Who's Working Where?

From time to time, we like to let people know what cartoon facilities here in the City of Angels are employing what numbers of animation staff.

So ... without further ado:

EMPLOYMENT BY STUDIO -- March 2015

6 Point 2 --- 24

Bento Box --- 52

Cartoon Network --- 218

Disney TVA --- 263

DPS Film Roman --- 127

DreamWorks Anim --- 597

DreamWorks TV --- 232

Fox Animaiotn --- 90

Hasbro --- 49

Illumination Entrtnmnt --- 7

Marvel Animation --- 44

Nickelodeon --- 324

Paramnt-Animation --- 60

Rich Entertnmt --- 7

Rick & Morty --- 7

Robin Red Breast --- 108

Six Point 2 --- 24

Sony Pix Anim --- 57

Walt Disney Anim Studio --- 530

Universal --- 23

Hasbro --- 41

Warner Animation Group --- 25

Warners TV Anim --- 186

Wild Canary --- 32 ...

You're probably wondering what all those names and numbers up above are about; we're happy to tell you.

Signator studios send TAG employment/layoff slips informing us who they've hired and who they've laid off. This includes free-lance (out of studio) workers and in-house staff.

But signator studios, good citizens though they are, sometimes fall behind in the slip sending, so please understand that employment numbers are always in a wee bit of flux. (Some shows are ramping up, some shows are ramping down. Etc., etc. It's the nature of the entertainment biz.)

We have bold-faced studios that are employing artists, writers and technicians in the triple digits. If you see a particular studio and your reaction is: "Wait a minute! Company A just laid off a bunch of people! I read about it! They still employ that many folks?!"

Yeah, they employ that many folks. Because 1) they're a big organization (still) and 2) many employees remain on payroll for an additional X number of weeks or months after leaving company premises. (Some of them might not be working in a corporate office or cubicle anymore, but they're still employed.)

Any questions? ...

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Interns

One of our fine entertainment conglomerates will be paying money.

(From Reuters:) Viacom Inc. agreed to pay $7.21 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by thousands of former interns who said the owner of Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon did not pay them, despite their having done work similar to paid employees.

The settlement disclosed on Wednesday night in Manhattan federal court covers roughly 12,500 former interns, and requires court approval.

It is among the largest settlements by companies, including many in the media industry, that have been sued since 2013 by interns who claim they were not paid, or were paid less than minimum wage, in violation of federal and state labor laws. ...

From time to time, the Animation Guild has run across signator studios with unpaid interns performing covered production work. Happily, it hasn't happened recently, and it hasn't happened at most larger studios.

Occasionally, however, an over-ambitious production person attempts to squeeze the turnip until juice flows out. It's a story as old as civilization.

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The World's Box Office

... has any number of animated (and animated-related) moving pictures on it.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Cinderella -- $62,400,000 -- ($132,453,000)

Chappie -- $13,600,000 -- ($56,712,000)

Big Hero 6 -- $17,000,000 -- ($632,786,265)

Jupiter Ascending -- $8,700,000 -- ($171,180,134)

Spongebob Squarepants -- $4,300,000 -- ($270,891,372)

Paddington -- $3,300,000 -- ($218,291,178)

As industry journals tell us:

Cinderella took to the international dance floor this frame, kicking up a fantastic $132.45M global opening. The international portion of that is an estimated $62.4M with nearly half of it coming from China ($25M). ...

Big Hero 6 became the top animated title of 2014 with $633M globally over the weekend. After opening in China on February 28, the film now has a local cume of $66.5M, surpassing Frozen to become the highest grossing animated release there ever from Disney or Pixar. ...

Jupiter Ascending added $8.7M this frame in 37 markets, bringing the international cume to date to $125.2M. ... The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water soaked up a further $4.3M this weekend from 5,028 locations in 49 territories, bringing the international cume to $116.2M. ...

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Battling "Popeye" Stories

So Variety proclaims:

The director [Genndy Tartakovsky] told Moviefone that he’s “off that project” essentially over a difference of opinion in the direction the movie was headed. However, the film is still in active development, according to Sony Pictures Animation.

“I was in love with what we were doing, but I think the studio is going through changes and I don’t know if they want to make the ‘Popeye’ that I want to make,” he told Moviefone. “So they’ve got to make a decision.” ...

This is seconded by Cartoon Brew, but Animation Scoop tells us:

... Sony hasn't cancelled the film. What has happened is that Genndy Tartakovsky had moved on to completing Hotel Transylvania 2 and has started production on an original flick, Can You Imagine?

According to a Sony Pictures Animation spokesman I contacted today - and I quote: "Genndy has been developing both Popeye and his original idea Genndy Tartakovsky's Can You Imagine? (temp title) at the same time while directing Hotel Transylvania 2."

"It initially looked like Popeye would happen first but Imagine pulled ahead and is now scheduled to be his next directorial film at Sony Pictures Animation. That said Popeye is still very much in active development." ...

And what Animation Guild reps heard the middle of last week from staff artists was: Popeye hasn't been cancelled outright, but more like put on the back burner/top shelf and left in (temporary?) limbo.

We alluded to this in an earlier post, but the last thing we want to do is break some animation story and then get a brusque and businesslike phone call from the studio, the underlying message of which is:

"Where the f*ck do you get off talking about the status of our projects?!

But since, you know, the cat is now out of the bag, we'll relay what we heard: Popeye development has slowed way down. There was a difference of opinion between corporate parties over the movie's take on the characters. Should the film have a thirties' sensibility along the lines of the Fleischer featurettes? (See below.) Or should the sailor man be more modern? Some story artists thought the Fleischer approach was the way to go, but the story and character development wasn't grabbing higher ups, and so ...

Back burner time.

However, please note: Shelved projects often don't remain shelved. (Witness, for instance, Frozen.) And whatever the full story is, we don't think the sailor man is dead at Sony Pictures Animation, but only in hibernation. SPA needs new projects, so Popeye could ultimately get made.




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The Princess of Weekend Box Offices

So there's the live action version of an animated feature up top ... and an animated feature at #7.

1). Cinderella (DIS), 3,845 theaters / $23M* Fri. / 3-Day: $70.5M / Wk 1

2). Run All Night (WB), 3,171 theaters / $3.9M* Fri./ 3-Day: $11.44M /Wk 1

3). Kingsman: The Secret Service (FOX), 2,635 theaters (-466) / $1.62M Fri. (-27%)/ 3-Day: $6.2M (-25%)/ Total Cume: $107.1M/ Wk 5

4). The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (FSL), 2,022 theaters (+449) / $1.6M Fri. (-40%)/ 3-Day: $5.79M (-32%)/Total Cume: $18.2M/Wk 2

5). Focus (WB), 2,855 theaters (-468) / $1.6M Fri. (-45%)/ 3-Day: $5.5M (-45%)/Total Cume: $43.6M /Wk 3

6). Chappie (Sony), 3,201 theaters (0) / $1.5M Fri. (-66%)/ 3-Day: $5.46M (-59%)/ Total Cume: $23.2M /Wk 2

7). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PAR), 2,659 theaters (-438) / $954K Fri. (-31%)/ 3-Day: $4.6M (-31%)/Total Cume: $155.2M/ Wk 6

8). McFarland USA (DIS), 2,455 theaters (-337) / $961K Fri. (-34%) / 3-Day: $3.5M (-33%) /Total Cume: $34.8M/ Wk 4

9). Fifty Shades Of Grey (UNI/Focus), 2,039 theaters (-749) / $936K Fri. (-47%) / 3-Day: $3M (-45%)/Total Cume: $161.2M/ Wk 5

10). The Duff (CBS/LGF), 2,301 theaters (-258)/ $921K Fri. (-40%) / 3-Day: $2.9M (-38%)/Total Cume: $30.1M/ Wk 4

Cindy got herself an “A” CinemaScore and a $23 million gross on Day #1 of release. And to think the Mouse, just a few years ago, was skittish of princess movies.

Corporate minds can be changed when box office results roll in.

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Box Office Predictions

Per Mojo.

Weekend Estimated Grosses (March 13-15)

1. Cinderella - $75 million
2. Run All Night - $10 million
3. Kingsman - $6.6 million (-21%)
4. Focus - $6.2 million (-38%)
5. Marigold - $6.1 million (-29%)
6. Chappie - $6 million (-55%)

And it's started strong. As a fine trade paper relates:

Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella bewitched audiences as it began rolling out in roughly 2,000 North American theaters Thursday night, grossing $2.3 million for Disney.

Cinderella bested the $1.6 million Thursday-night gross of Universal's Snow White and the Huntsman, which opened to $56.2 million in June 2012, and the $2 million gross of Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful, which opened to $79.1 million in March 2013. ...

