 3,097 theaters (-45) / $2.23M Fri. / 3-day cume: $9.07M (-31%)/ 4-day cume: $11.53M / Total cume: $150.46MM / Wk 4

3). A Walk in the Woods (BGP), 1,960 theaters / $2.197M Fri. / 3-day cume: $7.76M / 4-day cume: $10M / Total cume: $11.6M / Wk 1

4). Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (PAR), 2,849 theaters (-246) / $1.68M Fri. / 3-day cume: $7.7M (-6%) / 4-day cume: $9.9M / Total cume: $183.1M / Wk 6

5). The Transporter Refueled (EURC), 3,434 theaters / $2.4M (includes $365K Fri.) / 3-day cume: $7.1M / 4-day cume: $8.8M / Wk 1

6). No Escape (TWC), 3,415 theaters (+60) / $1.32M Fri. (-46%) / 3-day cume: $5.27M (-35%) / 4-day cume: $6.77M / Total cume: $19.8M / Wk 2

7). Man From U.N.C.L.E (WB), 2,102 theaters (-604) / $841K Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.6M (-18%)/ 4-day cume: $4.7M / Total cume: $40.65M / Wk 4

8). Inside Out (DIS), 2,967 theaters (+2,204) / $612K Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.03M (+124)/ 4-day cume: $4.36M / Total cume: $349.5M / Wk 12

9). Gallo con Muchos Huevos (LGF), 395 theaters / $887K / 3-day cume: $3.29M / Per screen average: $8,329 / 4-day cume: $4.2M / Per screen average: $10,633 / Wk 1

10). Sinister 2 (Gramercy/Focus), 2,651 theaters (-148) / $879K Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.39M (-27%)/ 4-day cume: $4.19M / Total cume: $24.5M / Wk 3

11). Ant-Man (DIS), 1,527 theaters (-163) / $628K Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.02M (-2%) / 4-day cume: $4.05M / Total cume: $174.4M / Wk 8

12). Minions (UNI), 1,927 theaters (-49)/ $574K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.83M (-1%) /4-day cume: $4M/Total Cume: $329.9M / Wk 9

13). Gallo con Muchos Huevos (LGF), 395 theaters / $762K / 3-day cume: $2.8M / Per screen average: $7,118 / 4-day cume: $3.5M / Per screen average: $9,060 / Wk 1...

Kindly note that there are, on this three-day holiday, no less than three animated features in the Top Thirteen.

While Minions has dropped out of the Big Ten (but only barely, Disney has pushed Inside Out back into theaters for one last Hurrah as summer draws to a close.

A new entry from Mexico, Gallo con Muchos Huevos [Rooster With Many Eggs] is the movie with the highest per-screen gross among the top forty films.



The flick is pitched to the Hispanic demographic, and since there are 54 million Hispanics in the United States, that's a big audience.

Add On: The chicken picture, it is doing well.

... Lionsgate/Pantelion is setting solid numbers with its Spanish-language Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos, which opened in 395 theaters. The film is tracking to reach $4.4M over the holiday weekend, giving it a nice $11,139 theater average ($3.4M three-day, $8,608 average). ...

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Down Argentine Way

At the bottom of South America, there's a fledgling animation industry happening in fits and starts.

Despite a dearth of funding, Argentina’s animation industry remains a leader in Latin America and a pioneer of artistic innovation, as demonstrated by the Argentine entries in two festivals exhibiting the best of the craft. ...

Creativity, artistic mastery and low production costs are Argentina’s main competitive advantages in the field, to which Federico Moreno, head of producer Luty, would add: “the great capacity to adapt to unconventional situations and unforeseen events.” ...

Growth in Argentina’s animation industry is fueled by international demand for material for advertising, feature films and television series, but also by the incipient market for new technologies.

Virtual reality and transmedia storytelling open new opportunities for the production of content at costs, according to Manfredi, as much as 40 percent lower than in Europe or the United States. ...

