Your American Box Office

Trolls, it clings to second place on the List.

WEEKEND DOMESTIC GROSSES

1). Fantastic Beasts… (WB), 4,144 theaters / $29.8M Fri. (includes $8.75M)/ 3-day cume: $76M /Wk 1

2.) Trolls (DWA/20th Century Fox), 3,945 theaters (-121) / $3.9M Fri. (-68%) / 3-day cume: $16.9M (-52%) /Total Cume: $115.7M/Wk 3

3.) Doctor Strange (DIS), 3,694 theaters (-188) / $4.8M Fri. (-68%)/ 3-day cume: $16.7M(-61%) /Total cume: $180.6M/Wk 3

4). Arrival (PAR), 2,335 theaters (+18) / $3.4M Fri. (-63%) / 3-day cume: $11.2M (-53%)/Total:$42.8M/ Wk 2

5). Almost Christmas (UNI), 2,379 theaters (+3) / $2M Fri. (-66%) / 3-day cume: $6.6M (-53%)/Total: $25M/ Wk 2

6). Hacksaw Ridge (Lionsgate), 2,883 theaters (-88) / $1.9M Fri. (-50%) /$6.4M 3-day (-40%)/Total: $42.5M/ Wk 3

7.) The Edge of Seventeen (STX) 1,945 theaters/ $1.7M Fri./3-day: $4.8M/wk 1

8.) Bleed For This (OR) 1,549 theaters/ $882K Fri./3-day: $2.6M/wk 1

9.)The Accountant (WB), 1,423 theaters (-919) / $603K Fri. (-60%)/3-day cume: $2M (-55%) / Total cume: $81.1M / Wk 6

10.) Shut In (Euro), 2,006 theaters (-52)/ $501K (-70%) Fri. / 3-day cume: $1.6M (-66%)/Total: $6m/ Wk 2 ...

The DWA picture should be close to $150 million by the end of its run, yes?

On the other hand, Moana will take a bite out of Trolls when the Disney feature sails into the marketplace, so who knows the actual steepness of the inevitable drop? Or how solid a bet the $150 mill might actually be?

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Diretcor Out, Director In

Deadline tells us:

... David Leitch has signed on to direct Deadpool 2.

Leitch beat out a host of competitors that included the likes of Drew Goddard and Magnus Martens after Deadpool director Tim Miller departed the superhero sequel over creative differences in late-October. Leitch spent more than 20 years as a stunt coordinator and stuntman before he teamed as a director with Chad Stahelski on John Wick. The Keanu Reeves-starring neo noir action pic went on to earn $86 million on a $20 million budget but became an instant cult favorite. ...

Deadpool Uno was a huge hit with large swaths of animation stitching the movie together. :

After stepping away from Deadpool, director Tim Miller has set his sights on a new gig: developing an adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog for Sony Pictures.

Miller and his longtime Blur Studio collaborator Jeff Fowler have been tapped to work on the project, on which Fowler would make his feature directorial debut.

The duo are working with Neal H. Moritz (the Fast and Furious franchise), who is producing the adaptation. Miller will act as an executive producer on it.

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Anniversary

A future corporate symbol was launched into the world on this day, as TAG President Emeritus Tom Sito recounts:

Nov 18, 1928- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At Universal’s Colony Theater in New York, Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuted before a movie called Gang War.

The first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's had been done, but when Walt saw Jolson speak in the Jazz Singer, he held those two back so the sound experiment could go ahead. ...

Steamboat Willie, of course, was an animated riff on Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr., just as the previously made (though later released Gallopin' Gauchos was a spoof of Douglas Fairbanks's The Gaucho.

Hard to believe that the Diz Co. empire of today started in a small storefront on Hyperion Avenue back in the 1920s. Walt Disney had a habit of rolling the dice on commercial enterprises, whether it was the first sound cartoon, the first color cartoon, the first feature-length cartoon, or an amusement park that few through would work.

But it all paid off in spades. ...

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CTN animation eXpo starts TOMORROW!

Now with Add On!

The last couple of days, there's been a whirl of activity in and around the Burbank Marriot Hotel (directly across the street from the renowned Bob Hope/Burbank Airport).

CTN eXpo has been setting up its monster exhibition tent (seen above) in Marriot's parking lot, directly across the way from Marriot's convention center.

