Michiyo Yasuda, RIP

A well-loved veteran of animation departs:

Michiyo Yasuda, a longtime animator and color designer for Studio Ghibli, has passed away at age 77. Her credits at the vaunted animation studio span decades, from its very first release in 1986 (“Castle in the Sky”) to Hayao Miyazaki’s final film (“The Wind Rises”) three years ago; it would be easier to list the revered projects made by both Ghibli and Miyazaki that she did not contribute to. ...

... Yasuda, who was born in Tokyo on April 29, 1939, began her career in Toei’s ink-and-paint department when she was 20. In 1997 she was the subject of Yasuko Shibaguchi’s book “The Color Artisan of Animation,” which has yet to be published in English; she retired once, in 2008, before returning to work on “The Wind Rises.”

“What I like best is when I am building up the colors in my head, thinking of how to get the tone worked out,” Yasuda said of her process in her interview with the L.A. Times. “Color has a meaning, and it makes the film more easily understood. Colors and pictures can enhance what the situation is on screen.”

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On-Coming Super Heroes

The last announcements of what the spandex crowd will be doing in the animated realms:

Wonder Woman

Warner Bros. Animation supervising producer James Tucker confirms that Warners are looking into another “Wonder Woman” film for the DC animated universe: “We discussed with Warner video, and they have Wonder Woman on their radar in some form or fashion.” ...

Avengers: Secret Wars

Hayley Atwell will reprise her role of Peggy Carter, at least in voice anyway, four the upcoming fourth season of the “Avengers” cartoon on Disney XD. Dubbed ‘Secret Wars’ for its new season, Atwell appears in an episode that will see Carter teamining up with Captain America and Iron Man to stop Kang the Conqueror. ...

Also, too:

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders features Adam West and Burt Ward back as the voices of Batman and Robin, not to mention Julie Newmar as their adversary Catwoman. Since the original stars who played The Joker, The Riddler and The Penguin have since passed away, other voice talent has taken up those roles, but a big name has been cast to take on a different villain in the sequel.

William Shatner has been cast as the voice Harvey “Two-Face” Dent in the Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders sequel, expected to arrive sometime in 2017. ...

Super heroes are busting out all over. On the live-action side there are new theatricals, new TV shows ... and Supergirl meeting up with Wonder Woman (okay, Lynda Carter as not Wonder Woman).

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Mining the Vault -- Part Whatever

From the intertoobs:

... In Disney’s quest to turn every single one of its properties into an ouroboros of cartoon-sequel-live action remake-live action sequel-cartoon again, Aladdin is going to join Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella as a live-action movie. And they’ve somehow landed on Guy Ritchie as the director. ...

John August, entertainment journals report, has written the screenplay.

In my long-ago youth (we're talking the 1980s), people used to complain to me that Disney wasn't Disney anymore, and wasn't that a shame, wasn't that dispiriting (etc.) I used to think they were on to something, these people, grousing about how the company of Walt had become impure, and just wasn't, you know Disney anymore.

Now I think the complaints are poppycock. Walt went to his reward a half century ago. "Walt's dead and you missed it!*" Sweet little Walt Disney Productions is now the gargantuan Walt Disney Company, the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates, and it makes product to

1) increase profit margins and cash flow

2) strengthen the bottom line

3) expand and reinforce the brand.

Nobody can bring back the studio that existed in the era of Snow White ... or when Disneyland was built ... or the period when young Jeffrey Katzenberg breathed fresh life into feature animation a quarter century ago.

All that's over.

What's there now is a large, busy company that's out to maximize the potential of its Intellectual Property. Diz Co. has long-since stumbled onto the fact that remakes of its animated library make mountains of money, so quess what? The company is going to order up remakes of even marginal hits from its past.

If purists don't like that, they can go watch a Blu-Ray of So Dear To My Heart, and pine for the way things used to be.

* Ward Kimball gleefully telling art students that they weren't around for the glory days of the studio, and too fcking bad.