But domestic production of animated feature films remains meager. ...

South America and Argentina are discovering what other continents have learned before them: It's not enough to have an inexpensive pipeline. You must also have product that global audiences want to see. Otherwise all you have is inexpensive shorts and features that nobody looks at, and so they still lose money.

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Good Box Office, But Not Great Overall Results

It turns out robust box office numbers were only wonderful for a chosen few.

Summer Box Office Poised To Be 2nd-Best Ever, So Why Isn’t Everybody Happy?

Despite all the great news about how this summer’s $4.36 billion box office is a 7% boom over last year’s dumpy ticket sales, several studios aren’t sharing the wealth in a season where Universal and Disney ruled 60% of stateside ticket sales. As of today, summer 2015 currently ranks third behind 2013’s record $4.77B and 2011’s $4.405B, however pundits think it will fly past that latter figure by the end of Labor Day.

Eight films out of the top 12 that cleared $100M+ were either Universal or Disney releases. Compare this to 2013, when 19 $100M-grossing titles were spread among the majors. ...

Let's see.

Disney had Inside Out and Universal had Minions. Those two offerings certainly helped the bottom line. And then there was that other animated hybrid disguised as a dinosaur movie entitled Jurassic World.

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Women In Animation - The Mentorship Program

Via WIA:

... Women In Animation, the professional, non-profit organization for women involved in all aspects of the animation industry, has announced that they are now accepting applications for their 2015-2016 Mentorship Program. Designed to empower, educate and support mentees by increasing their industry knowledge and access to information through relationships with experienced animation talent, the WIA Mentorship Program is open to all WIA members. Mentor and mentee applications will be available online until September 13,
2015.

The 2015-2016 WIA Mentorship Program is scheduled to run for seven months, from October 2015 through April 2016. Through the program, entry and mid-level professionals are paired with industry veterans to develop career objectives and devise strategies for reaching their goals. “Mentoring is one of the principles at the heart of WIA's mission and vision, and we look
forward to furthering our goal to foster leadership and encourage women to achieve their professional goals,” says WIA Co-President Kristy Scanlan.

The Mentorship Committee is spearheaded by Scanlan and committee chair Kaaren Lee Brown, “The pilot year of the program was a tremendous success, and we are thrilled to expand our program this year to welcome more pairings and to help more women in their efforts to succeed in our industry,” adds Brown. ...

TAG's current employment data shows that women in signator studios (Disney, Nick, DreamWorks, Warners, etc.) represent 21% of guild-represented employees. That's somewhat better than before, but not particularly "bang the drum" good.

So WIA's mentorship program is a positive thing. Not only does it give the women in the cartoon business some deserved assistance, but it broadens the demographic of artists, designers, technical directors and writers.

Onward and upward!


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Where the Cartoon Productions Live

The Hat Building. Outdated photo, but it's eye candy.

So as a kind of companion piece to the ever-popular (and ever changing) The Animated Productions Among Us, allow us to describe where the animation studios creating the magic are housed in Southern California.

The links below will lead to photographs! ...

Some of the significant cartoon makers:

Bento Box

They have a studios outside of L.A., but in California's San Fernando Valley there are two, one in Burbank and one in North Hollywood. Both front Magnolia Boulevard.

Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network lives under the Time-Warner umbrella, but reports to Turner headquarters in Atlanta. (There is also a second cartoon studio in that Southern city.) But CN's west coast studio sits on Third Street in Burbank, directly across from the Burbank Police Department. The studio also occupies several floors of an adjacent skyscraper.

Disney Television Animation

Invented in the mid 1980s, Disney TVA (or Walt Disney Television Animaion) has occupied numerous sites in the course of its existence. In the '90s it filled up several floors of the TV Academy's North Hollysood facility, but today it occupies two floors of a Disney-owned building on Sonora Avenue in Glendale, within blocks of the long-gone Grand Central Airport, also Marvel Animation ... Rough Draft Animation ... and DreamWorks Animation (feature division). Right next door sits the Disney Toon Studios building, which now houses units of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

(The studio also occupies one of the buildings of Burbank Media Center North, up near the Burbank/Bop Hope Airport on Hollywood Way.)

DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks Animation started life on the Universal City Studios lot in Los Angeles, in a building that had splendid views of the L.A. River, the Smokehouse Restaurant, and Warner Bros. Studio.

Today the studio occupies a site that's a few miles downstream, the river's wide concrete channel on one flank, and Flower Street on the other. Jeffrey Katzenberg's independent studio is two blocks from where Disney's Flower Street Studio used to be in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where Little Mermaid, Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were all made, supervised by Jeffrey Katzenberg.

(The television unit is housed in a skyscraper in another part of Glendale.)

Film Roman - Starz

Film Roman -- a play on founder Phil Roman's name -- started life in Toluca Lake (an upscale neighborhood on the southern edge of the San Fernando Valley) thirty years ago. Uncle Phil is long gone, and the studio now sits just north of Burbank/Hob Hope Airport on Hollywood Way. It's known for The Simpsons, their longest continuous project, although it ain't the first studio to work on The Yellow Family. That honor goes to Klasky-Csupo. (Hasbro's cartoon studio occupies the same building.)

Fox Television Animation

Fox TV Animation has studios on Wilshire Boulevard, cheek by jowl to the La Brea tar pits, where they produce Family Guy and American Dad. (In FG's early days, the studio existed in the Valley across from Gelson's supermarket. Before that, it was briefly at Film Roman -- see above.)

Marvel Animation

The newest member of the Disney animation family, Marvel Animation is yet another cartoon studio residing on Flower Street in Glendale, although its front door faces Circle 7 Drive, at the end of which squats a large building that for a brief moment contained Disney's Pixar sequels. (None were ever made, because Michael Eisner retired and his successor Robert Iger made nice with Pixar by purchasing the northern California company for $7.2 billion.)

(Marvel Animation can be found at two sites: Prospect Studios in East Hollywood and the Glendale building. We show Prospect Studios at the link above.)

Nickelodeon Animation Studios

Nick's animation studios are located on Olive Avenue in beautiful Burbank, across the street from Community Chevrolet. The company is now building a large five-story building right next door; the structure will end up the home for Nick units nowin Glendale, north Burbank and Santa Monica.

Paramount Animation

Paramount Animation Studio is housed in various buildings and trailer on the Paramount lot in downtown Hollywood. (Paramount Pictures, interestingly enough, has been in and out of the cartoon biz for over seventy years. In the 1930s and early 1940s, they were partnered with the Fleischer brothers who produced Popeye cartoons in New York and then Florida. Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town were both made in Florida.)

Sony Pictures Animation

Sony Pictures Animation (or SPA, as it's sometimes called) occupies a corner of the Sony Pictures ImageWorks campus in Culver City. A block from Culver Studios (where Gone With the Wind was made), the place is a shadow of its former self, because ImageWorks, which took up the lion's share of the campus, has departed for the Free Money of British Columbia.

Walt Disney Animation Studios

WDAS just now is spread out in three different buildings -- one near the end of an airport runway on Tujumba Boulevard, the Disney Toons building in Glendale, and the Hat Building on Riverside Drive displayed at the link directly above. See the light blue boards with the painted figures at the base of the structure? That wall is there because construction workers are gutting the place and rebuilding the interior so it won't be as gloomy and dungeon-like.

Warner Bros. Animation

WB Animatin has had many homes, snaking all the way back to the 1930s. It's been in Hollywood, it's been on the main Warner Bros. lot.

The studio has existed in Sherman Oaks and Toluca Lake and for a while didn't exist at all. But at present it occupies six different buildings on the Warner Ranch (pictured at the link just above) and a seventh on what used to be the NBC studios in Burbank, a block from St. Joseph's hospital, and two blocks from Disney.