What's different this year is that all the vendors and exhibits previously housed in the convention hall, are now in the big fat tent. It's not really a problem, because the BFT is generous in its square footage and air conditioned on a par with the climate and temperature of Gnome, Alaska. (No doubt the temp will rise once there are a few thousand bodies jammed inside the canvas walls).

Beyond the exhibition hall, CTN will be packed with presentations and events, including:

"Behind the Scenes of Disney's Moana" -- (Disney Panel Discussion)

"Finding Clarity In Your Storyboards" -- (Adam Cootes - Blue Sky Studios)

"Jam Packed With Story" -- (Panel Discussion)

"Create or Die: How Living the 5 Pillars of Creativity Can Change Your Life" -- (Jake Parker)

"The Art of Making Trolls" -- (DWA Panel Discussion)

"Colorful Language: Ever Palette Tells a Story" -- (Brian McEntee)

And this is only a fragment of the first day. So as you can see, it's going to be a fast-moving weekend.

Add On: CTN eXpo is expanding in a variety of ways:

... This year, it will open its doors to the public, offering speaker sessions, workshops, art demonstrations, book signings, studio recruitment, portfolio reviews, vendors and more at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel and Convention Center running Friday through Sunday Nov. 18-20.

“I was at Disney for 23 years, and when I left, I wanted to provide an arena to help promote what these particular group of artists do because I realized when you’re at a studio for that long, when you leave, it’s a challenge trying to identify yourself as not working for ‘fill in the blank,’ ” said Tina Price, founder and owner of Creative Talent Network and producer of CTN eXpo.

Price decided to change things because, as a networking event, a big part of the convention is exposing the artists to future generations and the general public. Students and youths will have the opportunity to learn more about the animation industry as a career choice, while animation fans can shop and meet some of their favorite artists. ...

When: Noon to 7 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, plus CTNX After Dark gathering 8 p.m. to midnight tonight and Saturday.

Where: Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel and Convention Center, 2500 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank.

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Another Negotiatin' Season Commences

The IATSE (our mother international) goes into negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers at the end of each negotiation cycle. The IA and The Animation Guild negotiated their latest contracts last year. But you will be pleased to know that a whole new season is starting up once more.

The Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to enter into formal contract negotiations on Dec. 5.

The DGA and the AMPTP also said that they have also agreed that neither organization will comment further to the press until negotiations have concluded.

The DGA tapped secretary-treasurer Michael Apted and third VP Thomas Schlamme in February as co-chairs of its negotiating committee for the successor deal to its master contract. The guild’s current three-year deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires on June 30, 2017. The DGA has over 16,000 members.

Jay D. Roth, longtime national executive director of the DGA, will be the lead negotiator for the guild.

SAG-AFTRA’s current master contract with the AMPTP also expires on June 30, 2017, while the Writers Guild of America’s deal will expire on May 1, 2017. The WGA usually goes into negotiations after DGA and SAG-AFTRA have completed their deals. ...

The way industry negotiating works is, one of the above-the-line guilds (usually the DGA, but not always) is the first into the arena and arm-wrestles the conglomerates and various production companies until a deal is reached.

And that deal lays down various markers: wage increases; pension contributions; New Media provisions. Naturally enough, the details of various contracts have differences but many of the broader brush strokes are the same. This is called pattern bargaining.

Guilds and unions end up achieving similar monetary gains, though pies are carved up in differing ways. (One group might take higher pension contributions and lesser wage hikes). It all depends on where each labor organization's priorities lie.

The Directors Guild usually goes into talks with a focused set of objectives, and often gets many of them. When the DGA's contract talks are over and the agreement between the parties is announced, we'll have some idea about the bargaining template from which every other union ... WGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE ... will be working.

And the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE, will be among the last labor unions to march into the arena, sometime in the Spring of 2018.

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WAG Feature

Warner Animatin Group, which has a number of animated projects in development, appears to be moving ahead with this one:

Mark Osborne, fresh off directing The Little Prince, has come aboard to tackle Warner Bros.’ animated adaptation of Bone, the Eisner-winning comic series from Jeff Smith.

Adam Kline has been tapped to co-write the script with Osborne, who is developing the project as a directing vehicle. The moves re-energize the adaptation for the studio, which first picked up the rights around 2008.

