Animated/Mo Cap World Box Office

The boy reporter stays on top.

Taking first place in at least a dozen of 45 overseas markets played, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn scored its second consecutive No. 1 box office weekend on the foreign theatrical circuit with a $40.8 million gross ... [Tintin] has sailed past the $100-million mark with an accumulated tally of $125.3 million. ...

As for animated titles, they've been raking in some heavy coin as well:

... Ranking No. 3 on the weekend was DreamWorks Animation’s Puss In Boots, which grossed $15 million from 1,262 venues in just four markets ... Total foreign box office for the 3D animation spinoff of Shrek is $39 million after two rounds of foreign play ...

Disney sci-fi/action drama Real Steel has accumulated a total of $127.2 million. ... Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes finished No. 1 in China for the second straight stanza, and collected $7.47 million overall on the weekend from 2,981 situations in five markets. Foreign cume comes to $294.3 million. ...

Other international cumes: Sony’s The Smurfs, $416.5 million; ... Disney’s The Lion King 3D, $53.1 million ...

We can see a trend here, can't we? Animation and Spielbergian Mo Cap -- which has a major dollop of animation in it -- is doing really, really well.

And our fine, not totally dense entertainment conglomerates have noticed this. They understand that C.G.I. in its various forms is a major commercial driver. Which explains why Southern California, despite having a smaller slice of animation's big fat layer cake than previously, has more animation work than ever before in its history.

The layer cake is that much bigger.