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The Weekend Foreign Box Office

The numbers and totals that keep our fine entertainment conglomerates making the cartoons.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Miss Peregrine's Home -- $42,500,000 -- ($145,100,000)

Operation Mekong -- $26,500,000 -- ($97,500,000)

The Girl On The Train -- $16,500,000 -- ($41,200,000)

Bridget Jones's Baby -- $11,300,000 -- ($120,600,000)

Deepwater Horizon -- $10,600,000 -- ($66,300,000)

Storks -- $9,700,000 -- ($106,100,000)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $9,100,000 -- ($848,200,000)

Finding Dory -- $8,900,000 -- (1,001,500,000)

Sausage Party -- $4,100,000 -- ($129,209,151)

Kubo and the Two Strings -- $1,300,000 -- ($63,108,048)

Sausage Party, though not a huge grosser by international box office standards, has taken in over sixt times its production costs. For the rest:

Finding Dory is now No. 3 globally for 2016 and the No. 5 animated pic of all time. German-speaking Europe maintained No. 1 in week 2. ...

Storks delivered $9.7M from approximately 8,300 screens in 55 international markets. The cume is now $56M. In Spain, the drop was 20% for a $2.8M cume. China leads overseas with $11.3M after 15 days and amid a crowded roster of local titles. ...

Here in October, five of the top 11 highest-grossing features are animated. And most of the rest are super hero flicks with loads of animated effects.

SO, we could say that 2016 is the Year of Animation, yes?

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Spidey!!

A fine entertainment journal tells us:

Disney XD is debuting a new original animated series Marvel’s Spider-Man, which is set to premiere next year, said Cort Lane, senior vice president at Marvel Animation and Family Entertainment, at New York Comic Con. Produced by Marvel Television, the series follows the teenage years of Spider-Man, as an unsure but courageous Peter Parker has to figure out how to be a superhero from the very beginning. Alan Fine, Dan Buckley, Joe Quesada and Jeph Loeb from the Marvel Animation team are executive producing.

The basic cable channel’s other web-slinger animated series Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man is in its fourth season which will end with a two-part finale in January 2017. ...

If you're keeping track of these things at home, Ultimate Spider-Man was produced* by Film Roman (on Hollywood Way in Burbank) for multiple years, while Spider-Man is being done at Marvel Animation's Glendale Studios.

One can never have too much Spider-Man.

* Produced means the pre-production. Production (animation, color, etc.) was done out of the U.S. of A.

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Troll Hunters

From one of the usual suspects:

Guillermo del Toro’s animated Dreamwork’s Trollhunters series will launch on December 23 it was announced today at New York Comic-Con. At the Theater at Madison Square Garden panel for the series, a new trailer for the Anton Yelchin, Kelsey Grammer, Ron Perlman, Steven Yeun and Charlie Saxton voiced show was shown too- as you can see above. ...

As happens in the Modern Era, there's a whole lot of cartoonin' in evidence around the world.

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Our American Box Office

The Weekend List for the big movie grossers has one animated feature in it.

Domestic Weekend Box Office

1). The Girl on the Train (UNI/DW), 3,144 theaters / $9.4M Fri. (includes $1.23m previews)/ 3-day cume: $26.7M / Wk 1

2). Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children (FOX), 3,705 theaters (+182) / $4M Fri. (-57%)/ 3-day cume: $14.7M (-49%)/Total: $50.9M/Wk 2

3). Deepwater Horizon (LG), 3,259 theaters (0) / $3.3M Fri. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $11.6M (-43%)/Total: $38.4M/ Wk 2

4.) Magnificent Seven (SONY), 3,696 theaters (+22) / $2.6M Fri. (-44%) / 3-day cume: $8.9M (-43%)/Total cume: $75.7M/ Wk 3

5). Storks (WB), 3,608 theaters (-314) / $2.1M Fri. (-33%) /3-day cume: $8.5M(-37%) /Total: $50.2M/ Wk 3

6). Birth of a Nation (FSL), 3,042 theaters / $2.6M Fri. (includes $350k-$400k previews)/ 3-day cume: $7.8M / Wk 1

7). Middle School (CBS/LG), 2,822 theaters / $1.99M Fri./ 3-day cume: $6.6M / Wk 1

8). Sully (WB), 3,058 theaters (-659)/ $1.4M Fri. (-42%)/ 3-day cume: $4.9M(-41%)/Total: $113.1M / Wk 5

9). Masterminds (REL), 3,042 theaters / $1.1M Fri. (-52%) / 3-day cume: $3.9M (-40%)/Total: $12.6M/ Wk 2

10). Queen of Katwe (DIS), 1,259 theaters (+17) / $447K Fri. (-37%)/ 3-day cume: $1.6M (-36%) / Total cume: $5.4M / Wk 3 ...