Dan Lin’s Lin Pictures is producing with Animal Logic’s Zareh Nalbandian with the goal of making a trilogy of animated feature films. ...

Bone has been in the development hopper for a bunch of years. (These things take time -- Disney's Tangled was in the oven for a over a decade). But now it looks like the Jeff Smith project is close to ignition and lift off.

Warner Animation Group ... otherwise known as WAG ... focuses on theatrical features and has several studios in Los Angels. One is on the Warner Bros. Burbank main lot, another is in a trailer at the Warner Ranch (also located in burbank) and a third is in Hollywood.

Only pre-production development will take place in California. Production will happen in Australia.
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Animation Pool Gets Deeper (Again)

Fox won't be releasing DreamWorks Animation features much longer, but it's staying in the feature-length cartoon business in a major way.

... 20th Century Fox is making it a priority to snap up various children's books and develop more live-action hybrids.

It looks like 20th Century Fox under Stacey Snider is going to be an all-in-the-family studio.

On Nov. 10, Fox Animation bought children's book Momotaro: Xander and The Lost Island of Monsters by Margaret Dilloway, which followed pickups of Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Ben Hatke's Zita the Spacegirl, Jennifer Weiner's The Littlest Bigfoot and Garth Nix's Princess and the Frog tale Frogkisser! And on Wednesday, Fox also revealed it is developing a theatrical feature based on the 2014 Oscar-nominated animated short The Dam Keeper from two former Pixar art directors.

The new projects won't all be straight animation plays. At least two — Girl Who Drank the Moon and Littlest Bigfoot — will be CG/live-action hybrids, a priority area for the studio, which hired executive Nate Hopper in September to build the initiative. ...

Fox is like every other big entertainment conglomerate. It knows that animation is one of the high-margin corners of the movie biz, and it needs to be in that corner in order to maximize profits. Even though the latest production in its Ice Age franchise had an anemic box office return of a mere $64 million in the U.S. of A., it has collected $343,105,048, giving it a world-wide total of $407,168,056, four times its production cost.

So there is no way that Fox will be getting out of making the cartoons

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Blending Formats, Gaining Ideas

VFX super Stephane Ceretti speaks about Doc Strange, the Movie:

CS: You’ve been working with Marvel for awhile now. Does each project feel like it’s own world or does it feel like building one giant universe?

Stephane Ceretti: It’s funny. It’s one world, but it’s also many worlds. I’ve been lucky enough to explore a lot of them. I worked second unit on “Captain America,” which was setting up that character. I got to work with Joe Johnston, which was really great. ...

CS: Doctor Strange is getting a lot of notice for its innovative visuals. Where did those begin as far as realizing the look you wanted?

Stephane Ceretti: It’s been a long process. We started in September of 2014, just after I finished “Guardians.” Scott [Derrickson] was already on the project. He had started to write the script and he had a list of visual that he wanted to use in the film. Some were from other films, others were from photographs or paintings. He kind of collected together a list of things that we looked at. Charlie Wood, the production designer, came to LA and we did a kind of brainstorming bootcamp to figure out what we were going to do for the film visually. ...

CS: Do you need to make firm rules about what is and isn’t possible in the realm of sorcery?

Stephane Ceretti: That’s the big balance that we were trying to find throughout production. Even in post-production, to be honest. How much do you explain? How much do you show? You don’t want to explain everything, because then it gets tedious. You want the visuals to integrate into the story, but not to take over the story. ...

And then the quote that made me laugh:

CS: What about the Cloak of Levitation? I’m assuming that was a blend of both practical and visual effects.

Stephane Ceretti: There’s a lot of practical cloak in the film and the practical cloak is a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful piece of fabric. Originally, the Cloak of Levitation was just the Cloak of Levitation. It was helping him fly. Then we figured out as we were doing pre-vis that it would be great if it was actually a character. We looked at the magic carpet in “Aladdin.” There was some cool stuff there. It could be the story of a cowboy and his horse. He finds that horse in nature and they don’t know each other. The horse has never been with a cowboy before. But then they kind of get to learn each other. They form that relationship by the end. That’s the arc we wanted to do. ...

Good ideas don't disintegrate with age.

