Your American Box Office

With JLaw on top ... to nobody's surprise.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1). The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (LGF), 4,175 theaters / $46.2M Fri.* / 3-day cume: $104M /Wk 1
*includes $16M in previews

2). Spectre (SONY), 3,659 theaters (-270)/ $4.3M Fri. (-57%) /3-day cume: $14.3M (-58%)/ Total cume: $153.4M /Wk 3

3). The Peanuts Movie (FOX), 3,671 theaters (-231)/ $2.9M Fri. (-48%)/3-day cume: $12.6M (-48%)/Total cume: $98.6M /Wk 3

4). The Night Before (SONY), 2,960, theaters / $3.55M Fri. **/ 3-day cume: $10M /Wk 1
*includes $550K in previews

5). Secret In Their Eyes (STX), 2,392, theaters / $2.3M Fri. +/ 3-day cume: $6.9M /Wk 1
+includes $170K in previews

6). Love The Coopers (LGF), 2,603 theaters (0)/ $1.17M Fri. (-58%) / 3-day cume: $3.9M (-53%) /Total cume: $14.9M /Wk 2

7). The Martian (FOX), 2,086 theaters (-702) / $1M Fri. (-47%)/ 3-day cume: $3.6M (-46%)/ Total cume: $212.9M / Wk 8

8). Spotlight (OPRD), 598 theaters (+538) / $1M Fri. (+161%)/3-day cume: $3.4M (+152%) / Total cume: $5.7M /Wk 3

9). The 33 (WB), 2,452 theaters (0)/ $686K Fri. (-63%) / 3-day cume: $2.3M (-60%) /Total cume: $9.9M /Wk 2

10). Bridge of Spies (DIS), 1,532 theaters (-1,156) / $555K Fri. (-56%)/3-day cume: $1.9M (-55%)/Total cume: $65.1M /Wk 6

If you're wondering, Hotel Transylvania 2 has dropped a ways down the box office list and now holds on to 828 screens across the fruited plain. Domestically, it's raked in $165,786,741 to become one of Sony's top grossers in 2015.

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What Ed Said

An entertainment journal does a lengthy question and answer with Dr. Catmull, including:

... How much pressure [does Pixar] get from Disney to make more sequels?

Some people don't believe this: They don't give us any pressure and they don't pick any of the films. ...

Two Pixar directors, Andrew Stanton (John Carter) and Brad Bird (Tomorrowland), have made expensive live-action flops for Disney. Will there be reluctance to draft Pixar filmmakers for these big Disney projects?

It's not that we "draft" people into live action. These are two people who've been extraordinary here and they love live action, so that just is what it is.

Disney is now making live-action remakes of its classic animated movies. Would you endorse a Pixar film being remade?

It has never come up. So I haven't even thought about it. We're not involved in that. ...

In the beginning, Pixar paid artists with production experience, particularly story artists, top dollar. The company needed to pay a premium to entice a seasoned crew into leaving Southern California and moving north to work on movies for a small, barely-known animation studio. But when Pixar matured, making hit movies and building its reputation and culture, it stopped using so many artists from Southern California, and stopped paying top dollar.

Because it no longer had to.

A couple of days ago, a former Pixar staffer communicated that he had been making 30% less up in Emeryville than at an L.A. signator studio, even woking at contract minimums.

I answered that the "Pixar discount" he was telling me about stands to reason, since they've

1) Never had a collective bargaining agreement for artists and technicians that drives pay upward, and

2) No longer need to shell out high wages, because people are happy to work at Pixar for less, just to gain the experience.

When you're a red hot cartoon studio with leverage, you use the leverage.

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Series Wraps

A Disney TVA show reaches its finish.

Disney XD’s mystery toon “Gravity Falls” will end with an hourlong episode expected to air early next year.

Series creator/exec producer Alex Hirsch announced via a Tumblr post his decision to bring the story to a close after 40 half-hour episodes and 17 shorts. Hirsch said he had always envisioned the mystery coming to a close on a specific timetable. The series’ penultimate episode, “Weirdmageddon Part 2: Escape From Reality,” is set to bow Monday.

“The first thing to know is that the show isn’t being cancelled — it’s being finished. This is 100% my choice, and its something I decided on a very long time ago,” Hirsch wrote. “I always designed Gravity Falls to be a finite series about one epic summer- a series with a beginning, middle, and end. ...

While Gravity Falls wends its way to a conclusion, we're aware of another Disney cartoon series that's ending. Unfortunately, since its wrap-up hasn't been announced, and because I'm in too delicate a condition to be snarled at on the phone by a Disney administrator, will let the other ending reveal itself in the fullness of time.

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TAG at CTN 2015!

The Animation Guild is happy to be attending the CTN Animation Expo this weekend at the Burbank Marriott Hotel. For the sixth year in a row, we look forward to speaking with animation professionals and enthusiasts, sharing how we strive to keep the benefits and workplace conditions in the animation industry the best they possibly can be.

If you're planning to attend, be sure to stop by table T046 in Exhibit Hall A, which is located at the lower right corner of the room as you walk in from the front. We are fortunate to be placed near our CSATTF training partner the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art

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Out of the Shadows

Another live-action director visits Cartoonland. (Usually it's the other way around).

In what will be his first fully animated feature debut, Shaun Of The Dead director [Edgar Wright] is taking on DreamWorks Animation’s shadowy pic. The Jeffrey Katzenberg-run toon studio announced today that Edgar Wright will helm and co-write a as yet-untitled feature “centered on the concept of shadows.” ...

This effort co-written by David Walliams is not a revamping on the long-on-hold Me & My Shadow feature, sources say, but something entirely original dealing with a the same basic concept. “Edgar will spearhead a new approach to this fascinating concept, and we’re ecstatic to have him onboard as director along with David as co-writer,” DreamWorks Animation’s Co-Presidents of Feature Animation Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria said Thursday. ...

The trend of having live-action helmers try their hand at animation kind of started with Gore Verbinski and Rango. Rob Minkoff started in animated features as an animator, then became a feature director on Lion King, and then moved on to a variety of live-action films. He returned to his roots with Mr. Peabody and Sherman, but has since moved on to more live-action.

There was a time when I was dubious about live-action directors slumming in the sun-kissed uplands of animation, but as live-action becomes more like cartoons, and vice-versa, I don't think the gaps between the two types of movies is nearly as wide. So good luck to Mr. Wright. So best of luck to him.

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MacFarlane Award

From an entertainment journal.

Seth MacFarlane has been set to receive the WGA West Animation Writers Caucus’ 2015 Animation Writing Award. It’s a lifetime achievement honor for MacFarlane, and will be bestowed tonight in a ceremony at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. He follows Len Uhley, who won the award last year, and The Simpsons‘ Sam Simon the year before. ...

Gold trophies are always nice. Our congratulations to Seth, who of course started his career as a board artist on early Cartoon Network shows.

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Altered Movies

Den of Geek puts up a piece on animated features that changed a lot.

10 Animated Films That Underwent Big Mid-Production Changes

The Black Cauldron

...The film was already in the works when Jeffrey Katzenberg - who now heads up DreamWorks Animation - was appointed studio head in 1984. It was already shaping up to be the most expensive animated movie of all time, and yet Katzenberg didn't like what he saw. The film has, even in its released version, a far more sinister edge than most Disney material (that's some understatement), and with its release planned for 1985, Katzenberg ordered some hefty cuts to be made to the film.

Among the excised material was much of the undead Cauldron Born, a partially naked Princess Eilonwy, and the slaying of people with a magic sword. ...

Nakedness and dead people were the least of the problems.

Vance Gerry, one of the great Disney story artists, created wonderful early storyboards for the Cauldron, but the directors and producer decided to go in a different, darker direction and the picture took an unhappy turn. (Find details here). The young story crew that started the picture was, sequence by sequence, removed from the picture, and replaced with another more to producer Joe Hale's liking.

But this sort of thing is old news in the movie business. First ... or second ... or third story passes often fail to make it to the screen. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. What's important to keep in mind, particularly when reading the above: there have been few big-budget animated features that didn't go through wrenching alterations during the course of production, from Pinocchio and Snow White straight through to today. (Good Dinosaur had big changes? Well hey. So did the cartoon version of The Jungle Book. Story artist Bill Peet wanted JB to go one direction, Walt Disney wanted another. Walt won.)