Storks has crossed the $50 million threshold. Anybody's guess if/when it cracks $60 million. Or $70 million.

There have been a plethora of animated features released in 2016, with several major theatrical unveilings still to come. Trolls (DWA) breaks on November 4th, Moana (from Disney) happens at Thanksgiving, and Sing (Illumination Entertainment) arrives on December 21st.

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Tom Tomorrow

An entertainment journal tells us:

Animation house Film Roman announced today that it has optioned This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, the long-running and acclaimed weekly comic strip written and drawn by Dan Perkins, with plans for an episodic series to be co-executive produced by company founder and legendary animator Phil Roman. ...

One of the seminal works of underground political cartooning of the the last 30 years, This Modern World has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Economist, as well as a host of independent weeklies since its launch in 1988. ...

The planned animated series will retain the political and social bent of the original strip and in the words of executive producer Jeff Segal, who is developing the series for Film Roman, will be aiming at “essentially the same demographic as The Simpsons“. ...

Film Roman left its Burbank location months ago, after The Simpsons departed for Fox Animation and the company founded by Phil Roman had no work in either development or production. FR has now settled in the West Valley with a small staff and its founder.

Phil Roman's company has come a long way from its start with Garfield and Friends in the 1980s. After Garfiled there was Bobby's World, Mother Goose and Grimm, Mighty Max, Richie Rich and Bruno the Kid. There was King of the Hill and The Simpsons. For a time in the '80s and '90s, the studio was the independent animation facility in Southern California, making many of the coolest kid shows. Along the way, Phil R. left the company as corporate finances suffered, then suffered some more, but now there's the prospect of a new beginning with Tom Tomorrow, and we wish the organization well.

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Continuing That Upward Trajectory

... which is a theme we've recently been on, yes?

FX Networks has upped television executive Kate Lambert to the post of senior vice president of series development and animation, Variety has learned.

Lambert’s promotion comes as FX is emphasizing an expansion in animated programming, highlighted by FX boss John Landgraf‘s announcement this summer at the Television Critics Association that FXX will be moving “really aggressively” into more animated series and short-form series in the adult animation format.

In the new role, Lambert — who developed and oversees the critically-acclaimed and Emmy winning animated comedy “Archer” — will head development of animated original series and short-form animated programs for FX and FXX. She will also continue to develop live-action series for both networks. ...

More and more animation is, apparently, getting pushed into various production pipelines. This explains why I hear supervisors complaining about the difficulty in finding experienced board artists, experienced timing directors, experienced revisionists, etc.

Ms. Lambert and her promotion at FX is merely the latest indicator.

The bigger story here is that cartoons continue their run as a high-profit sector of story-telling, a sweet combination of lower production costs and higher margins.

The cable networks, Amazon, Netflix, theater chains and the wider internet are not in showbiz for the charitable side of it. The moolah is the important part, and they want to make a good college try as raking in as much as they can. Hence, animation.

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Ever Voracious Netflix

From an entertainment journal:

Fox Broadcasting is teaming with the Google Spotlight Stories to create a special virtual reality experience for The Simpsons couch gag to commemorate its milestone 600th episode. Titled “Planet of the Couches,” the gag will open the “Treehouse of Horror XXVII” episode on October 16 and will be available via Google Spotlight Stories and Google Cardboard app for the full VR experience.

“Planet of the Couches” takes viewers on a completely immersive VR experience as the world of The Simpsons is extended to 360 degrees. The audience is able to enter and explore the universe of the long-running animated series, with multiple viewings yielding different results. ...

Decades after I'm moldering in the grave, The Simpsons will be creating new episodes and providing work for board artists, writers and animators yet unborn.

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Saban Still Makes the Cartoons

In the go-go nineties, Haim Saban's studio was a prolific cartoon producer. Saban partnered with Marvel and Dic, distributed (and redubbed) dozens and dozens of Japanese anime cartoons. They produced live-action television shows (Power Rangers) and theatrical features (Casper the Ghost 2). The company partnered with Fox and both corporations profited hugely by selling out to Disney.