They just go into hibernation and reappear in another place and time ... and end up being a good idea all over again.





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Ramping Up Moana

Diz Co. now drops clips fast and furiously ....



... as the picture's release date draws close. ...

And the reviews are coming in ...

“The film front-loads [Moana's] story with two exceptional original songs: The first conveys her father’s play-it-safe mantra, ‘Where We Are,’ while the other gives voice to Moana’s own horizon-challenging desires, ‘How Far I’ll Go’ — both the result of an inspired collaboration between Hamilton composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, longtime Disney music guru Mark Mancina, and Opetaia Foa’i, the lead singer of South Pacific fusion band Te Vaka.” ...

Here in the second decade of the 21st century, Diz Co. knows how to make and market animated features.

The picture wrapped last month, and now it's time for some of the dazzling bits of the movie to be drizzled out on YouTube, to have the cast and directors fan out to drumbeat that the feature is soon to arrive, and by and large build audience desire to rush to their neighborhood multiplex and goggle at the visual splendors on opening weekend ... and beyond.

Judging from the reviews and "want to see" quotient steadily building across the fruited plain, that shouldn't be hard to do.

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Stewart Animation

Jon Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show, is plunging into a new area of show biz.

Entertainment Weekly: Has the fate of Bill Simmons’ show, or the election of Donald Trump, impacted how you much you might be relying on Jon Stewart or John Oliver in the future? Could we be getting more of either?

HBO Programming President Casey Bloys: I’ll take as much John Oliver as I can get. In terms of Jon Stewart, he really is putting together a whole animation studio. My hope is that it’s up and running and putting out content in first quarter of ‘17. Does the election change things? I think it’s more important, now more than ever, that we have voices like that who will parse the information and call out what’s going on.

So if Stewart is setting up a studio, it's likely on the East Coast. Since that is where Jon Stewart lives.

If it were here, TAG would work assiduously to secure a contract. Even being in New York City (or wherever), we can strive to get a contract. Why not?

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The Animation Guild Election

The Animation Guild's officer elections have been taking place by mail since October 11th. On Saturday, November 12th, the ballots for Business Representative, Sergeant-At-Arms, and eleven executive board seats were counted. Here are the results. ...

NEW ANIMATION GUILD OFFICERS

BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE

Jason MacLeod

SERGEANT AT ARMS

Robert St. Pierre

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Bronwen Barry
Jeanette Moreno King
David Chlystek
Dave Thomas
Steve Kaplan
Bill Flores
Jason Mayer
Cathy Jones
Lisa Anderson
Candice Stephenson
David Woo

From Dave Robb at Deadline:

Jason MacLeod has been elected business rep of the Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, succeeding Steve Hulett, who is retiring December 6 after 27 years at the helm of the union.

Hulett, currently the longest serving union leader in Hollywood, spent a decade as an animation writer at Walt Disney Animation Studios in the 1970s and 1980s before taking the leadership role at the guild in 1989. This election marks only the second turnover in the office since 1978.

“I’m very honored to be elected to represent the membership,” said MacLeod, whose credits as an animation lighting artist include Frozen and Zootopia. “Animation in all forms is doing spectacularly well in the marketplace, but this hasn’t translated to a work-life balance our members are happy with. I look forward to partnering with the executive board, listening to our members’ concerns, and working in union to achieve our goals in the next contract cycle.”

“Jason has a big job ahead of him,” Hulett said. “The guild has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, and animation continues to be a red hot sector of the entertainment industry. There will be plenty of challenges ahead, but I know Jason is up to them.”

Laura Hohman, a surfacing artist at DreamWorks Television, was elected president of the guild. ...

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Christmas Stop Motion

The Brits are going in for big-budget stop motion holiday ads, vocals provided by British TV host James Corden, currently working stateside for CBS on The Late Late Show.

... Sainsbury's [the British supermarket chain] will launch its three-minute ad, which took seven weeks to animate using hitech 3D-printing techniques never previously used in the UK, on Monday, making it the last of the major retailers to kick off its festive campaign. ...

Directed by Sam Fell, an alumni of Wallace and Gromit maker Aardman Animations who went on to make comedy zombie animation ParaNorman, the film does not feature any Sainsbury’s products directly. ... however, Sainsbury’s has found a way to link this year’s ad to its stores.