What I would like to see is some first-hand, no-holds-barred accounts of what really went on in various story sessions. Sadly, for a lot of features made far back in the twentieth century, the true and gritty stories of their creation are now lost.

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The Challenges of The Peanuts Movie

A fine entertainment journal interviews two Blue Sky animation supes.



Supervisors Nick Bruno and Scott Carroll talk to David Cohen about why the classic “Peanuts” look proved a wee bit complicated in CG, and mucked up the computer graphics pipeline of “The Peanuts Movie.”

(The animators at Bill Melendez Productions had it easier. They animated with pencils a comic book character drawn with pencils. Much easier match.)

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My Big Money

One more long-form animated movie:

Hasbro and Lionsgate has announced that My Little Pony The Movie will trot into theaters on November 3, 2017. At this point in time, My Little Pony will face off with the Disney/Marvel sequel Thor: Ragnarok. ...

It's good to understand why there's interest in doing a theatrical version of the franchise:

My Little Pony toys and accessories rake in $650M annually.

Hasbro credited My Little Pony as driving their 2014 girls’ sales by 2% to a $1.02B figure. The last big screen My Little Pony film was in 1986 and it grossed $6M. Danny DeVito, Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn were among those providing voices.

Are corporate motives clear to you now?

The first MLP, now thirty years distant, came at a time when feature animation was in flux. Disney had floundered after the dull thud made by The Black Cauldron soon after a major management change. At the time, the costly flop from the House of Mouse was overshadowed by Nelvana-produced The Care Bears Movie, which was created on a shoe-string budget and made $34 million. And the feature was produced to ... let's face the realty fearlessly ... boost sales of kids' toys. Disney newbies Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg weren't even sure it was a good idea to continue doing animation stateside, given the profit margin of Bears compared to Cauldron.

So consider My Little Pony, the New Generation as a throwback to that glorious era when animated features not produced by Disney were ninety-minute ads for toy lines. And that the era will soon come again.

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Newer Adult Swim Series!

A corporate press release informs us:

Adult Swim, basic cable's #1 network, has greenlit Dream Corp, LLC., a new animated comedy series from creator Daniel Stessen (The Gold Sparrow) and executive produced by both American and British The Office alums, John Krasinski and Stephan Merchant, as well as Krasinski's Sunday Night partner Allyson Seeger. ...

The first Adult Swim original series to utilize the latest rotoscope technology, Dream Corp, LLC. will be an innovative standout in the current animation landscape. Each week viewers will watch as a rotating cast of desperate patients have their dreams recorded and analyzed by Dream Corp's absent-minded professor, Dr. Roberts (Jon Gries), and his team of unremarkable scientists. The new series is set to start production in Los Angeles, CA later this year. ...

This will be interesting.

Word reaches us that various branches of the Turner/Time-Warner empire want to do more animation, and more animation in Los Angeles. Though Adult Swim is owned by one of our fine, entertainment conglomerates, the Top Dog of the division likes many of the animated shows to be non-Guild. That being the case, TAG has to gallop out and organize them, (Rick and Morty being a recent example.)

Dream Corp, LLC may or many not come under the union umbrella, but as more and more animated shows get produced for cable and new media in L.A., the ranks of experienced animation writers and artists gets stretched thin. And it becomes harder and harder for non-Guild outfits to field needed talent without a TAG contract.

So here's to more animation work. Also, too, more guild productions under spanking new TAG contracts.


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Lion King Record

The hit feature birthed a hit stage production, which in turn has now hit a new milestone.

Disney’s blockbuster The Lion King passed Cats last week to become the third-longest-running show in Broadway history. But Disney’s claim that a new ad for the show represented a first in 360-degree promotion had Cats master Andrew Lloyd Webber well, baring his claws.

On Wednesday morning, Disney is planning to unveil a virtual reality clip of The Lion King‘s famous “Circle Of Life” opening number, noting that it’s the first time the technology has been used inside a Broadway theater. “The 360-degree footage has been compiled to create the first-ever virtual reality experience of a theatrical production number captured exactly as it is seen onstage,” according to Disney.

Have you no memory, asks Lord Lloyd Webber. Just last month his new show, School Of Rock, released its own 360-degree promo, the song “You’re In The Band” from the musical. OK, so it wasn’t shot in the theater, it was shot in a genuine New York City classroom. ...

THe point here isn't which Broadway hit was Numero Uno with the cool new technology (like who really cares), but that Disney animated features have a dandy track record when they morph into stage musicals. Not every one is a monster hit, but most seem to be nicely profitable.

And if they're still-born as Broadway shows, they can get re-tooled as a "Disney on Ice" presentation, no?

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History of an Animation Startup

New animation studios happen from time to time. Pixar. DreamWorks Animation. And this one.

... For relative peanuts (at least compared to the price of acquiring a fully fledged toon studio), Universal underwrote the launch of Illumination Entertainment, which started with just two employees — Chris Meledandri and Kelly Martin, who had been Meledandri's executive assistant at Fox — and has since grown to more than 700, thanks to a successful partnership with Paris-based animation outfit Mac Guff. ...

Meledandri makes it a habit to share ideas for possible upcoming projects with Universal honchos Donna Langley and Jeff Shell at a very early stage. “Part of our strategy has always been to keep a very low ratio of developed projects to produced projects, which helps us to stay very focused on where we spend our resources,” Meledandri says. ...

When Illumination Entertainment began, it used a production process used often in television animation but seldom with its theatrical cousin. Illumination developed its movies in Los Angeles (often with moonlighting Disney and DreamWorks artists) and did the production overseas.

But it didn't use the traditional low-rent studios of India, Malaysia or the Philippines. It employed the MacGUFF animation studio in Paris. And with Despicable Me, MacGUFF and Illumination produced itself a hit right out of the box.

Illumination focuses on keeping its budgets in check and putting as much value as possible up on the screen. All of its animated features have been made at budgets below $80 million, which make them half as expensive as the DreamWorks Animation and Pixar product. To date, the lower budgets haven't impacted Illumination Entertainment's bottom line in the least. All of the company's animated features have made money, which has led Illumination Entertainment to buy MacGuff outright.

IE has upended old feature animation business models and gone on to produce hit after hit. It's become a force and influence in theatrical cartoons, and that influence will likely continue to grow. Where the number of successful theatrical animation bosses could be counted on two fingers (Lasseter and Katzenberg), three digits are now required.

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The President Emeritus Presents November's History Cavalcade

Time once again for Professor Tom Sito's Month in Animation (with, as is the custom, other things).

AN ANIMATED NOVEMBER

Nov. 1, 1968- To replace the outmoded Hays Production Code, the Motion Picture Ratings System is introduced- G, M, R, and X- Later PG, PG-13, and NC-17 replaced X.

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

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

Nov. 3, 1977- Disney's original version of Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons hits America's screens.

Nov. 3, 1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty comics like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that brought down upon him the wrath of the Disney legal dept.

But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, and failing kidneys, Wally Wood put a 44 cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. On this day police find his remains.

Nov. 5, 1937- Walt Disney's silly symphony The Old Mill debuts. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique. (Snow White has its world premiere a month later.)

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

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

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

Nov. 9, 2004- Mozilla-Firefox starts up.

Nov. 10, 1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

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

TWPaB wins an Oscar.

Nov. 10. 1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premieres on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper. And SS employs a lot of animators.

Nov. 11, 1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

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

Nov 12, 1937- Alan Turing delivers his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" at Kings College, Cambridge.

In it he postulates on the ability to create a "universal machine" that uses numbers to solve problems and could be re-programable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.

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

Nov. 13,1940- Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' premiered. As Walt put it, "This'll make Beethoven!" Frank Lloyd

Wright's opinion was 'I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?"

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

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

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

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

Nov. 14, 1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C., the British Broadcasting Companies first radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.

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

Nov, 14, 1998- Pixar's A Bugs Life premieres.

Nov. 15, 1881- The American Federation of Labor AF of L formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merge with the CIO.

Nov. 15, 1907- The comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuts. The strip was so popular that it’s creator Harry “Bud“ Fisher becomes a celebrity and negotiats the first large backend deal. He builds an animation studio, but spends all the profits on partying with showgirls.