And now there is a newer animation studio living under the Warner Bros. banner. It's called Warner Animatin Group (WAG), and it occupies a large, multi-story building on the main WB lot.

There. I think I've covered most of the fun factories. I hope you're more enlightened.


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Online Incubator

Animation springs from all corners of the media landscape. Especially the internet.

... Frederator has been at the forefront of the YouTube animation revolution, incubating series that have made the jump to television, as well as hosting digital extensions of some of today’s biggest hits. ...

Among them:



THere are a variety of Frederator shows that are now under the Guild's jurisdiction, but (we'll be honest) most low-budget animated shows work to go the non-union route. TAG has had to get them under contract one production at a time.

Which we do. It's amazing how artists respond to better working conditions (especially the chestnut of "minimum health care"/"Lower wages.") But it's still a process of getting various L.A. studios into the "signator studi" column one facility at a time.


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Dean Jones, RIP

A Disney main-stay has passed.

Dean Jones, the affable actor best known for leading roles in several Disney films of the 1960s and ’70s including The Love Bug and That Darn Cat! — as well as creating one of Stephen Sondheim’s iconic leading roles on Broadway in Company — died Tuesday from complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was 84. ...

While a tot, I became a fan of Dean Jones when he top-lined an amusing half-hour comedy title Ensign O'Tolle, supported by a terrific character actor named J.C. Flippen.

People forget that the original Love Bug, which Mr. Jones top-lined, was the highest grossing film of its year. (The Love Bug?! Yep, The Love Bug.)

Today, most people think of Dean Jones as a pleasant, bland Disney leading man in pleasant, bland Disney comedies. But he was a much better and more versatile actor than his spate of Disney films let on.

Condolences to his friends and family.

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Middle Kingdom Marches On

The trade press informs us:

... In its latest foray into the fast-growing Chinese entertainment sector, the film unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has partnered with upstart animation studio Light Chaser Animation to co-finance and distribute its debut film, Little Door Gods.

Light Chaser was launched in Beijing in March 2013 by Gary Wang, founder of Tudou.com, which was bought by rival Internet video company Youku.com in a $1 billion stock deal in 2012. Wang has said his ambition for the company is for it to be China's answer to Pixar – a boutique studio "creating world-class animated films with a Chinese cultural touch."

Inspired by Chinese folklore, Little Door Gods tells the story of two guardian spirits who return to the human world to stir up some fun trouble and bring modern non-believers back to the old ways. Although the budget was not revealed in Tuesday's statement, estimates ranged from $15-$30 million when Light Chaser was pitching the project earlier this year. The film was completed in August and will be released in China on January 1, 2016. ...

China has made progress in creating animated features that the Chinese movie-going public wants to see. But the question, "Can China make features that a world audience will love?" remains an open one.

If Light Chaser aspires to be "China's answer to Pixar," then Light Chaser better have its own John Lasseter (or Walt Disney?) on tap. Because it's not enough to own a studio. You need to have a Top Kick who knows how to make audience-pleasing movies. So good luck with that.

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The Job Action Thing

Apparently the subject of a possible contract strike two years hence is coming up in current WGAw elections:

When the WGA’s current contract expires in May 2017, it will have been almost 10 years since writers last struck the film and TV industry. Negotiations for a new contract won’t start for another 18 months, but the topic is taking center stage in the the guild’s ongoing officer and board elections as those elected will represent film and TV writers in the upcoming negotiations with producers. Gearing up for tough talks, WGA candidates are already talking about the need for a “viable strike threat.”

Incumbent board candidate Patric Veronne, who as president led the guild’s last strike, wrote in his campaign statement that the guild should start preparing now for another walkout in 2017. “Leverage in collective bargaining,” he wrote, “is most effectively built through the careful development of a viable strike threat, applied by a thoughtful and strategic board of directors. Thus, this should be the focus of, and the most important work to be performed by, the board you select in this election.” ...