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Guardians' Profits

The Guardian of the Galaxy's numbers get broken down.

... Our experts peg Guardian's net budget at $196 million – $30 million over the original projection–but it was all on the screen. The film grossed $333 million domestic, and added another $344 million foreign, and another $96 million from China (worth $24 million to the bottom line). On a worldwide gross of $774 million Disney’s net haul was $204 million, for a Cash on Cash Return of 1.39. That’s extraordinary for a new franchise. ...

And how smart was Bob Iger to spend that $4 billion on Marvel?

The reason that Diz Co's stock price keeps going up and up and up is because Robert Iger made the decision to turn the Walt Disney Company into the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates. The corporation's earnings growth has been on steroids almost from the month he took over.

People bemoan that "Disney isn't Disney anymore," but that was really true from the moment Walt Disney died in December 1966. Change accelerated when Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg rode through the Buena Vista gate in 1984, and gained speed again when Robert Iger assumed the helm. (Who would have guessed when he was Michael's Number Two?)

But here we are, with Disney transformed into a plethora of brands and cable networks, and it's paying off big time.

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Gross Observation

In 1938, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the highest grossing feature* of all time.

No sequel.

In 2014, Frozen became the highest grossing animated feature of all time.

Sequel.

The times (also the company) have changed.

* "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" made $9 million in its first release. This made it the biggest money earner of its era. (It's probable that "The Birth of a Nation" made more in multiple releases, but nobody knows for sure because records were spotty.)

"Gone With the Wind," adjusted for inflation, has grossed $1,660,000,000 and sold the most theater tickets. "SWASD" has grossed $643,010,400. Or so Box office Mojo says.

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Down at the Culver City SPA

Sony Pictures Animation e-mailed us their latest:



And as it happened, Steve Kaplan and I motored to Sony just a few days ago ...

The division is going through a morphing stage. Staffers we talked to said the new management team has put development of some pictures on hold and (per employees) will be working to ramp up new projects.

So this is kind of a "limbo period" for the division. Osher exited in the usual way that division heads exit: his chief supporter (in this case, Amy Pascal)was nudged off the top of the corporate heap, and Bob quickly followed. None of the Sony artists we talked to were surprised Osher left, but a few were taken aback at the speed of his departure.

Kristine Belson, the new division chief, is likely itching to put her own stamp on SPA, so look for some previously-announced pictures to be pushed back .... or pushed overboard.

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Fox Animation Block

Family Guy ties for first in Sunday night's key demographics.

9 P.M. -- FG -- rating: 2.1 -- share: 6

Which translates into just under 4 million viewers. ...

This doesn't sound like a hell of a lot when you think of the numbers a hit Fox show like, say, M*A*S*H collected forty-odd years ago, but in the age of fragmented viewership, it spells T-R-I-U-M-P-H.

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Expanding Awesomeness

DreamWorks Animation develops creates more content.

The YouTube networks of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. will produce 200 hours of original programming for mobile streaming to customers of Verizon Communications, the companies announced Wednesday.

AwesomenessTV will program a channel of scripted and unscripted content for teens and young millennials, while DreamWorksTV will feature family-oriented live-action and animated short-form content.

Chief Executive Brian Robbins, who oversees both AwesomenessTV and DreamWorksTV, said the opportunity expands the audience for both online networks. ...

The web holdings that DreamWorks Animation purchased for a (relative) song two short years ago appears to be paying off in major ways.

If the theatrical features begin turning a profit, the company will be on the high road to recovery.

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That Didn't Take Long

I mean, it's been a whole fourteen days.

SunTrust Banks Inc., which agreed to buy DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.’s headquarters near Los Angeles for $185 million about two weeks ago, has put the property back up for sale.

CBRE Group Inc. is marketing the 497,403-square-foot (46,210-square-meter) office campus, which is completely leased to DreamWorks Animation for two decades, according to a brochure on the brokerage’s website. ...

So is the little Renaissance village on the cement banks of the Los Angeles River destined to be bought and sold like hog belly futures?

Doesn't seem right somehow.

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Moving View Master

Remember how Three Dee was the biggest thing since three-strip Technicolor?

... Disney-Pixar's 3-D toon "Up" has enough lift to likely become the second-highest-grossing Pixar title at the domestic B.O. after "Finding Nemo."

Through Sunday, "Up's" domestic total was $187.4 million -- the second best of any summer film to date. Par's "Star Trek" has cumed $231.9 million.

"Up's" boffo run is the latest example of how 3-D runs can boost a film's bottom line through higher ticket prices. The film's 3-D runs make up only 40% of the total screen count, yet they contribute 60% of the gross ...

That was then, this is now. From a fine trade paper today about world box office:

... Audiences also seemed more fatigued than excited by 3D, with the format comprising 14% of the overall box office. That represents its lowest percentage since 2009. A mere 27% of the moviegoing public saw a 3D film in 2014, roughly half of the 52% of the public that checked out the format in 2010, a year in which “Avatar” made most of its $2.8 billion haul. ...

Despite rosy predictions that the Moving View Master was a movie game-changer, the New York Times reported otherwise:

Ripples of fear struck Hollywood last week after Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which cost Walt Disney Studios an estimated $400 million to make and market, did poor 3-D business in North America.

... "The American consumer is rejecting 3-D," Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial-services company BTIG [said] ... Consumer rebellion over high 3-D ticket prices plays a role, according to analysts - as does the fading novelty of the funny glasses. ...

TAG blog concurred.

... I spent a year looking at every 3-D release that rolled down the digital highway, Avatar, Christmas Carol, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Toy Story 3, Shrek Forever After, etc. and etc. The DreamWorks features have (for me) the best 3-D going. Jeffrey's crew knows when to punch it, and when to dial it back. DWA's 3-D effects work, I think, to heighten story more than other 3-D presentations.

And still the format leaves me cold. Every time I don the goggles and sit there in the dark I flash on my childhood, sitting on my bed looking at View Master pictures, pushing the little lever, snicking another 3-D color slide into place. ...

The trouble with Three Dee is, it's often a strain to look at and it costs a hell of a lot more than the flat screen version that doesn't hurt your eyes. It was never comparable to color. Everyone sees reality in greens, reds, yellows. Nobody sees it in weird, flat planes that look like a pop-up book.

Or, God help us, Eisenhower-era photo disks in a plastic viewer.



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Oncoming Box Office

Cinderella (the live actor version) looks like it's going to earn some cash.

Cinderella could dance past $65 million in its North American debut in a needed boost for the box office.

The $95 million movie is all but guaranteed to continue Disney's winning streak in turning its classic animated titles into live-action tentpoles. ...

And a few people wonder (and are even ticked) that Diz Co. keeps turning their animated features into live-action remakes.

Let them ear celluloid. Now you understand why Tim Burton is going to

... direct Disney's live-action Dumbo*. ...

I'm sure Disney wishes there were twice as many old, hand-drawn features to remake. I eagerly await the redo of Aristocats. Should be great.

* I'm so old I remember when DisneyToon Studios was developing a CG animated feature of the little elephant. With Joe Grant's blessing.


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Disney Torrent

... of new trailers, already on display hither and yon.

Brad Bird's opus:



Pete Docter's latest:



My prognostication: both features will do well at the box office. (Wow! How Hulett does go out on a limb!)

From what I can see, they're full of well-observed character stuff, and if story elements in each are similar to bits and pieces of movies already out there, what of it? There is nothing totally new under the sun anyway. It's about how the concepts, story arcs, and characters fit together. About how the actors and director present the material.

Both Bird and Docter are good at putting together satisfying, entertaining movies. So we'll see.

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Clutch

... was let out all at once on this date, fifty-six years ago.



Tom Sito reminds us that The Clutch Cargo Show was "The original real time performance capture!" ...

In my youth Clutch was not a guilty pleasure. I never cared for the program, and would have nightmares about those horrid floating mouths above Mr. Cargo's lantern jaw.

And the stories and dialogue were insipid, too. (But it was clear, even to a ten-year-old, that the producers weren't spending money on anything. So no surprise that it sucked.)

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Sam Simon, RIP

One of the Godfathers of the Yellow Family:

Sam Simon, who was one of the major creative forces behind “The Simpsons” and who left the show after its fourth season in a lucrative arrangement that allowed him to spend much of the rest of his life giving his money away, died on Sunday at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. He was 59.

His death was confirmed by his agent, Andy Patman. Mr. Simon learned a few years ago that he had colon cancer. ...

Sam Simon had a long career in show biz ... which started at Filmation in the 1970s. He soon left animation to work in live action sitcoms, returning to cartoons with a vengeance to help launch The Simpsons.