Nov. 15, 1920- The League of Nations holds its first meeting in Geneva.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gable had one after shooting, and on this day while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a second heart attack kills him. He writes his own epitaph, but it's never used: "Oh Well, Back to Silents."

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

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

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

Nov. 17,1993- The US Congress votes for the free trade, job-killing bill called NAFTA.

Nov. 18,1902- THE TEDDY BEAR BORN - The Washington Evening Star published a story of how

President Teddy Roosevelt while hunting couldn't bring himself to shoot a grizzly bear cub. Cartoonist Cliff Berryman illustrated the incident with one of his signature “dingbat” bear cubs in a gesture of “oh no!” Brooklyn toymaker Morris Mitchcom sewed a doll from the illustration in the newspaper and sent the first one to the White House.

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

Nov. 18, 1985- Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbs debuted.

Nov. 18, 1988- Disney’s Oliver & Company released.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov. 23, 1963- The very first episode of Dr. Who premieres on the BBC TV. (William Hartnell plays the first Dr. Who. There have been eleven doctors since.

Nov. 24, 1999- Pixar's Toy Story 2 in theaters.

Nov. 24, 2010- Disney’s Tangled is released. (The feature is over a decade in the making.)

Nov. 25, 1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, sung by Gene Autry, hits number one on the musical charts.

Nov. 25, 1997- Pixar's A Bug's Life and Geri’s Game premieres.

Nov. 25, 2009 Disney’s Princess and the Frog is released.

Nov. 26, 1939- The first Woody Woodpecker Cartoon, "Knock-Knock.’

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

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

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

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

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

Nov. 29, 1915- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything. This day John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon debuts. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, creating the job positions of layout, background painter, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. After 1919 J. R. Bray shifted his studio’s focus from entertainment to technical and training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.

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

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

[Roy Disney told me he resigned from the board because he had it on good authority that he was going to be pushed out. "I left before they could fire me." -- Steve Hulett]

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

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INVESTING AND OUR FEARS

"CRASHES, TERRORISTS AND SHARKS (OH MY)"

After studying the investing thing for awhile, I've come to the conclusion that your best chance of long-term success is to

1) Set up a simple, executable plan (invest in three to four broad-based index funds);

2) Start doing the plan;

3) Don't f*ck up* the Plan.

4) AND DON'T GET CAUGHT UP IN FEAR

* Like freaking out at the wrong time and bailing; like changing your mind all of a sudden to chase "hot" returns; like flipping in and out of investments looking for something better; etc.

Barry Ritholtz has some useful thoughts on why we're afraid of the wrong things and how we undermine ourselves: ...

1) Understanding What We Fear -- and Why.

2) Misunderstanding "Risk" -- hurts performance.

3) Recognizing these errors and avoiding them. ...

* * * * *

NEURO FINANCE -- How Your Brain Interferes with Your Investing

1. Risk Aversion; Herding, Groupthink

2. Optimism Bias

3. Confirmation Bias

4. Expert Opinions

5. Recency Effect

6. Endowment Effect

7. Hindsight Bias

* * * *

AND YOUR FEARS CAUSING SUB-OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE IN THE DAY-TO-DAY LIVING DEPARTMENT:

FEAR OF ... SHARKS?

5-10 People a year are killed by sharks worldwide annually.

Deaths From Other large predators:

Lions - 100

Elephants - 100

Hippos - 500

Crocodiles - 1,000

Snakes - 50,000.

Dogs - 25,000 (almost all due to rabies). ...

* * * * * *

FEAR OF ... TERRORISM?

2010: U.S. noncombatant fatalities from terrorism worldwide = 25

2011: Terror deaths = 8

People who die after being struck by lightning = 29. ...

* * * * *

SUB-OPTIMAL INVESTORS:

1) Mis-Managing Losses
2. Excess Trading
3. Lack of Discipline
4. Costs, fees
5. Position Sizing
6. High Turnover = High Taxes
7. Taking profits too soon
8. Leverage
9. Deviating from Strategy (“style drift”)
10. Emotional Decision making
11. Over Confidence
12. Poor Risk to Reward Ratio ...

My take away from the above is, concentrate and manage the important stuff that you can control ... or at least impact.

(Worrying about dying on the next Southwest Airlines flight to Vegas is non-productive, so don't do it -- or do it as little as possible.)

Think long-term about investments.

Ignore the day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year.

You cannot successfully time the market, cannot successfully out-think the market, so it's not a good strategy to try.

Time is your ally. And when you have saved/earned ENOUGH, stop playing the game and shift more of your stash to less risky investments.

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Animation's First Modern Turning Point

Not Toy Story (that was the second), but the release of this:



It was released 26 year ago. It was the start of animation's renaissance. ...

And at the moment of its first pitch, studio brass turned it down.

Ron Clements presented Mermaid as one of his ideas for a new feature at an Eisner-Katzenberg "gong show" the summer of '85. The pitch session was in the conference room of the Disney commissary, and almost every animation director and story person was in attendance.

Jeffrey Katzenberg passed. ("Splash is the studio's mermaid picture." ... "We're not doing any more fairy tales." ... etc.)

Ron wouldn't take no for an answer. He sent a longer treatment to Mr. Katzenberg, and Mr. Katzenberg changed his mind. And the rest -- the hiring of Ashman and Mencken, story development, test animation -- unfolded over the next four-plus years ... until the feature was released in November of '89 and changed the course of animation.

It was the first feature to use the CAPs ink-and-paint system (developed by a tiny little northern California company named Pixar).

It was the first animated feature in ages to put songs and musical numbers back into the foreground.

It contained full-bodied characters the audience cared about, and that were funny.

And the feature made a whole lot of money. And the studio ... and ultimately the wider movie industry, began to take animation seriously as a theatrical force.

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The Global B.O.

Pungent. As it generally is.

WEEKEND INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE -- (World Totals)

Spectre -- $152,600,000 -- ($543,800,181)

The Peanuts Movie -- $2,500,000 -- ($90,489,856)

The Martian -- $5,300,000 -- ($477,407,616)

Hotel Transylvania 2 -- $8,900,000 -- ($417,844,692)

Pan -- $3,900,000 -- ($119,331,140)

A plucky entertainment journal reports:

... After crossing $400M globally last week, Hotel Transylvania 2 continues to perform. Halloween is long gone, but this picture, which along with Spectre will be one of Sony’s biggest hits this year, added $8.9M this weekend from 10,150 screens in 77 total markets. The international cume has now reached $252.6M. ...

The Martian continues to cultivate box office wherever it lands. A $5.3M weekend from 3,082 screens in 47 markets blasts the offshore total to $270.5M. This film, from Fox, is on track to best all of Scott’s overseas performances. ...

Spectre grossed a phenomenal $152.6M in its 3rd overseas outing. That’s 30% up on last week and largely down to the addition of China, Korea and Australia. In total, Spectre added 14 markets. ...

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Lou Scheimer's Digs For Sale

The late Lou Scheimer, founder of the late Filmation, had his house placed on the market two weeks back:

4 Beds/5 Baths on 5,500 sqft on a total lot size of 2.88 acres built in 1972 in Tarzana available for $5.5 million on November 2, 2015. This home was designed by Dion Neutra, the son of legendary architect, Richard Neutra. ...

Scheimer commissioned Neutra to build this home and therefore it's the first time on the market. So you have the son of the greatest architect and a legend behind cartoons and I am just foaming at the mouth wishing I could buy this home although the $1K per square foot price tag is not helping one bit. ...

I visited Lou's expansive pad, high atop the Hollywood Hills, exactly twice. I was there to interview Mr. Scheimer for a podcast, but he was too ill at the time to talk at any length. I did however, get a tour of his residence.

The house is a one-of-a-kind architectural wonder. I saw the rooms upstairs and down, the expansive views out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and my mouth was continually agape. Make sure you click on the link above to see more photographs of the place.

Thanks to Jeff Massie for tipping us off about the house being on the market.