Animators created tiny versions of Sainsbury’s prosecco, Christmas cards and homewares to fill the houses of the multi-racial mix of families who are in Dave’s world.

Fell said work on creating and planning the film began in March and was only completed last week. It took 16 weeks to build the sets and create the 26 puppets used in the film. ...

You don't have a catchy ad on the teevee, you don't end up with audience eyeballs to watch it, as these days everybody fast-forwards through the commercials. So you have to up the ante by packing in razzle-dazzle entertainment.

Doing this in good old stop motion gives the piece a certain holiday charm, don't you think?

The Daily Mail features the Christmas ad here.

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Global Box Office

Marvel and DreamWorks Animation post nice three-day grosses in lands overseas.

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

Doctor Strange -- $60,200,000 -- ($492,600,000)

Trolls -- $18,300,000 -- ($222,284,367)

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk -- $$13,200,000 -- ($13,200,000)

One Piece Film: Gold -- $10,450,000 -- ($58,450,000)

Storks -- $2,100,000 -- ($172,375,734)

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children -- $2,000,000 -- ($258,137,224)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $700,000 -- ($871,999,625) ...

Deadline noted:

Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange remained atop the international box office for the third frame in a row as it nears $500M in worldwide returns. The offshore total is $339.6M. ...

Ang Lee’s latest, [Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk], opened in nine offshore markets across Asia this weekend. ... The first frame was worth $13.2M. The majority of that came from China ($11.7M).

Tim Burton's [Peregrine] pic added $2M in 27 markets this weekend for a $173M international cume. This is ahead of openings in China, Italy and Japan. ...

[Trolls] went to an $18.3M happy place in 68 markets this frame. It held No. 1s in Spain, Mexico and Argentina kept dancing with soft drops in the UK, France, Germany and Italy. The top play is the UK at $24.7M after four sessions. ...

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The Big Box Office Ten

The animation is strong here on Veterans Day Weekend.

WEEKEND DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE

1). Doctor Strange (DIS), 3,882 theaters / $14.9M Fri. (-54%)/ 3-day cume: $43M (-49%) /Total cume: $153M/Wk 1

2). Trolls (DWA/20th Century Fox), 4.066 theaters (+6) / $12.3M Fri. (0%) / 3-day cume: $34.8M (-25%) /Total Cume: $93.7M/Wk 1

3). Arrival (PAR), 2,317 theaters / $9.3M Fri. (includes $1.45m previews) / 3-day cume: $23.4M/ Wk 1

4). Almost Christmas (UNI), 2,376 theaters / $5.9M Fri. (includes $500K previews) / 3-day cume: $15.3M/ Wk 1

5). Hacksaw Ridge (Lionsgate), 2,971 theaters / $3.8M Fri. (-28%) /$5.9M Sat./$3.5M Sun/ 3-day cume: $11.5M (-24%)/Total: $32.9M/ Wk 2

6). The Accountant (WB), 2,342 theaters (-346) / $1.5M Fri. (-14%)/3-day cume: $4.4M (-25%) / Total cume: $77.6M / Wk 5

7). Shut In (Euro), 2,886 theaters / $1.4M Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.8M/ Wk 1

8.) Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween (LG), 2,104 theaters (-130) / $1.2M Fri. (-43%) / 3-day cume: $3.5M (-55%) / Total cume: $70.4M / Wk 3

9.) Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (PAR), 3,079 theaters (-701) / $1.1M Fri. (-30%) / 3-day cume: $3.3M (-39%) / Total cume: $54.6M / Wk 4

10.) Inferno (SONY), 2,656 theaters (-920) / $1.1M Fri. (-41%) / 3-day cume: $3.25M (-48%) / Total cume: $31.6M / Wk 3 ...

Trolls looks to gross $34.8M from 4,066 screens this weekend. If it makes $300k more than that, the picture will beat DreamWorks Animation's Megamind for the best second weekend hold during November.

The way the feature is playing, it will likely run up a healthy domestic gross before Moana shows up near the end of the month and sucks much of the wind out of the little creatures' sails.