Strikes have their uses, but they are always a double-edged sword.

When the Animation Guild was wrestling with the AMPTP in contract negotiations three years ago, we held a meeting that had 250 members in attendance. There was a lot of discussion about what strategies to take, and the subject of a labor strike was bandied about. Some dual card holders (WGAw and TAG) spoke at length about the 2007 WGA strike, and how they didn't think it had gained, after all the dust had settled, live-action writers a whole hell of a lot.

I participated in the 2007-2008 WGA strike a bit, walking the picket line in front of Universal on multiple days, but I'll be frank. I didn't have skin in the game, I was just a body on the picket line, helping out.

For the folks who did have an investment, certainly the ones I've talked to, there's divided opinions on how worthwhile it all was. My opinion is, the strike was helpful in getting New Media under union jurisdiction, even though the studios used the strike to roll back over-scale deals. And even though the Directors Guild of America rolled in during the writers' strike and pretty much set the template for the side letters for SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) that followed.

Still in all, I can see where the Writers Guild is going with this; New Media has played a larger and larger role in the way the public receives its movies and tv shows, and the day will come when the DGA, WGA, SAG-AFTRA and IATSE demand that "New Media" has wage parity with all the other delivery pipelines. A strike might well be the only way to ultimately get it.


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The Marvel Two-Step

Micro-managers sometimes wear out their welcome.

After what one source describes as "several years of frustration," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has pulled off a reorganization of the vaunted film company that has him reporting to Disney studio chief Alan Horn as opposed to the infamously micromanaging Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter.

Feige, the architect of Marvel's transition from a flailing comic book company into a film powerhouse that was sold to Disney for $4 billion in 2009, is said to have vented his unhappiness to Horn and Disney CEO Bob Iger earlier this summer. The reorganization was put into effect last week, according to sources.

I hear tell that Mr. Perlmutter is a wee bit difficult to deal with. And now it appears that Kevin Feige has appealed to a higher power. Or two.

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The Animated Productions Among Us

Add On: Kindly note that this post is being continuously updated as studios call and members weigh in down below in comments.

From time to time we put up a roster of teevee shows and theatrical features being made in the Southern California area of Cartoonland. We try to be reasonably comprehensive, but we're constrained by

1) A reluctance to list stuff that hasn't been announced (although we screw up), and

2) A lack of total knowledge.

Feel free to chime in with things we've missed. And be aware that we might be taking things down as we get e-mails and phone calls from studios that don't want something up on this part of the internet, even though the offending titles are up on other sections of the internet. (There are very few secrets). ...

LOS ANGELES PRODUCTION WORK

Bento Box

Legends – multi episodes
Bob’s Burgers – multi episodes ...

Cartoon Network

Power Puff Girls – multi episodes
Ben 10 – multi episodes
(Above shows = high international demand.)

Regular Show – multi episodes
Adventure Time -- multi episodes
Stephen Universe – multi episodes
Clarence – multi episodes
Royals – multi episodes
Uncle Grandpa – multi episodes
Mixels - episode
(Additional unannounced shows in development for multiple distribution platforms.)

Cosmic Toast (non-signator)

La la Loopsy – multi episodes

Disney Television Animation

Star Vs. Forces of Evil – multi episodes
Mickey shorts – ongoing.
Mickey and the Roadster Racers (CG show) – multi episodes
Tangled – multi episodes
The Lion Guard – multi episodes
The 7D -- multi-episodes
Unannounced fairy tale -- development
Pickle And Peanut – multi episodes
Future-Worm! – multi episodes
Duck Tales – multi episodes
Billy Dilley's Super Duper Subterranean Summer – multi episodes
Wicked World – multi episodes
Sophia the First – multi episodes
Puppy Papers – multi episodes
Elena of Avalor – multi episodes

(Wrapping things up (so far as we know): Wander Over Yonder; Gravity Falls; Penn Zero)

DreamWorks Animation

Kung Fu Panda 3
Trolls
Puss in Boots 2

(Other jams and jellies in development).