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Your American Box Office

The numbers according to the entertainment journal of record.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOTALS

1). Spectre (SONY), 3,929 theaters (0)/ $10.2M Fri. (-63%) /3-day cume: $33.9M (-52%)/ Total cume: $129.2M /Wk 2

2). The Peanuts Movie (FOX), 3,902 theaters (+5)/ $5.6M Fri. (-54%)/3-day cume: $23.9M (-46%)/Total cume: $82.1M /Wk 2

3). Love The Coopers (LGF), 2,603 theaters / $2.8M Fri. / 3-day cume: $8.4M /Wk 1

4). The Martian (FOX), 2,788 theaters (-67) / $1.9M Fri. (-26%)/ 3-day cume: $6.7M (-26%)/ Total cume: $207.4M / Wk 7

5). The 33 (WB), 2,452 theaters / $1.8M Fri. / 3-day cume: $5.6M /Wk 1

6). Goosebumps (SONY), 2,805 theaters (-246) / $1.1M Fri. (-33%)/ 3-day cume: $4.6M (-32%)/Total cume: $73.4M /Wk 5

7). Bridge of Spies (DIS), 2,688 theaters (-79) / $1.3M Fri. (-28%)/3-day cume: $4.3M (-26%)/Total cume: $61.7M /Wk 5

8). Hotel Transylvania 2 (SONY), 1,834 theaters (-440) / $515K Fri. (-36%)/3-day cume: $2.3M (-36%) / Total cume: $165.2M /Wk 8

9). Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (FIP), 286 theaters / $698K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.25M /Wk 1

10). My All American (AVI), 1,479 theaters / $519K Fri. / 3-day cume: $1.5M /Wk 1

The Peanuts Movie drops 46 percent but still comes in at #2. It'll be north of $80 million by Sunday night.

Box Office Mojo compares The Peanuts Movie to Wreck-It-Ralph, another animated feature tha opened against James Bond. Turns out Wreck It made $68 million its opening week, while Charlie Brown and Company collected $63 million.

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The WAG

We received word that Warners Animation Group (otherwise known as WAG) and located on Warner's Burbank lot in a multi-story building, is purchasing newer computer equipment and looking to expand. As of now, they have multiple projects in development, also this ....

...In a roundtable discussion with Polygon, Advenutre Time executive producer Adam Muto downplayed the ‘official’ nature of the film but was quick to point out that the film is still “in the works.” He also told Polygon that the film would essentially happen once creator Pendleton Ward finds the right story to tell: “[Series creator Pendleton Ward] is working on the premise of it.” ...

Adventure Time began life as a Fred Seibert/Nickelodeon project -- one of the myriad shorts developed at Nick in the great line ago.

At the time of it initial production, AT was not picked up for a series order. The short ultimately went into turnaround, and then picked up by Cartoon Network.

Where it turned into a major TV hit. Last March, development for a large screen version commenced; shortly thereafter the feature version dropped off our radar. But we're happy to see the project was simply hibernating, not dying a quick death.

It may yet see the inside of an AMC movie theater near YOU.

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Early Review

... of the next major animated feature.

Serving up a sweet tale of interspecies friendship and a stunning prehistoric vision of the American Northwest, “The Good Dinosaur” is easily one of the great landscape films of 2015, even if what unfolds against that landscape isn’t always as captivatingly rendered. Pixar’s 16th animated feature centers around a boy-and-his-beast dynamic that will strike some of the same audience chords DreamWorks did with “How to Train Your Dragon,” albeit with a crucial reversal of perspective this time around. That largely successful gambit turns out to be the boldest stroke in a picture that, for all its signature visual artistry, falls back surprisingly often on familiar, kid-friendly lessons and chatty anthropomorphic humor. Clever and cloying by turns, it’s a movie that always seems to be trying to evolve beyond its conventional trappings, and not succeeding as often as Pixar devotees have come to expect. ...

Other reviews I've seen to date are positive but not ecstatic for the latest Pixar offering.

The Good Dinosaur opens Wednesday, November 25. Business will likely be brisk.


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The Happiest Place In the Middle Kingdom

... happens this spring.

... The Disney Shanghai Resort, which takes up about a fifth of the Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, is less than half an hour by car from the financial district of China’s wealthiest and most populous city, but it feels like a kingdom all its own. Six square miles of the zone are vacant, set aside by Chinese authorities as part of a decades-long plan to draw tourists here. ...

Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger has called it the greatest opportunity the company has had since Walt Disney himself bought land in Central Florida in the 1960s. ...

Disney’s local partner -- the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group, which will own 57 percent of the resort and contribute about $2.1 billion of the equity -- is under pressure to get it right, too, after China’s long orgy of real estate speculation. ... Disney, betting on China’s rising middle class with its largest foreign investment ever, has a lot of competition.

On the other side of the Huangpu River from Disney’s resort, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and its local partners are building the $2.4 billion Shanghai Dream Center. Scheduled to open in late 2017, it will feature an animation studio, live performance venues and an attraction tentatively called the Kung Fu Panda Experience. ...

A lot of entertainment companies are betting big that China will keep growing ... and continue contributing to their bottom lines. It's a lot about theme parks, but Disney, DreamWorks and others have their eyes on China's domest movie market too.

Everybody has learned, as Disney did decades ago, that theme parks, movies and shelves full of toys, games and action figures are all slices of the same huge pie, all of the lucrative and each one interlocking with the others. A hit animated motion pictures triggers the building of an amusement park attraction, and high mounds of high-margin merchandise.

They don't call it "synergy" for nothing.

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This Day, 1946

Song of the South was released.




I saw it multiple times as a kid, and the racism sailed right over my pointy little head.

But you know? This was mainstream stuff in the middle forties. And far milder than Gone With the Wind, which Time-Warner has kept in continuous circulation without apology, even as Diz Co. keeps its film with Hattie McDaniel off the American market.

Movies, all movies, are the products of the time in which they are created. It's important to remember that. Even Charlie Chaplin concocted gags that now make many people cringe. But we need to remember the context of the era in which Chaplin ... and all other filmmakers ... existed.

Thanks for the reminder, President Emeritus Sito.

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Film Roman Purchase

This has been in the offing for some time:

Waterman Entertainment has bought Film Roman — best known as the source animator for “The Simpsons” — for an undisclosed price from Starz Media.

Waterman is headed by Steve Waterman, who has exec producer credits on “Stuart Little” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

Film Roman’s Dana Booton has been promoted from general manager to president of production and will continue to oversee the day-to-day business of the company, in addition to her new responsibilities of managing co-productions and development.

Additionally, founder Phil Roman is returning as chairman emeritus, serving in an advisory capacity and working closely with Booton, Waterman and the development team on the creative vision for the company and its subsequent projects. ...

This purchase has been known to FR staffers and TAG for a while. Word circulated weeks ago to Simpsoins crew members. Our information is that there will be other changes down the line, but (so far) announcements have not materialized in the press.

However, this press release clarifies the context for the Facebook photograph showing Phil Roman standing next to the Film Roman sign on Hollywood Way. That photograph has been up for a few weeks, without a lot of attached information.

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Animated Feature of the WB

Warner Bros. Animation rolls out a new Dark Knight saga.



Take pieces of Batman: RIP, stir in bits of Batman Inc. and a pinch of Batman and Robin, and you've got a semblance of WB's latest offering.

Batman Bad Blood is directed by Warners' veteran Jay Oliva. And as a young, hardcore fan of superheroes told me recently, "Marvel has the best live-action super-heroes, but Warners Animation does the best animated super heroes. By far."

A connoisseur has spoken.

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The Unending Siren Call of Free Money

Far to our south, New Zealand movie production is having a very good year.

... The New Zealand film and TV business is thriving even without its signature [Tolkien] franchise, turning the land that once served as Middle-Earth into a host of brave new worlds.

Despite a dearth of hobbits on set, 2015 has been a record year for international productions. Feature films and TV series alike are lining up to shoot there.

The biggest player in New Zealand’s next phase is Lightstorm Entertainment’s trio of “Avatar” sequels. The original “Avatar” had a local qualifying spend of NZ$362.8 million ($246 million) with incentives worth $35.8 million, but producer Jon Landau says it is more than just the coin that prompted James Cameron and him to return to New Zealand.

“Jim is not going back because of the financial incentives,” Landau says. “It’s part of it, but he is going because of the labor pool and the creative talent that is down there. And I think that says something.” ...

Okay, it's not totally about the subsidies.