Add On: Regarding the strength of box office this weekend, the Mojo tells us:

Disney and Marvel's Doctor Strange, topped the weekend box office for the second week in a row as 2016 became Disney's largest year ever at the domestic box office. In addition to that story, strong holdovers from the likes of Strange, Trolls and Hacksaw Ridge, along with the performance of newcomers such as Arrival and Almost Christmas, contributed to a weekend top twelve that combined for over $150 million, up 56% compared to last year. ...

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Deep Pool of Competitors

Old news; still worth noting:

A record 27 animated features have been submitted for consideration for the animated feature film Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Friday.

The crowded lists reflects the fact that most of the major studios are now all-in when it comes to animation, with Disney represented by Pixar's Finding Dory and Disney Animation's Zootopia and Moana; Universal/Illumination's The Secret Life of Pets and Sing; Dreamworks Animation/Fox's Kung Fu Panda 3 and Trolls and Fox/Blue Sky's Ice Age: Collision Course; Sony's The Angry Birds Movie as well as the R-rated Sausage Party; and Warner Bros.' Storks. ...

There was a time when animated features were few and far between. Disney rolled out a picture every few years. There was the occasional theatrical adaptation of a TV cartoon. And you had the infrequent independent feature.

But nobody got excited about long-form cartoons. Large studios pretty much ignored them. The smart money believed that Walt Disney Productions could make some money with the occasional offering; for every other studio on the planet animated features were minimal-profit endeavors.

Then The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King happened in rapid succession, transforming animation from a small Hollywood sideshow to a business of blockbusters. Because Hollywood is a town full of sedulous apes, it wasn't long before every movie conglomerate non-named Disney was making its own version of a Disney hand-drawn feature.

Sadly, most of the specimens made weren't particularly riveting; almost all crashed and burned shortly after launch.
And a half-dozen years after the animation boom started, it was limping to a close. Even the Disney Company wasn't turning out super hits any more.

But in the middle of this downturn, a wondrous thing happened. Pixar made a Computer Graphics animated feature named Toy Story, then another named A Bug's Life, and yet another titled Monster's Inc..

Each one made Pixar and Disney (Pixar's partner) millions upon millions of dollars, and lo! Competitors were seduced into giving animated features of the CG variety yet another try.

And this time, rival studios produced long-form cartoons that enabled them to open their own mints. Shrek was a blockbuster for indy studio DreamWorks Animation. Ice Age put Fox Animation on the map. Soon other studios jumped into the cartoon bonanza, until today, in 2016, the Motion Picture Academy will onsider a list of cartoon features longer than an orangutan's arm:

“The Angry Birds Movie”
“April and the Extraordinary World”
“Bilal”
“Finding Dory”
“Ice Age: Collision Course”
“Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV”
“Kubo and the Two Strings”
“Kung Fu Panda 3”
“The Little Prince”
“Long Way North”
“Miss Hokusai”
“Moana”
“Monkey King: Hero Is Back”
“Mune”
“Mustafa & the Magician”
“My Life as a Zucchini”
“Phantom Boy”
“The Red Turtle”
“Sausage Party”
“The Secret Life of Pets”
“Sing”
“Snowtime!”
“Storks”
“Trolls”
“25 April”
“Your Name.”
“Zootopia”

The business of animation has traveled a long way, don't you think?

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Emma and the Beast

The veins of animation gold are still plentiful, and the Mouse is eager to mine them.

Diz Co. is making dump trucks full of money converting animated features to live-action versions. You can complain about this development all you like, but the wisest course might be to buy some shares of Disney stock.

Because Walt's 21st century minions are going to go right on making them.

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Ixnay on "The Croods 2"?

Variety tells us:

DreamWorks Animation and its new parent, Universal Studios, have pulled the plug on the long-gestating sequel to the 2013 hit “The Croods.”

Universal Pictures Chairman Donna Langley met with workers at DreamWorks Animation’s Glendale headquarters Thursday to confirm that production of “The Croods 2” was being stopped immediately.

Some 30 employees who have been working on the film, launched 3 1/2 years ago, will be looking for new jobs. The workers were told DreamWorks Animation hopes to keep them at the company. Some could be shifted to other film projects, while others might be put into training or “artistic development” programs, according to an individual at Universal, who asked not to be named. ...

As we said yesterday, Universal has been telling DWA's artistic staff about changes that are rolling down the pike.