Mr. Simon's death wasn't unexpected; he had been fighting cancer for several years.

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Also Porky!

Since we're on the subject of anniversaries (and related celebrations -- March 9th is clearly an auspicious day in the annals of animation) Professor Sito reminds us:

Happy 80th Birthday Porky Pig, in the short "I haven't got a hat" March 9, 1935.

It could really be called the beginning of what we know as Warner Bros Looney Tunes. Because even though Leon Schlesinger's studio had been around since 1930, for those first few years they struggled to find characters that audiences would embrace. Starting with the little stuttering pig named Porky, the classic WB roster of stars began. Daffy in 1937, Bugs and Elmer in 1940, Road Runner and Coyote 1949. ...

During the thirties, the Disney shorts ran the table at Academy Awards time, but the Warner Bros. output is the more fondly remembered today. The Schlesinger Studio didn't have the budgets that Walt's Hyperion plant did, but Chuck, Friz, Bob, Tex and Frank made every nickel count.

And what they lacked in polish, they made up for in sass.

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Movie Cinderellas

A short history of how many times the fairy tale has been put up on screen. And now yet again.

Stir the embers of the Cinderella story and new flames arise. Kenneth Branagh directs the latest film version in an expensive-looking Disney release starring Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother, Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother, and fresh-faced Grace Kelly look-alike Lily James (“Downton Abbey”) as the ashes to riches heroine.

What’s the appeal? In the first 24 hours of its release in November, an online trailer for “Cinderella” was viewed 35 million times on YouTube and Facebook. The scullery maid turned princess can still pack ’em in. ...

Of course there's been a herd of live-action versions of the story, and the 1950 Disney animated feature (which financially revived the studio), but then there's the Fleischer version above, and this:



And Avery's Swing Shift Cinderella (and good luck finding the short on-line):



And so on and so forth.

The tale has been done six ways to Saturday in seven or eight different decades, up there with the zillions of versions of The Three Musketeers and Treasure Island. Show me a well-told public domain story, and all show you a bunch of different movie studios chasing the golden chalice.

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More Participants in Animation Biz?

This time it's a comics-related company not named Marvel.

Black Mask Studios does not have the name recognition of DC or Marvel Comics, but officials at the company hope that will soon change.

The publishing and media production company will unveil a series of YouTube channels devoted to comics on Monday, and release “Godkiller,” its first animated movie, this summer. Black Mask also is developing several television series and, of course, its comics.

The main YouTube channel, which will begin with five series, is intended to build a new audience for the comics and a showcase for better “motion comics,” which combine characteristics of print and animation. Black Mask has invested in voice actors to improve narration and directors to present and pace the comics. ...

Ultimately, [it's hoped that] Black Mask’s new endeavors will lead to something very old school: comic book sales.

Looking at Black Mask's YouTube channel on a Sunday night, it appears they have a ways to go to build their audience. (The YouTube vids are more comic ... of story reel from the 70s or 80s ... than 2015 animatic.)

But a story in the New York Times, that's a start. Click here to read entire post

Your World Box Office

... and welcome to it.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Jupiter Ascending -- $25,300,000 -- ($152,054,276)

Big Hero 6 -- $19,600,000 -- ($604,811,971)

SpongeBob Squarepants -- $9,600,000 -- ($259,392,859)

Paddington -- $5,600,000 -- ($239,559,868)

Penguins of Madagascar $1,400,000 -- ($365,751,086)
...

The trades offer details.

Crossing $600M, Disney’s Big Hero 6 now has a cume of $604.8M adding another $19.9M globally this frame. The Oscar winner has overtaken Tangled to become the 3rd-highest-grossing Disney animated release of all time behind Frozen and The Lion King. ...

Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water soaked up a further $9.6M this weekend from 6,676 locations in 51 territories for a cume of $110.4M. Opening in Israel, the film took the No. 1 spot with $854K at 27 locations — a $31,629 per-screen average and the biggest release ever for the studio in the market. It was four times bigger than Big Hero 6‘s opening and 4.5 times bigger than Penguins Of Madagascar. ...

Penguins Of Madagascar flapped up another $1.4M from 463 screens in 15 markets as its total hits $284.3M. The terrific run in Venezuela continued with $949K from 82 screens, a 14% drop for a local cume of $9.6M after four weekends. ...

Not too many pics that take in over $365 million at the box office get labeled "Disappointments," but Penguins is one of them.

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Buck an Hour

Now with Add On.

This works well donnit? Except for anyone who tries to eke out a living.

A newbie animator in Japan gets paid around 120 yen – that’s one, yes, one dollar – an hour.

That’s the word from animator and character designer Sachiko Kamimura (City Hunter, Arslan) in a recent blog post where she appeals for the industry to change its ways.

Kamimura writes “after seeing so many new animators unable to eat and slowing wasting away, I feel like something must be done.”

The problem, Kamimura writes, is animators are paid not on a fixed monthly or hourly salary, but for each completed drawing. ...

TAG has been fighting piece work for as long as I've been working for the guild. It just never works out well for artist. Today's okay piece rate for a background, layout, whatever, is tomorrow's starvation wage.

Fifty-fve or sixty years ago ago, some piece work for scripts and storyboards was written into the Animation Guild's collective bargaining agreement. They might have worked great in ... oh ... 1962, but they suck now. And when something gets into a union contract, it takes and act of congress (and/ or God) to get the something out.

Yet as bad as some rates are, they don't compare to an animator's take home pay in Japan.

Add On: Henry Thurlow is (so far as he knows) the sole American working in Japan's animation industry. He says this:

...“The projects are amazing and there’s a sense of pride that you’re among (or at least surrounded by) the best of the best. Unfortunately, as far as ‘good things about the anime industry go, that’s about it.” ...

“Let’s just be clear: It’s not a ‘tough’ industry… It’s an ‘illegally harsh’ industry. They don’t pay you even remotely minimum wage, they overwork you to the point where people are vomiting at work and having to go to the hospital for medicine. They demand that you come in whenever they realize a deadline isn’t going to be met. That probably means about a month and a half of nonstop work without a single day off. Then you will be allowed to go back to your regular six-day workweeks of 10-hour days.” ...

“Keep in mind all of this hard work was essentially all for the sake of simply being involved in and credited in the animation projects I love.” ...

More power to Henry, I guess.

h/t to Tom Sito, Larry Houston and Robin Steele.

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Brief Announcement on the TAG Blogs

That's right, TAG blogs, plural.

In 2006, then Guild President Kevin Koch and I started the Animation Guild Blog on blogspot. It was easy, it was straightforward, and we created a lot of content for it until Kevin stepped out of the President's chair and went on with his animation career (which is still going strong, I might add.) ...

I soldiered on, and soldier to this day. There's been a lot of material put up over the years, everything from art work to craft interviews to investment advice to politics. Also lots of news and analysis about the L.A. animation scene and the animation industry in other geographical locations.

In the last couple of months, a second blog pretty much like the first has materialized on the guild's website. (You can find it by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on "featured posts.")

This second blog is built on word press architecture and I'm still feeling my way through it. The intent is to make this second offering more union centric, but thus far it mirrors content put up here. I would like the two web logs to diverge more, but there are only so many hours in the day so the odds are good that one will be much like the other.

For now.

So why not simply embed this nine-year-old blog with the revamped guild website? Because only Word Press can integrate seamlessly with animationguild.org (because Word Press under-pinnings.) Blogspot, sadly, is like a round peg trying to thrust itself in a square hole. A merger just cannot happen.

How these separate internet locations evolve over the next year or two I know not, but we wanted you to know that they were out there in cyber space. Thanks for reading.

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Your American Box Office

SpngeBob clings tightly to the Top Ten.

Weekend Box Office

1). Chappie (Sony), 3,201 theaters / $4.5M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $13-$13.5M/Wk 1

2). Focus (WB), 3,323 theaters / $2.88M Fri. (-55%)/ 3-Day: $10.483M (-46%)/Total Cume: $35M/Wk 2

3). The Second Exotic Marigold Hotel (FSL), 1,573 theaters / $2.7M Fri./ 3-Day: $9.1M/Wk 1

4). Kingsman: The Secret Service (FOX), 3,101 theaters (-181) / $2.23M Fri. (-26%)/ 3-Day: $8.3M (-30%)/ Total Cume: $98M/ Wk 4

5). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PAR), 3,097 theaters (-370) / $1.379M Fri. (-34%)/ 3-Day: $7.16M (-34%)/Total Cume: $147.1M/ Wk 5

6). McFarland USA (DIS), 2,792 theaters (+27)/ $1.47M Fri. (-26%) / 3-Day: $5.48M (-30%)/Total Cume: $29.3M/ Wk 3

7). Fifty Shades Of Grey (UNI/Focus), 2,788 theaters (-595) / $1.77M Fri. (-50%)/ 3-Day: $5.2M (-51%)/Total Cume: $156M/ Wk 4

8). Unfinished Business (Fox), 2,777 theaters / $1.8M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $5.12M/Wk 1

9). The Duff (CBS/LGF), 2,559 theaters (-63)/ $1.526M Fri. (-30%)/ 3-Day: $4.9M (-29%)/Total Cume: $26.05M/ Wk 3

10). The Lazarus Effect (REL), 2,666 theaters (0)/ $1.55M Fri. (-58%)/ 3-Day: $4.65M (-54%)/Total Cume: $16.95M/ Wk 2 ...