But this is a horse laugh. Without the subsidies, does anybody honestly believe the Avatar sequels would be down there? Or lots of other work for that matter. Because there are plenty of other locations waving green stuff under the conglomerates' noses: Canada. London. Georgia. To name but a few.

The underwriting entity, in this case Fox, would pretty much insist that Mr. Cameron go where the moolah is. Because a sound stage is a sound stage is a sound stage. And crews and actors can be imported, as can visual effects wizards.

So of course the money matters, it always does. Did we all just fall off the apple truck?

H/t VFX Soldier, who remarks: "Avatar Producer says its not all about subsidies yet demanded an increase last year or else they would leave."

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Paramount/Viacom's Cartoon Schedule

Story work proceeds on Paramount's Hollywood lot for several animated features, among them:

Monster Trucks, the live-action/CG hybrid that is hauling a $125M price tag, will now premiere on January 13, 2017. Its’s the third release date for the pic which began production in May 2013 as the studio is making sure its marketing ducks are in a row. It originally had a summer 2015 release date, was moved to Christmas 2015, then March 2016.

Other dates: The Little Prince, March 18. 2016; the just announced Sherlock Gnomes, January 12, 2018; SpongeBob SquarePants 3, February 8, 2019; and Amusement Park, March 22, 2019. ...

There have been those who have wondered how committed Viacom is to producing animation. The company has had big success with its Nick unit, and SpongeBob has been a continuing success on the large screen, but what about a fuller slate of films?

This announcement indicates Paramount is serious about staying the course.

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Border Town

Now with Add On.

Remember how I quoted a fine trade paper that said: "Bordertown still hasn't found a spot on Fox's schedule?" Down here?

Well, that's changed now. Because Fox tweeted out ...

Just announced! #Bordertown will join the FOX​ Sunday lineup starting JAN 3, 2016! Details: http://fox.tv/1SgpHWe

Bordertown has been in the process of becoming since 2013. Seth MacFarlane, Mark Hentemann, Alex Carter and Dan Vebber are executive producers. The series, of which there are now thirteen half-hour episodes, is produced at Bento Box's North Hollywood studios.

Add On: Creator/exec producer Hentemann recounts how he came up with Bordertown:

“I was racking my brain over what could I do that ‘Family Guy’ or ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘South Park’ hasn’t already done,” he said. “And I immediately knew: the border. What’s interesting to me is that whites are going to become a minority in this country in 2017, a historic shift in the United States demographics. My family growing up my dad told our family’s immigration story a thousand times. My worldview is from the lessons I learned from my father and his father, coming over to the United States and work the four jobs. ...

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One Hit Wonder?

Usually when you have a hit movie, there are plans afoot to soon produce another ... and then another. But other times, not.

... Fox would love “The Peanuts Movie” to become a franchise, but the studio only has the rights to one film and Jean Schulz [Charles Schulz's widow] said she is no rush to produce a sequel. “This one took eight years, so maybe we’ll talk again then." ...

Rats!

So the question is, why wouldn't Rupert and his troops have the rights to several more? I suppose the answer is, you negotiate what you can negotiate, and hope for the best. Mr.s Schulz appears to have had some leverage.

And now she has more.

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Lawsuit Time

This is kind of a Hollywood ritual: "You stole my idea!"

“Wreck-It Ralph” might be heading for an adaptation from the big screen to the courtroom.

The Walt Disney Company is being sued by a man who claims that the company ripped off his idea for the 2012 animated feature, “Wreck-It Ralph.”

In the suit, filed in a Texas federal court last week, Dyke Robinson claim that “Wreck-It Ralph” infringes on his copyright for his manuscript “Digiland.”

Robinson claims that he submitted his manuscript to Disney in 2012, but that it was turned down by Disney. ...

Funny thing. I've walked through Walt Disney Animation Studios since it was called Disney Feature Animation. And I kept seeing this video game feature in development, titled Joe Jump at the time.

The picture was in development, then on the shelf, then back in development. It had a succession of different story people working on it, and Robert Iger liked the concept. (At the same time, a project that Disney feature veterans were working on fell out of contention. This happens all the time, features come and go.)

I suppose it's physically possible that a manuscript submitted to the Mouse in early 2012 could result in a full-blown feature by November 2, 2012, but since it's never happened in the history of Disney animation, from Snow White to the upcoming Zootopia, I don't think it occurred here.

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TV Hybrids!

Animation-live-action features have long been the rage at your local AMC. Now they're migrating to your local TeeVee.

... Hybrid live-action/animated comedies have emerged as a hot commodity for next season. Fox is throwing its hat into the ring in a big way with a series order to Son Of Zorn, from Last Man On Earth executive producers Phil Lord & Chris Miller and former Wilfred showrunners Reed Agnew and Eli Jorne. The live-action/animated project, toplined by Jason Sudeikis as the voice of Zorn, is set to debut during the 2016-17 season. ...

Son Of Zorn will likely be joined next season by ABC’s Imaginary Friend, a comedy blending live-action and CGI animation from Oscar-winning Disney feature animator Patrick Osborne and The Goldbergs team of Adam F. Goldberg, Happy Madison and Sony Pictures TV. ABC nabbed the project in a very competitive situation with a pilot production order. ...

These half-animated projects are the new hot commodities in television development land. As the Deadline article points out, some animated concepts are boffo in the executive suites and some are not exciting many corporate Vee Pees. Bordertown, a new offering from Seth MacFarlane's shop, has thirtyeen half-hours sitting on the shelf, waiting for a pickup.

Fox Broadcasting doesn't say "yes" to BT, Fox doesn't say "no." Fox just sits on its hands. At least with the thirteen episodes of Murder Police, Fox was decisive. It kicked that series out the door, and the thirteen lonely half-hours continue to sit out in the snow, crying for someone, anyonea, to rescue them.


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Robin Stifles

The media says that the late Robin Williams has put the kibosh on newer Aladdin projects.

If not for the will of the late Robin Williams, there might well have been an Aladdin sequel voiced by the legendary comedian. Williams recorded enough unused material during the making of the original film in 1991 for another one, claims an unnamed former Disney executive in a new interview with The Times of London (via New York Post).

The source claims the outtakes were planned to be used in a fourth film in the Aladdin franchise, but the project had to be shelved when Disney found points in Robins’ will that prevents the major production studio from using his name, or any taped performances or recordings for a full 25 years after his death.

While the performance outtakes weren’t used for the original feature film, the unnamed Disney executive said that they were top-notch. ...

An Aladdin reboot isn't particularly unusual, given the Mouse's recent history of animated feature conversions to live-action movies. Per the trades, Diz Co. was planning a blue genie origin story:

... Disney is reportedly developing a live-action Aladdin prequel, focusing on the world of genies.

Oh, and it gets better/worse—depending on your point of view. This film would tell the story of how the genie from Aladdin became a genie and got trapped in the lamp, potentially leading to a live-action remake of Aladdin itself. If everything goes to plan. ...

But Disney is a big, deep-pocketed organization. No doubt they can wait out Mr. WIlliams's quarter-century prohibition and use all the outtakes on the 100th anniversary of the Korda version of the Thief of Baghdad.





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What Jeffrey K. Said

Now mit der Add On!

As happens from time to time, the top-kick for DreamWorks Animation (one Jeffrey Katzenberg) briefs stock analysts and financial writers what's going on with the twenty-year-old company. Here's his report for the three months just gone by:

Jeffrey K.: In January we announced a strategic plan designed to ensure DreamWorks Animation was in the best possible position to succeed over the long term, not only from a creative standpoint, but also in terms of the company's overall financial performance.

On the creative side, we appointed new leadership in our feature animation business and committed to a series of changes in our creative process including resizing the business to focus our talent and resources on producing two feature films per year instead of three. Nine months later, we're seeing higher levels of creativity, collaboration, team work, and cost efficiencies. ...

The highlight of the quarter was Home's strong performance in the home entertainment market, particularly across digital platforms. In fact Home has sold the highest number of digital sell-through transactions worldwide of any DWA title. It is also the second highest selling family film in the domestic home entertainment market released to date this year. ...