DreamWorks Animation TV

Croods – multi episodes
Vegie Tales – multi episodes
Peabody and Sherman – multi episodes
King Julien – multi episodes
Dinotrux – multi episodes
Puss in Boots – multi episodes
Unannounced projects – multi episodes
Dragons of Berk – multi episodes

Film Roman – Starz

Spiderman – multi episodes
Mega Man
Simpsons – multi episodes

Fox TV Animation

Family Guy – multi episodes
American Dad – multi episodes

Hasbro

Rescue Bots – multi episodes
Transformers: Robots in Disguise
Micronauts (2D series)

Illumination Entertainment

Some feature story work done in L.A.; production at the MacGuff studios in Paris.

Marvel Animation Studios

Newer Super Hero project
Avengers Assemble – multi episodes
Guardians of the Galaxy – multi episodes

Nickelodeon

Pinky Malinky
Shimmer and Shine
Pig, Goat, Banana, Cricket
Loud House
Harvey Beaks
Sanjay and Craig
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Breadwinners
Spongebob Squarepants
Fairly Odd Parents
(The above are multi-episoded, in various stages of work.)

Paramount Animation

Multiple Feature Projects in Development

Six Point Harness (non-signator)

Hollow Gauntlet

Shadow Machine (non-signator)

Bojack – multi episodes

Sony Pictures Animation

Smurfs
Medusa
Superbago
Emoji

(There are various projects in and out of work at SPA. Popeye, for instance, has been on and off, on and off. Don't know where the switch position for that project is right now. And please note that Sony Imageworks, SPA's production arm, departed the Culver City campus for the Free Money in Vancouver a couple of years ago. The Sony Imageworks campus in CC now houses pre-production only.)

Starburns Industries

Rick and Morty – multi episodes
Animals – multi episodes

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (non-signator)

Robot Chicken
Bratz
Lego Scooby Doo
WWE Slam City

Titmouse* (Robin Red Breast)

TurboFast – wrapping 2nd season
Fancy Bastards – pilot (waiting series pickup)

Universal Cartoon Studios

Land Before Time
Alvin and the Chipmunks

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Moana
Gigantic
Frozen 2
Wreck-It Ralph 2

Warner Animation Group

Ninjago
Lego Batman
Lego 2
Billion Brick Race
(and various)

Warner Bros. Animation

Scooby Doo Wild West
WWE Meets Jetsons
Be Cool, Scooby Doo
Wabbit – wrapping up ... for now.
Bunnicula – multi episodes
Justice League Action – multi episodes
Mike Tyson Mysteries – multi episodes
Teen Titans Go! – multi episodes
DC Girls (online show)
Green Eggs and Ham (online show)
(Unannounced shows in development.)

Wild Canary

Miles From Tomorrowland
Sheriff Callie

And of course there are various non-signator* studios out there: Moonscoop, Renegade, ADHD, Rough Draft, etc. If you know what's going on in these places, feel free to comment. (As we said up above, we are only semi-comprehensive.)

Add On: We've already made some corrections to the above, adding a show and dropping a show. We'll note what's said in comments -- most TV work in Southern California encompasses pre-production (writing, designing, storyboarding, animatics) and post-production (editing, sound, etc.) Production work is (mostly done somewhere else, but a few shows have been known to do some production work in L.A. Disney features are largely produced in Burbank-Glendale-L.A., while DreamWorks Animation (feature) outsources some work while still doing a sizeable chunk of production in Glendale.

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An Over-Abundance of Free Money?

Some people across the pond, they aren't too happy.

... A report disclosed that more than 50 European Union grants were handed out to media production companies making documentaries, films and even cartoons – including some with a slant that promoted the work of the EU.

Projects funded by the Creative Europe initiative, backed by the European Commission, included a film about a climate change activist and an animated series about alien squirrels. ....