A friend proudly pointed out that The SpongeBob Movie is one hand-drawn animated feature that's done exceedingly well at the box office.

Another (more cynical) friend said: "Yeah, there's lots of hand-drawn animation in it, but Paramount advertised the flick as a CG cartoon. You see any ads with the hand-drawn stuff?"

I think we'll continue to see hand-drawn features with well-loved TV characters (Spongie, the Yellow Family), but I don't think there are many hand-drawn animated features coming from our fine, entertainment conglomerates anytime soon.


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Look Who's Hot

More players in animation are getting deals from the majors.

Chris McKay, who supervised animation on “The Lego Movie,” has signed a first-look producing deal at Warner Bros.

McKay is on board to direct Warner’s “Lego Batman” project, set to be released in May 2017, with Will Arnett again voicing the Caped Crusader. Roy Lee and Dan Lin are returning as producers along with “Lego” directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

McKay and Lee recently set up at Warner Bros. a movie version of the Cartoon Network series “Adventure Time.” ...

It wasn't long ago (the 1980s? 2002?) when somebody who was creatively involved with a hit animated movie got ignored.

No, they didn't get ignored. Nobody in the front office knew of their existence. Or cared.

But you get a live-action hotshot, a Wes Anderson say, and he gos and makes a stylish film that gets lots of critical hurrahs on its mad-cap journey to collecting a stupendous $174,600,318, and it's Academy Award time.

But if there are some animation directors who make a feature that collects (to date) $363,037,086, the press could well inform you that they've directed a failure.

And even the success stories in Cartoonland have to be very successful to get noticed. Chris Sanders has gotten some deserved praise. And Ron Clements and John Musker have directed enough blockbusters to get their names in the papers. Yet Ed Gombert, the story director on both Aladdin and The Croods, toils away in relative obscurity.

So it's nice to see Mr. McKay get a write-up in one of our fine trade papers. And nicer still that Warner Bros. is signing him to a multi-pic pact.


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Target Date Funds (TAG 401k Fund)

The Vanguard Target Date Funds, which most Animation Guild 401(k) participants are using, will be changing their investment lineups in coming months.

Right now, the Target Date Funds stock allocations are invested 70% in Total U.S. Stock Market and 30% in International Stocks. By the end of 2015, that will change to

60% U.S. stocks
40% International stocks.

The new allocation will bring Target Date funds closer to the actual world market, which is (approximately) 50% U.S. and 50% everything else.

As for bonds, the current allocation is: 80% Total Bond Market (U.S.), and 20% Total International Bond. The newer lineup will be

70% U.S. Bond
30% International Bond.

The intent is to bring more diversification to the Target Date portfolios, which these changes do. The costs of the TAG 401(k) Target Date Funds will remain low.

There's a bajillion different investment strategies, and all of them have their points, The Target Date Funds are good for most people because they allow you to set up a program and then not think about it anymore. A professional team is rebalancing a broadly diversified mix of stocks and bonds, and it ceases being a worry. (Okay, it ceases being a major worry.)

You could also use actively-managed funds, but they will probably -- over time -- fail to outperform market index funds because they cost more, and costs kill active funds' advantages. You could tilt to small cap or value, but that strategy might under-perform the total market for years ... or decades.

So if you are somebody whose head throbs trying to figure out which investment road to take, Target Date funds are probably a good highway to travel. The key is sticking with it.

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Gordon Kent, RIP

One of the really hard workers in animation ... and really good guys ... passed away early this morning.

Gordon Kent with his sister Victoria Kent Young.

Gordon Kent succumbed in the fight for his life at 2:00 A.M., after a long, heroic struggle. He was surrounded by his loving wife and soulmate, Donna, his sister Vickie, and her husband Jim. ...

Gordon jumped into animation soon after college, and took to it immediately. But it's better if he himself describes those early years:

... I was pretty lucky to get into animation almost right out of college. However, while I was in college I spent one summer working in an auto body repair shop as a “lot boy” – the worst part of the job being cleaning the toilet – those guys were not as careful in the bathroom as they were when repairing or painting cars. I also did scrimshaw for about a year – pendants, earrings, belt buckles… lions, tigers and bears mostly (oh, my!)

I’ve been doing this [animation] since 1977… I worked on a show called CBS Storybreak for two seasons. I was associate producer – but my job entailed hiring character and background designers, storyboard artists and story editing (and some writing). I also was the voice director for most of them and worked with the composers and sound effects people as well as working with the engineers on the final mix. I got to learn and do a lot. That was for Buzz Potamkin at Southern Star.

I also worked for Buzz years later at both Disney TV and Hanna-Barbera. At HB I got to be Supervising Producer on a couple of movies for TV – Titles change in animation all the time – today that would be supervising director. The Flintstones’ Christmas Carol was my favorite project there. I’ve been an animation timing director since then and have been lucky enough to work on Kim Possible, Teamo Supremo, Billy and Mandy and Bob’s Burgers among dozens of other shows. ...

Beyond Gordon's staggeringly long list of credits, he was a devoted man of labor, serving on the Animation Guild's executive board for multiple terms. His voice was always loud and passionate in meetings, and he always fought for the underdog. Case in point:

Director Terry Lennon, Steve Hulett, Gordon Kent, and Jeff Massie at a labor march in Downtown L.A.

You will be missed, Gordon. For you touched the lives of many.

A memorial service celebrating Mr. Kent's life will be held in the future. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to City of Hope in his name.

Add On: Mark Evanier has written a terrific remembrance of Gordon right here.


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The League

What I know about multi-player on-line video games is minimal, but a family member likes them a lot, and pointed this Cinematic out to me. ...



It publicizes the latest iteration of a wildly popular CG game in old-fashioned, hand-drawn animation.

And the Cinematic is getting buzz. I particularly enjoyed this exchange on reddit about the video above:

Anyone know what Bard was actually trying to do?

He's being a dick. He's just fucking around playing Call of Duty, ignoring a whole village being slaughtered, until something worthy of his attention pops up.

This is probably accurate. If Bard intervenes it's to influence something in another dimension 10000 years ago. Bard's not healing you to save you - hes healing you because your great great great grandchild will lead a revolution in the distant future. ...

And so on.

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Yet Another Remake

It ain't just Disney doing the redo thing.

MGM has acquired the rights to Robert C. O'Brien's children's novel "Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh" for a live action/CGI animation hybrid adaptation. Michael Berg (Ice Age 5) has been hired to write the screenplay, which will focus on an origin story involving an "imperiled mouse protagonist" who befriends a group of lab rats as they become "hyper-intelligent." ...

The novel, which was first published in 1971 and won the Newberry Medal a year later, was adapted into the 1982 animated feature The Secret of NIMH, with a voice cast that included Derek Jacobi, Dom DeLuise, Shannen Doherty and Wil Wheaton. The animated adaptation spawned the 1998 sequel The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue. MGM hopes to start a franchise with this new live action/CGI hybrid adaptation. Paramount previously tried to relaunch the franchise, but it never came to fruition. ...

Everybody is going back to musty library shelves to find themselves a (hoped-for) tent pole.

It almost feels like desperation time, reaching down to properties that didn't set the box office on fire thirty-plus years ago, but hey! Maybe this time it will be different!

If M-G-M still held the rights to Gone With The WInd, maybe they could rethink the movie as an animated property: Rhett Butler as a wolf, Scarlett as a fox, and Mammy as a tubby, hectoring badger. Get Robert Lopez and Kristen-Anderson Lopez to write a batch of songs, and you'll be all set.

h/t Chris Sobieniak.

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Son of Robin

Strange ideas about Disney's Spring '16 release.

Disney's Zootopia Could Bring Back Your Furry Robin Hood Fantasies

... [Zootopia is] all about anthropomorphized animals and the wacky world they live in (where one of the main characters happens to be a fox, cough cough). ...