The watchword here is optimism dosed with caution. To wit:

Looking ahead to our 2016 feature film slate, Kung Fu Panda 3 will be released on January 29, both domestically and here in China. Early previews have been successful and well received by audiences. ... I do want to highlight that we have a non-traditional release window for an animated film in the U.S. market and currency headwinds from a strong dollar will continue to weigh on international performance. ...

Jeffrey doesn't want to crank expectations up too high. (Who would?) He goes on:

Turning now to our Television segment where Common Sense Media recently named our original series Dragons: Race to the Edge and Dinotrux among the best shows on TV for families with kids ages 2 to 17 years. This distinction continues to highlight the high quality of our television programming and strength of our brand. ... Consumer Products [is] where several initiatives around location-based entertainment continue to reinforce the strength and value of our brands globally, this quarter we extended the terms of our license with regional theme parks, Beto Carrero World in Brazil and Dreamworld in Australia. ...

In our New Media segment, the team at AwesomenessTV continues its success in producing and monetizing quality program across multiple delivery platforms, screens, and mediums. The ATV team is off to a solid start delivering content for Verizon's go90. Only 20 days into the platform's launch and without any advertising and promotional activity around the go90 product, Verizon highlighted ATV's Top Five Live and Betch as two exclusive pieces of content that are gaining early traction with millennials and generating encouraging revisits to their platform. ...

So the diversification thing appears to be paying off, and if the latest Kung Fu Panda performs well, coupled with the musical Trolls near the end of next year, DWA should be on firmer footing.

Add On: Seeking Alpha explains why they are optimistic about DWA's forward-looking prospects>

* DreamWorks Animation had a very rocky 2014 due to the cyclical nature of the film business, but it has shown signs of recovering its financial footing.

* The company has implemented a restructuring plan that diversifies the company's revenue streams and de-emphasizes the importance of hit-or-miss feature films.

* With several major new projects scheduled to add to the company's revenues over the next two years, DreamWorks Animation is regaining its financial health.

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Andreas Deja on the Nine Old Men

What Mr. Deja said.

... The B Boys talk with legendary Disney Animator Andreas Deja about his new book about “The 9 Old Men” of Disney Animation yesteryear. Find out why he was passionate about making this book, what drove the 9 Old Men, and any animator worth their muster should know who they are! ...

TAG did an interview with Mr. D. a while back (available here), so take a listen to both. Andreas has a lot to say.

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Your Worldwide B.O.

The Peanuts Movie rolls out with gusto.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE -- (World Totals)

Spectre -- $117,800,000 -- ($296,100,000)

Peanuts -- $4,600,000 -- ($49,600,000

The Martian -- $9,300,000 -- ($458,467,346

Hotel Transylvania 2 -- $15,000,000 -- ($404,243,404)

Pan -- $2,800,000 -- ($113,471,350)

As our fine entertainment journals tell us:

... This is the second consecutive international frame to be led by James Bond and Spectre — and it won’t be the last with China, France, Australia and Korea on deck this week. With No. 1 debuts in 71 more markets this session, Eon/MGM/Sony Pictures’ spy actioner picked up a further $117.8M. ...

Also opening internationally, Fox’s The Peanuts Movie was in limited release in just 11 markets with $4.6M. ...

Sony’s animated sequel Hotel Transylvania 2 has crossed $400M worldwide this weekend to become the studio’s top grossing title of 2015. Originally opening to a September record in North America, Genndy Tartakovsky 3D pic that stars the voice of Adam Sandler, now has a global cume of $404.2M. This weekend, it added $15M offshore from over 16,300 screens in 80 markets. ...

The Martian grew a further $9.3M this weekend as the Ridley Scott success rides to $261.4M internationally. ...

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Creative Talent Network Animation Expo

Per Animation Scoop:

... The seventh annual CTN Animation eXpo (CTN-X) will commence Friday, November 20th through Sunday, November 22nd. ...

This Annie Award winning event takes place at the Burbank Marriott Convention Center - across the street from the Bob Hope Burbank Airport. Special guests this year include Peter Lord (who will be interviewed by Animation Scoop's Charles Solomon on Friday November 20th at noon); Don Hahn, who will preside over a Rescuer's Down Under staff reunion panel (at 2:30pm on Friday Nov. 20th); and Laika Studios, who will be feted with a major tribute on Saturday (21st) at 5:30pm. ...

One major event of the weekend is the "Rat's Nest" Reunion. In the late 70s, "The Rat's Nest" was a derogatory name given to a small group of young, rebellious animators who where relegated to a tiny room in the Disney Feature Animation building. ... All of the original Rat's Nest members will attend this panel: Brad Bird, Dan Haskett, Bill Kroyer, John Musker, Jerry Rees, and Henry Selick. ...

The Animation Guild, as it does every year, will be havea booth on the exposition floor, dispensing pamphlets, chachkies and useful information.

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The Weekend Movie Derby

The Peanuts gang, after tracking at a robust $50 million, seems to be settling into the $40-45 million range.

SEEKEND DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE

1). Spectre (SONY), 3,929 theaters / $28M Fri. */ $26.75M Sat. (-4%) / $18.25M Sun. (-32%) / 3-day cume: $73M /Wk 1

*includes $5.25M of Thursday previews. Industry calculation: $71.6M.

2). The Peanuts Movie (FOX), 3,897 theaters / $12.1M Fri. /$19.6M Sat. (+62%) / $13.3M Sun. (-32%) /3-day cume: $45M /Wk 1

3). The Martian (FOX), 2,855 theaters (-363) / $2.6M Fri. /$4.3M Sat. (+66%) / $2.4M Sun. (-44%) /3-day cume:$9.3M (-21%)/ Total cume: $197.1M / Wk 6

4). Goosebumps (SONY), 3,051 theaters (-567) / $1.7M Fri. /$3.3M Sat. (+95%) / $2.1M Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $7M (-29%)/Total cume: $66.5M /Wk 4

5). Bridge Of Spies (DIS), 2,767 theaters (-106) / $1.8M Fri. /$2.7M Sat. (+54%) / $1.6M Sun. (-41%) /3-day cume: $6.1M (-26%)/Total cume: $55M /Wk 4
Industry calcuation: $6M

6). Hotel Transylvania 2 (SONY), 2,274 theaters (-688) / $793K Fri. /$1.7M Sat. (+119%) / $1.1M Sun. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $3.6M (-39%) / Total cume: $161.3M /Wk 7

7). Burnt (TWC), 3,003 theaters (0) / $897K Fri. /$1.3M Sat. (+42%) / $833K Sun. (-35%) /3-day cume: $3M (-40%)/ Total cume: $10.2M /Wk 2
Industry calculation: $2.9M

8). The Last Witch Hunter (LGF), 2,286 theaters (-796) / $702K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. (+72%) / $738K Sun. (-39%) /3-day cume: $2.65M (-49%) /Total cume: $23.6M /Wk 3

9). The Intern (WB), 1,071 theaters (-450) / $540K Fri. /$820 Sat. (+52%) / $450K Sun. (-45%) /3-day cume: $1.8M (-25%)/Total cume: $71.4M/ Wk 7

10). Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (PAR), 1,087 theaters (-443) / $510K Fri. /$760K Sat. (+49%) / $380K Sun. (-50%) /3-day cume: $1.65M (-52%)/ Total cume: $16.3M / Wk 3 ...

After holding well, Hotel Transylvania 2 takes a 55% hit, which tends to happen when a new "family friendly" animated feature enters the box office list.

So we've got The Peanuts Movie at #2, and Hotel Transylvania 2 at #6, looking toward a total of $161 million by the time Sunday night rolls around. Thought it's slowing down, the pic is already well above the first iteration, which pulled in $148,313,048 thee years ago.

Add On:

... Over on the Fox lot, they’re doing the Snoopy dance, with The Peanuts Movie besting its $40M estimates with a $45M opening, 27% of that coming from 3D. Matinees pushed Charlie Brown to a 62% hike on Saturday with $19.6M to Friday’s $12.1M. Some Sony insiders believe that the Peanuts ganged up on Bond, and stole some of the spy’s lunch money. I really don’t think Peanuts was a threat in any way. It brought it a significantly younger (46% under 25), more mom crowd (55% ladies) — and they’re not the primary demo for Bond. ...

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Disney's Profits

Up, because there doesn't seem to be any other direction for the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates.