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance, said: “Another day, another prime piece of evidence that Brussels bureaucrats simply do not understand the value of taxpayers’ money.

"Considering the myriad problems facing the European Union, you would think they'd have something better to do than subsidize cartoons about extra-terrestrial squirrels," Isaby said. “Blowing more than a million pounds on grants to fanciful animated adventures, pro-European mockumentaries with B-list celebrities, is totally inappropriate and, frankly, contemptible." ...

Contemptible, you say? So, like, what's wrong with alien squirrels? ...

But actually, my blood is boiling. When the government gets into the habit of showering free money on private companies, it's usually the taxpayer that gets hosed.

I mean, it's one thing to spend billions on behalf of the wealthy owners of professional sports teams, building fancy new stadiums so that the Haves can have more, but come on already. That's big league sports for Gawd sakes! And totally deserving of our tax dollars.

But why are a bunch of garlic eaters subsidizing cartoons? Isn't that communistic?

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International Box Office

Pure animation is somewhat less dominant this week, but there remains plenty of hybrid candidates.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)>

Terminator Genisys -- $23,600,000 -- ($409,294,045)

Minions -- $14,900,000 -- ($1,018,900,000)

Inside Out -- $10,900,000 -- ($715,625,000)

Ted 2 -- $9,300,000 -- ($190,200,000)

Fantastic Four -- $6,800,000 -- ($144,463,098)

Jurassic World -- $3,900,000 -- ($1,636,700,000)

Pixels -- $5,200,000 -- ($184,234,964)

Ant-Man -- $1,500,000 -- ($368,986,000)

Monster Hunt -- $4,500,000 -- ($375,000,000) ...

The trades tell us:

... With a global cume through Sunday of $409.5M, the latest pic in the Terminator franchise is benefitting from a strong China run. ... [and] now has an $82.8M cume there. The weekend was worth $23.6M in total with $23.4M from China. ...

Minions, which marched past $1B last week, was given a hearty buongiorno in Italy where it bowed No. 1 with a huge $8.5M to become the biggest opening weekend for an animated film ever in that market where it has a 77% share. ... That brings the cume overseas to $694.1M. Combined with the U.S. total of $324.8M, the worldwide cume is $1.02B. In other milestones, Minions overtook Ice Age: Dawn Of Dinosaurs’ $690M yesterday to become the 3rd-highest-grossing animated film of all time internationally. ...

[Inside Out] crossed $700M during the past week worldwide and added Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Singapore to the toon’s territories this frame. With $10.9M more from international play, its global total is now $715.63M after 11 weekends. ...

Ted 2 grossed $4.7M at No. 2 (behind Universal’s own Jurassic World) and 9% above Ted. In Mexico, it was No. 1 with $1.8M. The total weekend dowry is $9.3M in 45 territories for a $109M cume. ...

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Show Creator's Auction

Sam Simon, one of the godfathers of The SImpsons, who passed away last Spring, will be raising money with his art pieces:

... Auction house Sotheby's is planning to sell memorabilia and fine art from the collection of the late Sam Simon, one of the most influential creative forces in modern television. Simon, who died from colon cancer in March, was best known as co-creator of the Fox animated comedy, "The Simpsons," the longest-running sitcom in American television.

The wide-ranging collection of vintage pop-culture memorabilia includes a signed poster promoting the 1974 Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fight. That work carries a pre-sale estimate of $1,500 to $2,000. Sotheby's estimates the total sale will bring in upward of $10 million. ...

The centerpiece of the sale is a painting by American muralist Thomas Hart Benton, entitled T.P. and Jake, depicting a young boy and his pet dog. The work is expected to raise $2.5 million.

"Each piece in Sam Simon's collection embodies a central theme: The ability of art to tell a story," said Andrea Fiuczynski, Chair of Sotheby's West Coast. ...