Comparing an upcoming Disney CG animated feature to a post-Walt animated feature of so-so quality* wouldn't be the first thing that leapt to my mind, but what do I know? If the production team was using Phil Harris and Andy Devine sound-alikes, maybe the comparison would be apt. However, I don't think that's what they're doing.

* Although the early '70s Robin Hood may not be your cup of tea, it was Ollie Johnston's very most favorite animated feature. I know this because I asked him, and that's what he told me. My face fell atop the floor.

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Latest ReDo

A title character is cast.

Dan Stevens, the breakout actor of Downton Abbey and last year's cult action movie The Guest, is in negotiations to play the Beast/Prince in Disney's live-action retelling of Beauty and the Beast. ...

Stevens will join Emma Watson, who is playing Belle, the "Beauty" in the title, while Luke Evans is in talks to play the vain villain Gaston.

Bill Condon is directing what is turning out so far to be an all-British cast production while David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman are producing. ...

When Diz Co. mines the library, they drill down to everything. The remakes of Walt-era animated features has temporarily ended as they chisel gold from the Katzenberg-era features.

I'm waiting for the company to tackle Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Of course, a couple of other movie companies have already beaten them to it.

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Robust TV Animation

Television cartoons are doing well these days. The last week, I walked through Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney TV Animation; newer shows are staffing up and older shows are coming back (Duck Tales, Fairly Odd Parents, Spongebob ... you get the idea.) Cartoon Network continues to enjoy big numbers. ...

... Through the third week of February, Cartoon Network was the #1 network on all of television in total day delivery among all targeted boys. Total day delivery grew year over year among kids 2-11 by +6%, kids 6-11 by +13% and kids 9-14 by +3%. Prime was also up by +4% among kids 6-11 and +5% among kids 9-14.

Cartoon Network was the #1 destination vs. all TV with all key kids and boys on Thursday Night, with delivery growing between +78% and +97% across all targeted demos.

Saturday morning saw year-to-year gains across all key kids & boys, ranging from +20% to +52%.

Adult Swim took top honors as basic cable's #1 network in Live + 7 delivery of adults 18-34 and adults 18-49 for the week. And Cartoon Network ranked as television's #1 network in total day and early prime among all targeted boys. ...

Supervisors have reported to me that it's hard to find quality, experienced artists in the current labor market. And just about every experienced animation writer has assignments.

Feature animation has had serious downdrafts, but its small screen cousin is going strong.

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Majority Report

The WGA has released employment findings:

The number of jobs for women, minority and older TV writers took a nose dive last year, according to a new study by the Writers Guild of America, West. “Women and minorities have actually lost ground as compared to their white male counterparts,” the study found, “both in terms of overall staff positions and in higher-level executive producer ranks.”

Minority writers saw a nearly 7% decline in employment last season, falling screenwriting from 15.6% of the workforce in 2011-12 to 13.7% in 2013-14, while employment of female writers fell 5%, from 30.5% to 29%. ...

“Although writers over 40 continued to claim a majority of all staff writer positions,” the report found, “data from the most recent TV season show that their employment prospects drop dramatically after age 50. Such stark statistics continue to illustrate that the entertainment industry remains a glaringly unlevel playing field.”...

Funny thing. Employment of women writers went up in 2011-2012. I guess it's like a roller coaster, up and down. Because eight years back, it was much the same thing.

In point of fact, the WGA has a higher representation of women than TAG does. For years and years, the membership for women in the Guild has hovered in the 17%-20% range.

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Animation Stats in the Middle Kingdom

China's animation industry appears to be a bit choppy.

... China’s animation industry output value continued to grow and exceeded RMB90 billion in 2013, showing a year-on-year increase of around 21.0%. Despite the overall sustained growth, each link of the industrial chain is developing to varying degrees.

From the production and broadcast market, China’s animation production suffered three consecutive years of decline (2011-2013). In 2013 China produced 358 domestic TV cartoons, a total of 204,732 minutes long, respectively down 9.37% and 8.17% year on year. ...

In 2013, there were a total of 33 animation films released in Chinese mainland theatres, including 24 homemade and 9 imported, generating total box office of about RMB1.64 billion, up 13.34% year on year. ...

Reading between the lines, China' animation biz of late has been

1) Up and down.

2) Better on the theatrical side than the TV side.

3) Not as robust and fully developed as the Chinese government would like people to think.

So where the hell is the data for 2014?

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Viacom Sues

The company files against an internet interloper.

... On Friday, [Viacom], the parent company of Nickelodeon, filed a lawsuit against the anonymous operators of Nick.Reboot.com for allegedly violating copyrights "willfully, maliciously and with wanton disregard" and for violating trademarks "by creating the false and misleading impression that Defendants’ pirated Viacom Works are produced, distributed, endorsed, sponsored, approved, or licensed."

NickReboot offers free 24/7 streaming plus a premium on-demand service with a tab of $35.99 for a year. ... In its lawsuit, Viacom not only wants damages. It is also demanding that ISPs, cloud storage providers, advertising service providers and anyone else offering material support to NickReboot be added to an injunction. ...

Right on, Viacom. You can't stand idly by and let internet pirates steal your stuff.

Now. Enjoy a copyrighted cartoon from Diz Co.



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Our Robot Friends

Making like Rosengrantz and Guildenstern before death.

Disney XD has picked up Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales, an animated take on the six Star Wars movies. The limited series consists of five 22-minute episodes that will air later this year.

Force Awakens opens galaxywide Dec. 18.

But this is not an ordinary Star Wars in 22 minutes. The conceit is that the movies are being retold through the eyes of robots C-3PO and R2-D2 in a brand new story. ...

This could be good ... or something less.

We've all learned that Legos can mean Big Bucks. And the Mouse is nothing if not synergystic -- allowing one part of the Disney empire to buttress another.

I smell a new stream of cash flowing the company's way.


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Tales of Yesteryear

As I (once again) toot my own horn.

The Trials of "Oliver And Company"

It was a strange time, those last months at Disney. Everybody was on pins and needles, wondering how long the feature animation division was going to remain intact. And I could feel myself circling the drain.

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The Foreign B.O.

This week, animation and viz effx are present, but far from dominant.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

SpongeBob Squarepants -- $14,200,000 -- ($236,622,050)

Big Hero 6 -- $21,600,000 -- ($572,179,741)

Jupiter Ascending -- $3,500,000 -- ($124,211,063)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $562,000 -- ($485,004,754)

Night at the Museum -- $2,200,000 -- ($342,811,000)

Penguins of Madgascar -- $2,500,000 -- ($362,893,867) ...

The trades provide texture and detail:

... Disney’s Big Hero 6 lived up to its name, posting the biggest opening weekend ever for a Disney or Pixar animated release in China. The $14.8M haul in the Middle Kingdom was 68.5% of the full $21.6M frame for Hiro and Baymax in 25 overseas markets. The bow bested Frozen‘s start last year which was $14M over five days in a crowded 2014 Lunar New Year field. ...

Elsewhere, Big Hero 6 this frame held on to the No. 1 slot amongst animated films in Japan for the 9th consecutive frame; and is still the No. 2 Western release. The international cume is now $351.3M and the global total is $572.18M. ...

The Penguins of Madagascar continued cajoling Venezuelans with another $1M for a local cume of $7.7M. The total weekend take on the Fox/DreamWorks Animation pic was $2.5M elevating the overseas cume to $281.6M.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water splish-splashed to another strong $14.2M for Paramount in 46 territories at 6,947 locations. The international cume is swimming close to $100M with $96.3M to date. ...

Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb exhibited a weekend take of $2.2M lifting the Fox cume to $232.6M. ...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles served up a further $562K in Japan at 332 sites. The cume after four weekends in the final territory takes the movie to an $8.6M cume there and brings the international total to $293.8M. ...

A lot of the big vfx features (Turtles, Museum) are near the end of their respective box office trails.

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American Box Office

One animated feature (some of it hand-drawn! Overseas!) remains in the Top Ten.