But Mr. Saban's corporate namesake is still in the game:

... Saban Brands also received two series orders from Netflix: Kibaoh Klashers, to debut next year, and Treehouse Detectives, co-produced by Saban Brands and Sunwoo Animation, and set for a 2018 launch. ...

Of course it's not just Netflix animation and kid shows) being made with Saban. There's also this ...

[Netflix] ordered eight episodes of Lego Elves, The Lego Group, to debut in 2017 with hero character Emily Jones returning to Elvendale with her little sister, Sophie. Netflix already has Lego Bionicle: The Journey to One and Lego Friends: The Power of Friendship in its kids' lineup.

The streamer is also reteaming with Arad's 41 Entertainment shingle on Super Monsters, about six preschoolers with superpowers. Netflix earlier partnered with Arad on Kong: King of the Apes and the upcoming Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and Jane. ...

Also headed to Netflix is Slap Happy Cartoons' The Hollow, an animated-action series about three teens in a maze of bizarre towns and odd time portals, to debut in 2018; and ITV Studio's Robozuna, to launch worldwide in early 2018, and then afterward in the U.K. on CiTV. ...

The point is that animation, driven by a voracious market, continues to grow because large corporate entities continue to find it highly profitable. Which brings employment opportunities to artists, writers and technicians, both in California and other parts of the globe.

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The Global Talent Web

These days the Animation Guild is getting immigration visas from game studios, visual effects facilities, and animation studios at a rapid clip. Animators, compositors, tech directors from overseas are coming into the country to work on projects on both coasts, but mainly this one.

The Guild reviews O-1 visas and supporting O-2 visas, then writes letters of objection or support. Sometimes it gets hectic. Sometimes we're cranking letters out like a small publishing house.

But the talent flows in two direction, there's a global animation industry out there, competing for talent, and not just on the artistic side. There is also a steady flow of executives some from overseas to the States, but most going the other way. Like for instance: ...

A former animation studio chief at Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. has joined Singapore’s One Animation to spearhead a push into original content creation, TBI has learned.

Industry veteran John McKenna will oversee One’s current slate, which comprises Oddbods and Insectibles, and look at developing new multiplatform IP.

“Development is my key priority,” he told TBI this morning. “We want to create the right atmosphere within our studio, where our people feel valued, which will cultivate a culture in which people want to create new intellectual property.”

McKenna career has seen him work on major television and film productions for major US studios, as well on projects in LA, Berlin, Mumbai and Paris. He ran London studios for Disney and Warner during the 1990s, and was senior VP and general manager of 20th Century Fox Animation between 1998 and 2001.

He joins another kids industry veteran, Bettina Koeckler, who joined One in July to lead a push into consumer products. She also has studio experience, having spells at Sony and Fox. ...

A lot of global companies have caught wise to the reality that the animation biz, done right, cam make said companies cargo holds full of money. Current thinking is that American execs with big-time animation experience on their resumes can increase the odds of success.

The theory's debatable, since a number of expatriates have tried and failed, over multiple decades, to boost this or that Asian/Indian studio into orbit. But offshore companies are ever hopeful, so the idea will continue to be tested.

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The Japanese Powerhouse

Japan has been strong in the animated content department for a long time, and continues to move briskly forward.

... Of all forms of content that have made it out of Japan, none have had as much of an impact as animation. Whether it’s the legion of animators who entered the craft after watching a Hayao Miyazaki movie or the millions and millions of people who were sucked into the Pokémon GO craze this summer, the widespread influence of anime in global pop culture is clear.

“Japanese content’s greatest strength is animation as it travels broadly all over the world from developed to developing countries,” notes Satoko Shimbori, the director of the international business department at TV Asahi.

The broadcasting giant has a strong record in animation distribution, with a portfolio that includes the megahits Doraemon, Shin Chan and Ninja Hattori.