The Burbank-based entertainment giant [Walt Disney Co.] reported a $1.6-billion profit during the quarter ending Oct. 3, with much of the gains attributed to higher affiliate fees and advertising revenue at the sports broadcaster. Profit from Disney's media networks grew 27% year-over-year. ///

The Burbank-based entertainment giant reported a $1.6-billion profit during the quarter ending Oct. 3, with much of the gains attributed to higher affiliate fees and advertising revenue at the sports broadcaster. Profit from Disney's media networks grew 27% year-over-year. ...

Animation continues to loom large, what with theatrical revenues, rides for the parks, merchandising, etc.

It's not just about money from first-run releases. There are all the other cash streams from the different ancillary markets. And tv product plays ... and plays .... and plays. And then gets rebooted.

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Mojo's Predictions

The Mojo's predictions have Mr. Shaken-Not-Stirred on top, but Snoopy & Co. second.

>Weekend Prognostications

Spectre (3,929 theaters) - $82,509,000

The Peanuts Movie (3,897 theaters) - $52,024,950

The Martian (2,855 theaters) - $6,794,900

Goosebumps (2,051 theaters) - $5,921,237

Bridge of Spies (2,767 theaters) - $5,705,554

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2,274 theaters) - $3,224,532

The Last Witch Hunter (2,286 theaters) - $2,683,764

Burnt (3,003 theaters) - $2,600,598

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (1,530 theaters) - $1,718,190

Our Brand is Crisis (2,202 theaters) - $1,554,612 ...

The Peanuts movie cost way less to make than Spectre, so if these numbers hold up (whether they do is anyone's guess), yet another animated feature is off to the races and performing well. As BOM says:

... How well will The Peanuts Movie do opposite Spectre? Continuing the Wreck-It Ralph comparison, that film did $49 million in its opening weekend, banking hard on not only the Disney brand, but some classic video game characters as well. When it comes to Peanuts, Fox has decades of brand awareness on top of the fact November seems a prime month to open a new animated film.

Over the past several years, animated features have enjoyed big November openings. These films include Megamind ($46m), Happy Feet ($41m), Chicken Little ($40m) and even the live-action/animated hybrid Scooby-Doo ($54.1m), and that's before you get into the even bigger titles. Big Hero 6 did $56.2 million just last year, before that Frozen opened with $67.3 million, The Incredibles scored $70.4 million and Monster, Inc. brought in $62.5 million. ...

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More Players Into the Pool

Yesterday I was walking around the studio of one of our fine entertainment conglomerates, and a board artist asked me: "Aren't we losing jobs here? I mean, California is a high tax state, right?"

To which I answered, Yes, Cali is a higher taxing state, but no jobs being lost here, boss. One example: Southern California's animation industry, which is at record highs employment despite the lack of free money and an abundance of taxes. Cartoonland is thundering along, and here is yet another specimen that keeps the area at a high decibel level:

... Video game giant Activision Blizzard Inc. on Friday announced the creation of its own movie and television studio to bring hit titles such as “Call of Duty” and “Skylanders” to screens big and small.

The company, based in Santa Monica and with revenue of $4.9 billion over the last year, is the world’s fifth-largest video game maker by sales. The TV and movie studio announcement comes amid an ambitious expansion drive that also includes mobile games and spectator-based video game contests known as eSports.

With the studio, Activision Blizzard is looking to deploy its deep trove of characters and plots into new mediums ...

We continue to get reports of shortages in various job categories, "We need more board artists! We need more timing directors!" There are talented artists coming out of universities and art schools, but the companies want people who have production experience, and there is only so much seasoned talent to go around.

I don't know from where Activision Blizzard is drawing its employees, but it's likely from the greater Los Angeles area, since that's where Activision is located. And likely a number of Guild members.

And that's fine, because we'll be happy to deliver a fresh-printed TAG Agreement right to their door. We're not greedy, and have no desire to keep wages and benefits to ourselves. We wish AB well, also wish AB to quickly sign an Animation Guild contract. (TAG's number is 818-845-7500. Ask for Steve.)


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DreamWorks Moves Up

Now with Add On!

DWA, it turns out, had an excellent Autumn.

Why Did DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Stock Spike 16% in October?

The company has worked to diversify its business beyond movies, and that appears to be working.

... DreamWorks has been hit or miss at the box office for its entire existence, which has led the company to ramp up its other businesses. One of those efforts, AwesomenessTV, announced a major deal with global content creator, producer, and distributor Endemol Shine Group to enter "into a strategic partnership to extend the international reach of the AwesomenessTV brand", the company said

Under the multi-year deal, Endemol Shine Group's premium channel network (PCN) Endemol Beyond will launch local language, owned and operated AwesomenessTV channels in key markets outside the U.S., including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. ...

The company reports third quarter results on Nov. 5, [today!] and whether it can hold on to its October gains depends at least somewhat on if it managed to continue to grow its non-movie business. The Endemol deal, however, should help those goals long-term, making DreamWorks Animation stock less of a rollercoaster proposition based on how its latest film is performing. ...

DreamWorks Animation has performed a high-wire act since it's creation two decades ago.

At the beginning, DreamWorks was a creator of animated features, also the possessor of high ambitions for a TV animation division. The TV unit crashed and burned early on, but DWA's feature animation unit, once the company started doing CG animated features exclusively, prospered. One hit followed another, and the money rolled in. But the company was dependent on a business model requiring an endless stream of blockbuster animated features, a difficult feat at the best of times. When it hit the inevitable rough patch (i.e., several movies under-performed) there was trouble there on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River.

Jeffrey made moves to sell the company (a stand-alone after the separation from live-action DreamWorks) for several years, but potential deals didn't work out. He is now diversifying the corporation, turning it more into what Walt Disney Productions was in the mid-1950s, which is a smart move. The Netflix deal has gotten DWA back into the production of television animation in a major way, and it's purchase of Awesomeness TV is also paying off. If it's next few theatrical features perform well, it should be on much firmer ground.

Add On:

Whattayaknow.

DreamWorks Animation unveiled third-quarter earnings today that showed a 43% revenue increase compared with a year ago thanks to stronger TV and home entertainment results especially with its previous theatrical release Home. The news sent DWA shares soaring as high as 13.8% in post-market trading. ...

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The Derby For Little Gold Men

As the trades tell us:

“Inside Out,” “Anomalisa” and “The Peanuts Movie” are among the top contenders in a category that will once again have five nominees

The Oscar race for Best Animated Feature will likely include a full slate of five nominees this year, with 16 films submitted for the award.

Academy rules state that five films can be nominated in a year in which there are at least 16 qualifying entries. If there were less than 16, the size of the category would drop to three nominees, which was the norm from the category’s creation in 2001 through 2008.

Since 2009, however, enough films have been submitted to trigger a full slate of nominees every year except one. ...

Others might disagree, but it's a blessing that animated features now have their own Oscar category. Because the Academy would vote a "Best Picture" Oscar to an animated feature, any animated feature, around the time the sun reaches its "red star" phase.

And that's one hell of a long time.

By rights, Beauty and the Beast should have nabbed the Best Picture award twenty-odd years ago, but a law enforcement-horror flick named Silence of the Lambs beat it out
because it had flesh-and-blood actors on camera. And no self-respecting actors (who make up the largest bloc of Academy voters) are going to vote for voice performances when full-body versions are on the Academy ballot.

Sad, but the way it is. So I'm delighted that animated features have their own niche inside The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Otherwise they would have no niche at all.

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Los Angeles Outpost

There's more of this going on than you might imagine.

Boston-based visual effects firm Zero VFX has opened a new 5,000-square-foot office in Los Angeles this week, with eight employees to start. ...

"Many companies in our position would go to Canada, to Vancouver, Montreal or Toronto because there are some phenomenal tax incentives there but for us we always knew we wanted to have an L.A. office because studios are housed there," said Zero VFX co-founder and head of production Brian Drewes in an interview. ...

Small visual effects studios are moving into town to pick off work on television and various movies. We're a long way from the boom-times of Digital Domain and Rhythm and Hues, when it seemed all the major visual effects houses were clustered in Southern California or the Bay area, but at least things are moving (however incrementally) in the right direction.