Weekend Box Office

1). Focus (WB), 3,323 theaters / $6.76M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $20.2M/Wk 1

2). Kingsman: The Secret Service (FOX), 3,282 theaters (+16) / $3M Fri. (-43%)/ 3-Day: $10.8M (-41%)/ Total Cume: $85M/ Wk 3

3). Fifty Shades Of Grey (UNI/Focus), 3,383 theaters (-272) / $3.4M Fri. (-57%)/ 3-Day: $10.24M (-54%)/Total Cume: $146.9M/ Wk 3

3). The Lazarus Effect (REL), 2,666 theaters / $3.9M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $10.22M/Wk 1

5). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PAR), 3,467 theaters (-213) / $2M Fri. (-49%)/ 3-Day: $8.7M (-47%)/Total Cume: $137.6M/ Wk 4

6). American Sniper (WB), 2,914 theaters (-321)/ $1.9M Fri. (-28%) /3-Day: $7.3M (-27%)/ Total cume: $330.4M/ Wk 10

7). McFarland USA (DIS), 2,765 theaters (+10)/ $2M Fri. (-44%) / 3-Day: $7M (-36%)/Total Cume: $21.4M/ Wk 2

8). The Duff (CBS/LGF), 2,622 theaters (+47)/ $2.1M Fri. (-51%)/ 3-Day: $6.3M (-41%)/Total Cume: $19.1M/ Wk 2

9). Still Alice (SPC), 1,318 theaters (+553) / $755K Fri. (+10%) / 3-Day: $2.6M (+24%) /Total cume: $11.9M /Wk 7

10). Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (PAR), 2,901 theaters (+21)/ $690K Fri. (-70%)/ 3-Day: $2.1M (-65%)/ Total Cume: $9.9M/ Wk 2

Paddington, which has fallen off the list,now nudges up against $70 million domestic, with a world gross of $228,749,921.

SpongeBob proves that hand-drawn animation can have legs ... if it's SpongeBob.

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Real Estate Sale

When you need to raise money, you liquidate stuff.

In a regulatory filing on Thursday, DreamWorks Animation disclosed that SunTrust Equity Funding had signed an agreement earlier this week to purchase the DreamWorks campus for $185 million.

The sale includes 10 buildings on about 15 acres of land, which was developed two decades ago and is dotted with olive trees, oaks and a koi pond. ...

I've walked around the campus numerous times. You feel like you're in the middle of an Italian Renaissance village, maybe a corner of Florence.

I think of the koi pond (which is large) as "Lake Katzenberg." Snowy egrets have been known to swoop in and feast on the fish swimming in its clear, placid waters.

Add On: Prez Emeritus Sito recalls:

Soon after the campus was completed, I was showing Frank & Ollie around when they came to visit. I remember Frank saying " This place is sure nice. And just think, if things don't work out, it would make a swell outdoor shopping mall..."

I don't think Frank's speculation will come to pass. Jeffrey is tenacious.

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Tweet This

A factoid for Twitter fans:

"Networked Insights" says the average box-office value of a tweet is $560, but animated films are higher than that

If you want to have a significant effect on the box-office take of a movie, tweet about how you want to see an animated family film five weeks prior to its release.

That tweet will be worth an extra $1,390 at the box office, according to a study released on Friday by "Networked Insights".

A tweet about a comedy made the week of release, on the other hand, will only give the movie an extra $90. ...

DreamWorks Animation needs to get on the stick with this, and start Tweeting about Home. Click here to read entire post

Big Screen Time

... for the series Nick let slip through its fingers.

Adventure Time, one of the most popular shows on Cartoon Network, is being developed at Warner Bros. for the big screen as an animated feature. Created by Pendleton Ward at Cartoon Networks Studios, Adventure Time follows the escapades of 12-year-old boy Finn and best friend dog Jake. .... The project will be produced by the winning combo of Chris McKay and Roy Lee.

McKay (one of the exec producers of The Lego Movie) was recently hired to direct The Lego Batman Movie at Warner Bros. and also was the genius behind Robot Chicken. Lee is producing The Lego Batman Movie and also produced Warner Bros.’ groundbreaking animated The Lego Movie along with Dan Lin. ...

Deadline has it the teensiest bit wrong.

Adventure Time was launched as a short at Nickelodeon under producer Fred Seibert's deal with the Viacom company, not at Cartoon Network.

Nick had the project in its corporate hands, but elected not to expand the short into a series. (And even though at least one Nick exec pushed to turn it into a full-blown half-hour, thicker heads prevailed.)

Nickelodeon then put the short into turn-around, and Seibert took it to Cartoon Network, where it was polished to a high gleam and became a ratings winner. The rest, as they say in Hollywood, is cartoon history.

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Hand Drawn Animation

... receding in the rear view mirror.

I keep reading articles saying how hand-drawn cartoons are on the cusp of a comeback. Maybe in Europe, where hand-drawn features continue to be produced, but not in Southern California. A Disney animation veteran recently clued me in as to why: ...

I've worked on CG features and I've worked on hand-drawn features. And hand-drawn features are harder to make. Hand-drawn cartoons take a year to produce. Once you've produced sequences, it's hard to change the work. You have to go back and do everything over.

But with CG, you can animate the movie in three or four months, change things close to the release date. You can't do that in hand-drawn animation. If you find out the story doesn't work when you're two-thirds done, you're stuck. With CG, we change the story and rework sequences until late in the process.

It's close to live-action in that way. You can rework until late in the production. With hand-drawn animation, the plot, action and dialogue has to be locked down way earlier, or the picture won't get done in time for its release.

From a production standpoint, hand-drawn animated features are clunkier and take more production time. But from the executive suite, the superiority of CG animation over hand-drawn is glaringly obvious.

It makes a hell of a more money than traditional animation. The faster production time for CG long-forms is simply icing on the cake. Hand-drawn features have small-company disciples in Europe and elsewhere that create them, but the big entertainment conglomerates are done with the old style.

Sad, but the way it is.


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Robert Osher Departs

... from Sony subsidiaries.

Sony Pictures Digital president Bob Osher, who oversaw Sony Animation and Imageworks for the past seven years, has been fired, according to knowledgeable sources.

Thursday’s firing comes amid an ongoing shakeup at the studio. On Tuesday, Tom Rothman was named chairman of its motion picture group in a surprise move that followed the Feb. 5 ouster of Amy Pascal as co-chair of the Culver City-based studio. ...

After Ms. Pascal lost her job, Mr. Osher's exit was pretty much baked into the corporate cake. As a Sony Picture Animation employee told me a year ago:

"Osher's focused on catering to Amy Pascal. He doesn't have any decent creative ideas. He's a survivor more than anything." ...

So now he's "decided to leave the studio to pursue other interests," which, when found in a company e-mail or press release, is often code for "we tossed him over the side. Hope he can swim."

But of course, that's not the case here. We wish Mr. Osher the best, and the very best of luck chasing other interests.

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Another Studio Chief Bites Dust

First Amy Pascal, now ...

Adam Goodman is preparing to exit as president of the [Paramount Pictures] film group. ... Goodman's recent successes include The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, which has reinvigorated the family franchise with box office earnings of $203.8 million to date, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which exceeded expectations last year when grossing $438.8 million globally. ...

Goodman oversaw successful pictures, but displeased his superiors by failing to control production costs.

It's always something to do with money (or the lack thereof) that brings a Big Hollywood Dog down. Even the all-powerful Michael Eisner was put out to pasture when Disney's profits sagged. (And Roy Disney nipping at his heels didn't help either.)

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Netflix Cartoons

Netflix isn't slowing its acquisitions of cartoons.

Netflix is adding five children’s shows [four of them animated] over the next year — including new versions of “Danger Mouse” and “Inspector Gadget." ... [The other animated shows are] “Bottersnikes & Gumbles,” based on the Australian book series of the same name; and “Super 4,” a CGI-animated series inspired by Playmobil toys. ... Kidvids are an important part of the Netflix SVOD puzzle, appealing to parents because there aren’t any ads. ...

From the 1950s through the 1970s, TV animation was a Saturday and Sunday phenomenon, controlled by ABC, NBC, and CBS. Then in the '80s that tightly-knit universe unraveled a bit as syndication became a new vehicle for the distribution of animated product. Filmation pioneered it with He-Man and She-Ra; Disney capitalized on it with DuckTales and the "Disney Afternoon."

A quarter century on, television networks are out of the weekend cartoon business, and broadcast syndication doesn't pay the production bills anymore. Now it's cable networks and on-line distributors that propel small-screen animation down the tracks.

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The Rebooted Series

The press release is out. Everything old is new again.

... Marc Buhaj — Senior Vice President, Programming and General Manager, Disney XD — announced, “DuckTales has a special place in Disney’s TV animation history, it drew its inspiration from Disney Legend Carl Barks’ comic books and through its storytelling and artistic showmanship, set an enduring standard for animated entertainment that connects with both kids and adults. Our new series will bring that same energy and adventurous spirit to a new generation.” ...

The original series, launched back there in the 1980s, had an interesting history.

It was among the first Disney TVA shows developed for syndication, and the company (as Wikipedia notes) spent a LOT of money on it. What isn't noted is that the main lot was ticked off with Disney TVAs sizable budget overruns, and as one veteran of the series told me:

The series was way expensive, like by millions. And rumors were circulating that upper management would do some serious firings of TVA execs if the thing tanked. But when DuckTales premiered, the ratings were higher than projections, the company ended up making a fortune, and Disney TVA managers became heroes. ...