Mr. Simon made a LOT of money from the success of The Simpsons. What's staggering to think about is Mr. Simon's ex-sive is a millionaire because of a divorce settlement that gave her a slice of Sam Simon's Yellow Family earnings.

The auction should be worth attending.

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Shorter Jurassic World

Never saw the big screen original, so I do hope that this covers the major plot points.

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The Weekend Steeple Chase

For the first time in a long while, no animated feature graces to Top Ten.

WEEKEND DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE

1) Straight Outta Compton (UNI), 3,142 theaters (+117) / $3.85M Fri. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $12.59M (-52%)/Total cume: $133.48M/ Wk 3

2). War Room (Affirm/Sony), 1,135 theaters / $3.87M Fri.*/ 3-day cume: $10.2M / Wk 1
*includes $600K of Thursday previews

3). No Escape (TWC), 3,355 theaters / $2.41M Fri. / 3-day cume: $7.61M / Total cume: $9.68M /Wk 1

4). Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (PAR), 3,095 theaters (-347) / $2.18M Fri. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $7.58M(-34%)/ Total Cume: $169.7/ Wk 5

5). Man From U.N.C.L.E (WB), 2,706 theaters (-967) / $1.24M Fri. (-44%)/ 3-day cume: $4.2M (-42%)/Total cume: $33.9M/ Wk 3

6). Sinister 2 (Gramercy/Focus), 2,799 theaters (+33) / $1.38M Fri. (-70%)/ 3-day cume: $4.16M (-60%)/ Total cume: $18M /Wk 2

7). Hitman: Agent 47 (Fox), 3,273 theaters (+12)/ $1.14M Fri. (-64%)/ 3-day cume: $3.87M (-53%) / Total cume: $15.4M /Wk 2

8). The Gift (STX), 1,934 theaters (-369) / $830K Fri. (-34%) / 3-day cume: $2.85M(-33%)/ Total Cume: $35.65M /Wk 4

9). Jurassic World (UNI), 1,239 theaters (+665) / $786K Fri. (+194%) / 3-day cume: $2.79M (+195%) / Total cume: $642.8M /Wk 12

10). Ant-Man (DIS), 2,016 theaters (-290) / $777K Fri. (-33%) / 3-day cume: $2.73M(-33%)/Total cume: $168.8M / Wk 7

11). American Ultra (LG), 2,778 theaters (0)/ $808K Fri. (-62%)/ 3-day cume: $2.537M (-53%) /Total cume: $10.23M/ Wk 2

12). Minions (UNI), 1,976 theaters (-250)/ $660K Fri. (-39%)/ 3-day cume: $2.33M (-39%)/Total Cume: $324.1M / Wk 8 ...

Meantime, the Minions fun-fest clears another marker. It's taken in $682 million internationally, more than double the $321.9 million it grossed domestically.

Inside Out is a major hit, but Minions is gargantuan.

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Wartime Geisel

The work of Dr. Seuss while he was on detached duty, away from being Dr. Seuss.

... [Theodore] Geisel had published his first children’s book as Dr. Seuss — “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’’ — in 1937, but it was his work as a political cartoonist for a left-wing New York tabloid newspaper called PM that led to his being recruited by Capra, chairman of the Army’s motion picture unit, to head its animation department.

“He [Capra] had used animation in his ‘Why We Fight’ series to get GIs to listen to lectures about politics,’’ said film historian Mark Harris, whose excellent book “Five Came Back’’ inspired the TCM series. ...

Army Capt. Geisel scripted a series of raunchy adult cartoons designed strictly for military audiences. ....

These shorts have tell-tale signs of the Warner Bros. animation crew's busy hands all over them. But of course, there were a lot of animators in the army, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's seasoned warriors, being two of them.



As TCM host Ben Mankiewicz says: "They were made to entertain adult males while they were being warned about things like gonorrhea."

Turner Classic Movies will be screening lots of these shorts in coming weeks. And of course they're always available for your viewing pleasure on the ubiquitous YouTube.

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