It also helps that visual effects are supported in California's tax subsidy bill.

Television animation, which has suffered from runaway production for decades, didn't get in, but we'll work to rectify that oversight three years hence. Most of Canada subsidizes animation, as does the state of Georgia. Long-term, California's cartoon industry could be damaged if the playing field isn't leveled.

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Feature From the Continent

Is there really one announcement per day for a new animated feature? Or does it only seem like it?

Jack London’s classic wolf novel “White Fang” is getting the animated treatment from Big Beach, French animation company Superprod and Luxembourg’s Bidibul Productions.

Alexandre Espirages, whose 2013 short animated film “Mr. Hublot” won an Oscar, will direct from a script by Dominique Monfrey, Philippe Lioret and Serge Frydman. ...

New York-based Big Beach is best known for Little Miss Sunshine, the live-action hit from a decade ago. It hasn't released any animated features to date, but BB can read profit and loss columns like other companies, and so now will take the plunge.

Superprod is the production studio in France. Though the company does a lot of hand-drawn animation for television, this production will be CGI.


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Yet Another Cartoon Feature .. From a Newer Player

From a fine trade journal:

A new animated feature based on the Grimm’s fairy tale The Bremen Town Musicians is on its way from animation/production company Parallax Media Ventures. Musical will mark the animation team’s first animatic. With a budget of about $60M, the picture is being eyed for a 2017 release. ...

The project, which features about 3,200 storyboard images and paintings, will be featured for private viewing at this week’s American Film Market. ...

[Parallax founder Kevin] Richardson describes this project as Shrek meets Frozen and Lord Of The Rings. “I’ve always wanted to see an animated feature that shows characters focused on overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, inflexible cultural beliefs and self-doubt." ...

A combination of Shrek, Frozen and Lord of the Rings? Sounds like Parallax is pitching the project in the press release. (I would like to see a meld of those three movies. Should be ground-breaking.)

Parallax is a brand new corporate entity, but it's probably not a bad to have an animated project in its mix of features, provided they have a team that knows its way around animation. And it appears as if the company just might.

... The team of animators at Parallax have, among all of them, worked on such films as The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo and Mulan, to name a few. ...

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"Oswald the Missing Rabbit"

The BBC says:

... A restored print of Sleigh Bells (1928) will have its world premiere at the BFI in London in next month. ...

Sleigh Bells has been unseen since its original release. ... "The restoration of this film will introduce many audiences to Disney's work in the silent period - it clearly demonstrates the vitality and imagination of his animation at a key point in his early career." ...

I thought this flick was uncovered some time ago, but maybe it was another Oswald cartoon.

The BBC video regarding Sleigh Bells can be found at the link. Oswald is (to me) an appealing character. If Disney could have hung onto him, I like to think the rabbit's career would have prospered far more than it did under Charles Mintz and Walter Lantz. But maybe Mickey Mouse was destined to be the big star, with his cousin Oswald ending up little more than the middling bride's maid.

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Four Years of Movies From the Mouse

Here are all the big screen offerings from Diz Co., all the way out to the horizon line.

The good news is there will be a sequel to Finding Nemo and an Incredibles 2.

The bad news is there will be a Cars 3.

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Anomolisa, the Trailer

The New York Times profiled this feature a few days ago.

Today Paramount dropped the trailer.



The stated budget is $10 million. By the looks of the trailer, the filmmakers got their money's worth. We can only hope the crew was paid something north of minimum wage.

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About the Good Dinosaur Reboot

Now that the release date is nigh, tales of production.

... [Bob] Peterson seemed like the natural choice to direct Good Dinosaur — but he ended up getting removed in mid-2013, when the film was only about nine months away from its scheduled release date in early 2014. Producer John Walker also left the film at the time, to go work on Brad Bird’s live-action movie Tomorrowland. ...

After the film changed creative teams in mid-2013, “we changed the characters quite a bit,” said Ream. “They went from older to younger.” Arlo the dinosaur had been about 17 years old, but now he was 11. His siblings also became younger. ...

And so on and so forth.

None of the tales of rejiggering Dinosaur are out of the ordinary.

Ward Kimball told the same tale about Pinocchio, how everybody was stumbling around trying to find the through-line of the story and not having an easy time of it. (And even today, despite the glories of the characters, the multi-plane work, the art direction, some of the joints still show).

Sometimes troubles happen earlier in production, sometimes later. Gone With the Wind -- going on at the same time Pinocchio was in the process of becoming -- had shot principal photography for three weeks when the producer fired director George Cukor (who had worked on the flick for two-and-a-half years) and brought in director Victor Fleming.

Fleming pored over the screenplay and immediately told producer David Selznick: "David? Your f*cking script is no f*cking good."

(Fleming was less polite than John Lasseter.)

And they spent two frantic weeks rewriting the first half of the movie. And then started production again.

The point is that do-overs happen in film-making from time to time. Sometimes the end results are wildly successful, at other times not. When Thanksgiving arrives, we'll see what the changes made to The Good Dinosaur add up to.

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Th Actual Release Date

So the interwebs say:

Sony Pictures Animation announced today that Hotel Transylvania 3 ... will arrive on the big screen September 22, 2018. ...

One has one's suspicious regarding the interwebs because immediately above this announcement is

Hotel Transylvania 3 will hit the big screen September 21, 2018

So which is it? The 21st or the 22nd? Hard to know. But the one thing that's a cast-iron certainty is that the will be a Hotel Transylvania 3. Because #2 has outgrossed #1, and #1 did gangbuster business.

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When Pigs Fly

This oinker flies in and around Tokyo.



Per Adario Strange:

... The four-and-a-half-minute clip, directed by Takahiro Miyauchi and Takuya Okada, takes us inside the home of a woman with a fantastic imagination. Her imagination is so powerful that a simple household nuisance soon becomes an epic struggle. ...

As is noted, the video depicts the way life is lived today in Japan, and is currently up for an Audience Choice award.



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Good Dinosaur Director

A trade paper details a publicity tour by new Pixar director Peter Sohn:

... On the first leg of a jet-setting promo tour, Peter Sohn, director of “The Good Dinosaur,” ... spoke from the heart about inspiration for his career and film – his mother, for instance – which he called “a coming of age” and “survival tale” which, when asked to sum up in one phrase, is about “overcoming one’s fears.” ...

There’s a larger emotional dimension to “The Good Dinosaur,” indeed dinosaurs in general, Sohn argued in Argentina. “There was something kind of fun about the scale of dinosaurs, about a farming dinosaur that was very sincere. But there’s also an emotional connection. When you’re called a dinosaur, you’re old and stuck.” ...

I can see why this picture took a wee bit of time to achieve release mode. When you couple realistic environments with cartoony protaganists, you've got yourself a balancing act.

There is fine-turnig involved, and you want to get the tuning as right as possible.
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The Foreign Horse Race

The pictures at the top of the foreign and world markets.

International Weekend Box Office -- (Global Totals)

Hotel Transylvania 2 -- $33,600,000 -- ($373,604,480)

The Martian -- $17,000,000 -- ($428,406,753)

Goosebumps -- $7,100,000 -- ($75,704,415)

Ant-Man -- $11,000,000 -- ($513,742,944)

Pan -- $6,300,000 -- ($107,767,732)

The Walk -- $3,700,000 -- ($38,800,000) ...

Hotel T. #2 has now shot past the original: $373,604,480 to $358,375,603.

The trades tell us:

... There was a Drac attack on offshore box office this frame as Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 2 added just three new markets but sucked up $33.6M at theaters. One of those new plays was China, but with $12.4M, it was only responsible for about a third of the frame. HT2 is winning the family stakes overseas, playing in 82 markets in its 6th weekend for a cume of $217.6M. ...

Fox’s The Martian zoomed back to the top of the international charts last weekend and handily crossed the $200M offshore mark. This frame, the Ridley Scott space drama took its cume to $245.6M in 55 markets. ...

Ant-Man has been getting a leg-up out of China where the cume is now $101.3M. The superhero pic this week surpassed Guardians Of The Galaxy to become the biggest original IP Marvel release in the Middle Kingdom. Earlier this week, Ant-Man passed $500M global box office. It is the 7th consecutive and 9th overall Marvel Cinematic Universe film to reach the milestone. ...

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