One of Japan’s biggest anime production outfits is Toei Animation, which has been in business since the 1950s and boasts a catalog that includes the award-winning Saint Seiya and Sailor Moon. Among its newest highlights is Dragon Ball Super, a sequel to Dragon Ball Z. Ryuji Kochi, the president of Toei Animation Europe, is hopeful that the show will usher in a new period of dominance for Japanese animation in the region after having lost broadcast slots to content from other markets.

“I want Japanese animation to come back in the European market,” Kochi says. “We believe there is potential…. Japan has a huge comics market. We have a lot of the story writers, the [comics’] original authors. It’s competitive, so writers want to improve themselves. That’s why the stories are improving. The strength of Japanese animation is in the stories.”

Kochi also sees strength in the licensing business for Japanese anime. “Recently, games and apps have been growing the market. Also, anime fans like collector’s items, like action figures.” ...

While various foreign animated features do exceedingly well in Japan, the United States and other countries seldom return the favor. Your Name, the latest Japanese feature to break domestic box office records,
will likely do okay in selected foreign markets, but probably won't be a blockbuster.

Nevertheless, animated content out of Japan will continue to wield big influence on the style and stories that get made in the U.S. and Europe.

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Coming Attractions

As the new animated musical from Walt Disney Animation Studios wraps, the publicity rollout shifts to a taller gear. And Moana producer Osnat Shurer provided an interview:

Our movie was 85% FX, which in CG animation is quite a lot. There’s water, there’s lava, and none of the sets are static, they’re on a boat and always travelling. There were quite a few things that were invented for the film. There were a lot of smart people writing incredible programs. They wrote three different programs for the sea, one for distant water, one for midway water, and one for water very close up, and then a fourth program to stitch all those together.

Then, with the idea of water actually being a character in the film, we suddenly needed a huge collaboration between FX and character animation.

So aside from the programs written specifically to figure out water, they also had this incredible breakthrough where they created these buoyancy tests, to figure out the physics of when a boat is moving on the water and it leaves a wake. ...

[Songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda] is very fast in how he works but he also is a deep thinker, so we would always figure out the amount of time he needs for some thinking, so that we could collaborate back and forth.

We also had different people in different time zones all over the world, so some of the scheduling was challenging, and he was busy, but he was always available to us. This is first love. When we first interviewed him he came into the room and said to John, ‘I’m in this industry because of ‘The Little Mermaid’’...

The last couple of animated releases, one from Europe and one from Warner Animation Group, have under-performed at the world box office.

Disney is going to trundle out all its heavy guns for this picture, and it will likely have a profitable run from its November release to the middle of next year. Bank on it.

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New Director

This story came out yesterday, but we note it here because it's worth noting.

Inside Out co-writer Meg LeFauve is joining Tangled director Nathan Greno in helming Walt Disney Animation Studio’s Gigantic, THR reports.

Billed as “Disney’s unique take on Jack and the Beanstalk,” Gigantic was first announced at the D23 Expo in 2015, with Greno set to direct alongside producer Dorothy McKim. Prior to attempting to scale Gigantic, McKim was the producer for Disney short Get A Horse!, ...

Congratulations to Ms. LeFauve, who becomes Disney's second woman director of an animated feature. ...

Gigantic has gone through some reported story challenges, as animated features often do. (If there's one in memory that didn't have changes and alterations, we'd like to know about it.)

Gigantic will be Disney's second pass on the beanstalk and giant story. There was this earlier one:



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VFX Performance Enhancement

Actors in Westworld have gotten a little digital help.

Westworld takes place in a twisted theme park populated by incredibly lifelike androids and presided over by their morally compromised human creators. It can be hard to tell which characters fall into which categories until something breaks, which is where the computers come in. There are subtle tricks — twitches, stalls, inconsistent expressions — used to show what happens when robots perfectly designed to imitate humans malfunction and artifice can no longer obscure their nature. ...

In the first episode in which Old Bill, a first-generation robot at the park, drinks with Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) [the performance] wouldn’t have been possible without significant editing. Old Bill is rickety and moves like a looped Pirate of the Caribbean at Disneyland. While actor Michael Wincott has years of experience bringing characters to life, the VFX crew had to step in to help him give a believably “fake” performance.

“We changed his performance entirely, but it’s really subtle,” Worth says. “We gave him these little stopping and jerking things, his eyelids and hands and arms and how he moves. ...