DuckTales went on to be the cornerstone of the nineties syndicated block known to millenials as "The Disney Afternoon", and for a few years syndicated packages on broadcast TV was a major cash generator before fees were cut and it wasn't so lucrative anymore.

Time marches on.

Today, of course, cable and multi-platform viewing is where it's at, and DuckTales, the series that really put Diz TVA on the map, will be dusted off and reconstructed. (They're doing it with old animated feature titles, so why not television?)

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The New Director

The trades tell us:

Director Rob Schrab, who on the TV side has helmed Community, Parks And Recreation and The Mindy Project, will make his feature directorial debut on Warner Bros’ The LEGO Movie Sequel. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who directed the first pic, are writing and will produce the sequel together with Dan Lin and Roy Lee. ....

Hey, animation directors (Frank Tashlin, Brad Bird, Rob Minkoff) swing over to live action. So it's only fair and right that live action directors return the favor in the opposite direction.

(And maybe LEGO Movie II will get an Oscar nomination.)

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... And a Second Director on KFP 3

No solo helmer for the third chapter:

Jennifer Yuh will not be helming the latest installment in the Kung Fu Panda franchise by herself, I’ve learned. DreamWorks Animation has brought in Alessandro Carloni to co-direct Kung Fu Panda 3 with Yuh, the first woman to direct an animated feature solo at a Hollywood studio when she helmed 2011’s Kung Fu Panda 2. Sources tell me that Yuh requested Carloni join her as a director on the pic and DWA execs signed off quickly. ...

I think that, times being what they are, DreamWorks Animation doesn't want to take chances of slippage with the release date of major franchise.

The second movie might have under-performed domestically, but it did gangbuster business everywhere else, and took in more money than the first. DreamWorks needs all the hits it can muster, and the fat panda franchise fills the company's screaming need for a high grosser.

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The Bad News

Now with Add On.

DreamWorks Animation is not in a happy, peaceful place.

The studio had already told the Street to expect bad news including a big writedown. It included a $57.1 million impairment charge tied to Penguins Of Madagascar and Mr. Peabody And Sherman. In addition DreamWorks Animation wrote off $54.6 million for layoffs, and $155.5 million from unreleased projects including B.O.O. and Monkeys Of Mumbai.

All together, DWA had a Q4 net loss of $$263.2 million, down from a $17.2 million profit at the end of 2013, on revenues of $234.2 million, +14.7%.Aanalysts expected revenues of $246.2 million. The net loss at $3.08 a share was lower than predictions for a $3.01 loss.

“Although 2014 was a challenging year for our Company, I am confident that our recent announcement to restructure our feature film business will enable us to deliver great films and better box office results, while improving the overall financial performance of our business,” CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg says. ...

It has certainly been challenging for Dreamworks in the recent past. However, Jeffrey K. and his studio are following a well-worn path of peaks and troughs that mark the history of the biggest companies in the entertainment business. None of our fine conglomerates has a perfect streak and each has had to endure its own "challenging times".

DreamWorks has addressed their stumbles, girded their loins and now forges ahead with renewed conviction. We look forward to seeing them succeed and grow as their peers did after facing the same tribulations.

Add On>: And the company announces new moves as DWA's stock falls in after-hours trading:

DreamWorks Animation added $10 million to its debt with a new $215 million revolving credit facility. Total debt now comes to $515 million while DWA’s cash balance fell 30% to $34.2 million. But execs said they will see a jolt of cash from a $185 million deal to sell and then lease back DWA’s studio in Glendale. ,,,

Jeffrey K.'s high-wire act, thrilling the general public for years now, looks increasingly wobbly.

Add On: At least some stock analysts are positive about DreamWorks Animation's future.

... “They [DWA] needed to get things back on the right path,” B. Riley analyst Eric Wold told TheWrap. “Major layoffs. Switch out of creative staff. The future is still unknown but much brighter than it was a few months ago. We upgraded the stock from neutral to buy the Monday after the restructuring.” ...

Here's hoping the restructuring is a major success.

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Color Mickey

On this date, eighty years ago, the first full color Mickey Mouse cartoon was released. Titled The Band Concert, it also featured an early, longer-beaked incarnation of one D. Duck.



Walt Disney started making full-color cartoons in 1932 with the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees (remade from black-and-white). Starting in '32 and extending to '35, Walt Disney Productions had the exclusive use of Technicolor's three-strip system which provided full-spectrum color.

The first three-color, live-action feature was Pioneer Pictures' Becky Sharp (1935), followed by Trail of the Lonesome Pine, A Star is Born, The Garden of Allah, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wizard of Oz, and the eternally popular Gone With the Wind.

Walt Disney Productions, unlike other movie studios, never made a black-and-white cartoon after The Band Concert. (It made some black-and-white live-action features and TV shows during the 1950s, but that was about it for non-color films.)

Since 1935, Disney movies have been mostly rainbows.

H/t Tom (who else?) Sito.

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Globalization

Because it's a small world after all.

Tens of millions of shekels in computer-animation work is heading for Jerusalem after The Operating Room, a Los Angeles-based animation firm part-owned by Israelis, signed a deal to produce a TV series for the children’s entertainment company Nelvana.

About 30% of the $10 million of production work for the first season of the show, which has not yet been named, will be handled by scores of animators working in the capital. If the show moves into a second season, the budget will grow considerably. ...

Los Angeles. Canada. Jerusalem. For once the work isn't going to India, the Philippines and/or China.

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Hasbro's Ups and Downs

Hasbro had a studio in Burbank called "The Hub". But things have changed a bit.

Hasbro makes not just toys but also hugely popular intellectual property, which for decades has been key to its bottom line. But as kids' consumption patterns change radically with the advent of new technologies, the company has struggled to find a balance between its core business and its entertainment properties.

Over the last few years, the company has poured billions of dollars into (and received billions of dollars from) big-budget movies and triple-A video games, plus a joint-venture cable network called The Hub (a costly misstep), which since was rebranded and partially sold back to partner Discovery, [now called Discover Family]. ...

Projects like The Hub and disappointing films like Battleship might not have worked the way Hasbro wanted, but the company is, if anything, even more committed to TV and film today. ... Where are Hasbro's proprietary TV shows now? Well, everywhere.

Old shows from The Hub still run on Discovery Family, and several, including My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, will continue to premiere on the network for another season. Transformers: Robots in Disguise is upcoming on Cartoon [Network], which has turned into one of the last strongholds of boys programming on cable. ...

The toy company's large ambitions for its own kids' cable network didn't really pan out. (Or rather, didn't pan out ... and produce enough gold ... fast enough.) But Hasbro is still in the intellectual property game. And it's still got the Burbank studio, turning out family entertainment.

My bet is it will make new moves in the marketplace. The DreamWorks Animation deal might have fallen through, but you can't keep a good toy company/cartoon studio/content provider down for long.

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On Academy Voting

A long time ago, a veteran screenwriter (who had his flirtation with Oscar at the 1938 banquet) told me:

I was nominated for In Old Chicago, didn't win. The Academy Awards event was smaller in those days, but you were expected to show up for the ceremony, and you were expected to vote for your employer's pictures, because that's what good company employees did. ...

-- Niven Busch

"Because that's what good company employees did."

It's been written that Clark Gable lost the Oscar for Gone With The Wind because Louis B. Mayer instructed M-G-M's minions to vote for Robert Donat, the lead in the company picture Goodbye Mr. Chips. (Gable was on loan to Selznick International for that other one.)

Based on Mr. Busch's observations, and based on some of the movies, writers, directors and actors that have won gold statues over the years, it's pretty clear that "best" doesn't always end up "winner."

Academy members cast their votes for all kinds of reasons. On occasion it's quality, but other times it's because the nominee has been an also-ran five times before and so wouldn't it be great to give him a boost into the winner's circle, quality be damned.

And sometimes it's whim. The three glasses of wine and broiled halibut went down painlessly, and the ballot is sitting there on the dining room table, so the Academy member marks the first name that catches his eye, whether he watched the screeners all the way through or not. (Who's going to know, anyway?)

And sometimes it's willful prejudice. The member didn't like war movies, or comedies, or features with dogs in them, and so voted for something else.

Lastly, votes are cast from, as Cartoon Brew notes, "cluelessness." But is clueless worse than drunkenness, pity, bigotry or the company line?

In the end, every vote is subjective. Giving out Oscars isn't rocket science, or any science. And you're well advised not to take the results of the balloting too seriously because you will be A) ticked off, B) heartbroken, and C) believing the voters have no taste or idea what they're doing*.