The deep sixing of The Croods 2 was part of the changes. Others (per Guild employees) is the uncoupling of projects in development to specific release dates. DWA-Universal wants to make the pictures that are in work to be as ship-shape as possible before setting a release date.

There are other developments, but mum's the word until The Reporter or Deadline or Variety sniff them out. Then we'll comment. Maybe. ... Click here to read entire post

Trouble in Mumbai

It appears an animation studio of some renown will be closing its doors.

MUMBAI: A pall of gloom has been cast over the Indian animation industry. Late last evening, an announcement was made in the Technicolor facilities in Whitefiled, Bengaluru which house the DreamWorks Dedicated Unit (DDU) by general manager Damien de Froberville. Sources say that de Frobeville addressed the 300-odd assembled artists and animators and regretfully announced that the DDU would be ceasing operations come early -2017. At least that’s what he had been informed by the company’s headquarters in the US. ...

Folks have been expecting change to happen at the studio ever since Jeffrey Katzenberg exited DreamWorks Animation with the acquisition. But no one expected it to happen so suddenly. It was not too long ago that DreamWorks Animation had announced that it would be lopping off 200 jobs from its Glendale unit. And now the news has emerged that the Indian dedicated DreamWorks Animation unit would get the axe. ...

Source indicated that the Indian Technicolor management was awaiting official word from Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Dreamworks’ headquarters before deciding on the way forward. ...

The Brew has posted about this, as has VFX Soldier.

Today there was a townhall for staff at DreamWorks Animation's Glendale campus. Managers outlined upcoming changes in productions and production schedules. They also talked about other restructuring DWA will be undergoing.

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Robert Iger Speaks

The profit numbers are out for the House of Mouse, and Chairman Iger was on the horn with financial reporters.

... The magnitude of our Studio's success in fiscal 2016 is simply stunning. We released four films that broke $1 billion in worldwide box office, The Force Awakens, Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory, and Zootopia. And Jungle Book came very close with $966 million. Our Studio slate topped a record-breaking $7.5 billion in total box office for the year. Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm all contributed to this remarkable achievement, and their creative momentum continues.

Doctor Strange just opened to great numbers, Marvel's 14th consecutive movie to open at number one at the U.S. box office. And it has already surpassed $377 million worldwide. Our next animated musical, Moana, is already generating great buzz ahead of its opening later this month. And we expect it will join the pantheon of recent hits from Disney Animation alongside Zootopia and Frozen. ...

Sadly, today's earning report was a long way from being all lollipops and ice cream:

... [The Disney Company] posted adjusted earnings of $1.10 per share on revenue of $13.14 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue slid 3 percent from the prior year, which Disney said included an extra week of operations.

Analysts expected Disney to report earnings of about $1.16 a share on $13.52 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. ...

ESPN, the Disney cable sports network, continues to be a drag on company profits. Revenues at other cable outposts came to $3.96 bill, which was down 7%.

SO, some divisions are marching along smartly, while others are stumbling. Cable networks continue to deflate as more and more people switch to streaming on the internet. The movie studio continues to thrive, as do the various amusement parks girdling the globe.

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It's The Fiber, Stupid

Indie Wire tells us: How DreamWorks Unified the Divided, Fiber Art World of ‘Trolls’

... Veteran production designer Kendal Cronkhite-Shaindlin (“Madagascar”) had plenty of hair, fuzz and felt to work with in weaving a psychedelic world divided between the joyous Trolls and hateful Bergens.

“We wanted to create a hand-made kind of world made of fiber art…carpeted floors, houses made of hair, even fire made of hair…and Kendal was essential to doing that and getting our teams [in sync],” said director Mike Mitchell. ...

One of the production designer’s first decisions was hiring Portland-based fiber artist Sayuri Sasaki Hemann to build a six-foot forest model so they could analyze its properties. And an early aha moment was basing the Troll hair on wool.

“We broke it all down,” said Cronkhite-Shaindlin. “How does fuzz respond to light? What choice would you make for grass? How would you craft a mushroom?” This provided textures and a palette to emulate in CG. ...

After five days of release, Trolls has rolled up $159,237,239 in global revenues, and has raked in $54,404,682 domestically. The picture has a high Cinemascore and a 73% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The fiber likely has some thing to do with that.


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