And you would be at least partially right. But all these things about the Academy Awards have always been true, right from the beginning. The Oscars aren't a meritocracy, and really can't be. They're a political event, a popularity contest, and a demonstration of corporate muscle. They're also a reflection of the mood of the people who qualify for membership, and that mood is constantly shifting, driven by demographics and the hot topic of the moment. And it's why I look on the Oscar telecast as a pleasant background diversion while cruising the internet on a rainy Sunday evening, and nothing more.

To think of it as anything beyond that will only invite heartache and despair.


* This is doubly true for the Golden Globes, which are handed out based on the exquisite judgements of a few dozen foreign correspondents and stringers. But, year after year, Tinsel Town turns out for the Globes anyway. Go figure.

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And This Year's Little Gold Man Goes To ...

Best Animated Short:

Feast -- (Disney) Patrick Osborne, Kristina Reed

Best Animated Feature:

Big Hero 6 -- (Disney) Don Hall, Chris Williams, Roy Conli

And as Mr. Sito says ...

Regardless who wins the Oscar, and all the bellyaching about Lego aside, lets take a minute and salute what a great year this was for animated features! Five really good, really original animated films. Two hand drawn, two CG, and a stop motion. Animated films nominated for best screenplay and best song.

A few years ago we were fighting to even have a features category! Now everyone is talking about it. Give all the people who make animation a big hand for an extraordinary year!

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Your Global Box Office

... with animation doing pretty well throughout.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World-Wide Totals)

Spongebob Squarepants -- $21,900,000 -- ($201,171,834)

Jupiter Ascending -- $8,900,000 -- ($114,516,979)

Big Hero 6 -- $11,000,000 -- ($546,224,880)

Penguins of Madagascar -- $5,200,000 -- ($359,208,569)

Shaun the Sheep -- $4,500,000 -- ($17,500,000)

Paddington -- $1,000,000 -- ($227,660,766)

Paddington, now near the end of its run, has made a tidy profit forStudio Canal and the Weinstein Company. There is now buzz of the (inevitable) sequel.

Viacom's Sponge Out of Water gathered in in another $21 million from 44 markets for a foreign total of $76 million and global box office of $191.2 million.

And the "disappointing" Penguins of Madagascar now bumps against $360 million in world grosses. This compares unfavorably with the very successful (and Academy Award winning) Rango, which took in $245,724,603.

Perceptions and media memes are sometimes at odds with reality. Ten weeks ago, we were hearing

... Stifel analyst Benjamin Mogil says he expects DWA to book a $14 million loss for Penguins in Q4. He cut his domestic box office and home-video sales estimates by more than 25% and notes that the film “has limited consumer products expectations.” ...

It's true that Penguins under-performed in the U.S. of A., but grosses beyond our shores have been steady. Probably there won't be a loss taken on a movie that collects more than $360 million.

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Disney Family Tree

A veteran artist, formerly of Disney's feature animation department, recently pointed out to me an interesting through line:

Thirty-plus years ago, we were doing a Disney World Show called Cranium Command. And we drew inspiration from an old Disney short, Reason and Emotion ...

Which is, if you don't know, this:



You will note the different visual representations of emotion/reason working on the characters? Look familiar to you at all? The son of this Disney short, per a Disney artist from the early eighties, would be ...

A presentation that was a staple inside EPCOT for decades.





Good old Cranium Command, an entertaining stop inside the "Wonders of Life" pavillion. It was created by Disney artists back in Burbank, one of whom was a talented young guy named Pete Docter.

So now, another thirty-five years along the Great Highway of life, Pete Docter is directing this Pixar feature:



Quite a lot of connecting wires between each of these Disney projects, don't you think?

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The American Box Office

... has a couple of cartoons embedded inside it.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

1). Fifty Shades Of Grey (UNI/Focus), 3,655 theaters (+9) / $8.4M Fri. (-72%)/ 3-Day: $25.1M (-71%)/Total Cume: $132.5M/ Wk 2

2). Kingsman: The Secret Service (FOX), 3,266 theaters (+62) / $5.16M Fri. (-50%)/ 3-Day: $16.1M (-54%)/ Total Cume: $66M/ Wk 2

3). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PAR), 3,680 theaters (+26) / $3.85M Fri. (-40%)/ 3-Day: $16.3M (-48%)/Total Cume: $125.2M/ Wk 3

4). The Duff (CBS/LGF), 2,575 theaters / $4.1M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $11.2M/Wk 1

5). McFarland USA (DIS), 2,755 theaters / $3.6M Fri. / 3-Day: $11.1M/ Wk 1

6). American Sniper (WB), 3,235 theaters (-201)/ $2.6M Fri. (-30%) /3-Day: $9M (-45%)/ Total cume: $318.2M/ Wk 9

7). Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (PAR), 2,880 theaters / $2.5M Fri.*/ 3-Day: $7M/Wk 1

8). Jupiter Ascending (WB), 2,503 theaters (-678) / $1.08M Fri. (-46%) / 3-Day: $3.67M (-60%)/Total Cume: $39.5M/ Wk 3

9). Paddington (TWC), 1,837 theaters (-407) / $622K Fri. (-23%) / 3-Day: $2.7M (-32%) /Total cume: $68.1M /Wk 6

10). The Imitation Game (TWC), 1,408 theaters (-143) / $701K Fri. (-13%) / 3-Day: $2.5M (-27%)/ Total cume: $83.8M / Wk 13 ...

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 isn't doing well for Viacom. (Did Hot Tub Uno set the turnstiles afire? Not that I remember.)

SpongeBob, on the other hand, has held better than any older release in the Top Five. It appears it will collect $16+ million in its third weekend, good for more than $125 million when the weekend concludes.

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Gaumont Acquires

... rights to a comic duo.

Gaumont Animation, the LA-based animation unit of the French mini-major, has picked up the exclusive worldwide option to develop and produce an animated 2D series based on the iconic comic duo Laurel & Hardy. Rights were acquired from Larry Harmon Pictures Corporation. ...

I never got doing animated versions of live-action comedies. How do you replicate this*?



It's like doing live-action versions of classic animated features.



Oh wait. ...

* Apologies for the colorization.

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Sito Recalls

The President Emeritus sends birthday greetings.

Happy 90th birthday! Feb 20, 1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movieThe Lost World premiered. Based on Conan-Doyles 1912 novel. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films. O'Brien later did King Kong and trained kids like Ray Harryhausen.

Dinosaurs have always enthralled the elementary school set, particularly boys.

The flick directly above was a staple around our house when I was young. Blackhawk Films (now long gone) sold an 8mm print; the Hulett household had an 8mm projector. The result? My younger brother and I sat mesmerized watching the movie over and over again. (This was long before the internet began mesmerizing people.)

The Lost World is really the granddaddy of 3D/CGI features. Everything that came after it, from King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1948) to Jurassic Park, Avatar,, the Ray Harryhausen pictures and the latest incarnations of Planet of the Apes owe something to this movie. Because this is where live-action/3D animation hybrids got their actual, big-time, commercial start.

There was nothing much before. There was lots and lots in the nine decades that followed.

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At the Network of Cartoons

Cartoon Network had a bunch of announcements about series old and new today. They were as follows ...

We Bare Bears -- Each episode follows three bear siblings' awkward attempts at assimilating into human society, whether they’re looking for food, trying to make human friends, or scheming to become internet famous.

Powerpuff Girls -- Reboot. Adventure Time's Nick Jennings exec produces.

Magic Magiswords -- A brother and sister team of “Warriors for Hire,” on hilarious adventures and crazy quests to collect magical swords.

Long Live the Royals -- The royal family celebrates the yearly Yule Hare Festival (in four rib-tickling episodes).

Steven Universe/Uncle Grandpa -- Crossover Special: “Say Uncle”.

Adventure Time -- Special Miniseries (above and beyond the Regular Show's regular shows).

In addition to the above, Uncle Grandpa has been picked up for additional episodes. (I'm told the number is 13.)

Clarence has gotten picked up for a new season.

The Amazing World of Gumball, out of CN's European branch, will continue, as will Teen Titans, Go! from sister studio Warner Bros. Animation.

Regular Show, Uncle Grandpa and Steven Universe, all in-house series, have also gotten renewals. And Mixels a joint production of Cartoon Network and Lego, is coming back for a second season.

I've been trhough the studio a couple of times over the past week. Clarence, the half-hour created by Skyler Paige, has had a lot of creative personnel changes the last six months, and continues to have changes. Whether it impacts the quality of the show remains to be seen, but CN had enough confidence in the production to give it one more green light.

And why there isn't more coordination and synergy between Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network continues to be a mystery. ...

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