With the heightened reality every self-respecting big-budget screen extravaganza is expected to deliver in the current era, it's unsurprising that Westworld 2016 have moved several leagues past Westworld 1973. Did it occur to anyone to put James Brolin into the Anthony Hopkins role? Would have presented a nice echo to an earlier, simpler time.

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Trying For Leverage

... but having a time of it.

Unable to get video game producers to meet their demands at the bargaining table – and unwilling to carry through with their threat to call a strike – SAG-AFTRA instead has “promulgated” a new low-budget contract and is hoping that some video game producers will sign it. Few are expected to, however. ...

The union’s chief demand all along has been for a type of residuals for voice performers based on sales. During the negotiations, the union was asking for backend bonuses for voice actors that would be triggered once a game sells 2 million units. ...

The issue before us, ladies and gentlemen, is one of leverage.

SAG-AFTRA has residuals for television and motion pictures because they achieved them back when the playing field was more level. Movie studios were high profile companies in the fifties and sixties, but not pieces of monster, international conglomerates. (That came during the age of the Great Mergers ... where all the movie companies were gobbled up by other companies and became bigger, and BIGGER, and BIGGER.)

And since Games is a new, gargantuan and unorganized part of the entertainment industry. SAG-AFTRA is having a bit of trouble getting an effective contract in place.

Here's hoping it gets better.

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How To Make a Half-Hour, Prime-Time Animated TV Show

This isn't a particularly deep or detailed newspaper article. But it was written 66 years ago, so maybe we should be gentle. ...

Actually, the step-by-step process hasn't change much.

Except now pre-production is digital (as is post-production).

And the animation and color are done outside California.

And there's one hell of a lot more animation being done now than in 1960.

Outside of those things, very similar.

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Weekend Foreign Box Office

... where there are a number of animated features in the mix.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Miss Peregrine's Home -- $36,500,000 -- ($65,000,000)

I Belonged To You --$33,600,000 -- ($44,900,000)

L.O.R.D: Legend Of Ravaging ... -- $29,200,000 -- ($29,200,000)

The Magnificent Seven -- $14,800,000 -- ($108,100,000)

Storks -- $14,600,000 -- ($77,611,274)

Finding Dory -- $13,600,000 -- ($985,200,000)

Deepwater Horizon -- $12,400,000 -- ($33,000,000)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $6,900,000 -- ($833,700,000)

Pete's Dragon -- $2,800,000 -- ($122,851,257)

Kubo and the Two Strings -- $1,400,000 -- ($61,300,000)

Finding Dory keeps rolling out in new territories and holding nicely in old ones. Shouldn't be long before it rolls into the billion dollar club.

Storks isn't burning up the box office track, but it is opening higher than Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The Peanuts Movie in multiple markets.

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Aussie Animation

The trades tell us:

Netflix is amping up its animated slate with a new comedy, “Pacific Heat,” hailing from award-winning Australian company Working Dog Productions, Variety has learned exclusively.

The series, which landed a 13-episode order for its initial season, will debut on Netflix Dec. 2 in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Ireland. In Australia, the television partner is Foxtel and the series will premiere in late 2016.

“Pacific Heat” follows the exploits of a dynamic unit of undercover police investigators working on the glitzy Gold Coast of Australia. ...

The important (though unspoken) wrinkle here? Netflix is really focused on having lots of animation on its service. Kids' animation. Adult animation. Teenage animation. Though Netflix doesn't publish ratings and holds its future plans close to the corporate vest, it seems obvious that animation is attracting eyeballs in a major way, hence NF's enthusiasm for having multiple cartoon series.


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Your American Box Office

In the animated category, only Storks hovers in the Box Office Ten. But Tim Burton, lands his latest pic at #1.

TOP WEEKEND GROSSERS

1). Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children (FOX), 3,522 theaters / $9M Fri. (includes Thursday previews of $1.2M)/ 3-day cume: $26M / Wk 1

2). Deepwater Horizon (LG), 3,259 theaters / $7M Fri. (includes $860K Thursday previews) / 3-day cume: $20M / Wk 2

3). Magnificent Seven (SONY), 3,674 theaters / $4.6M Fri. (-64%) / 3-day cume: $15.6M (-55%)/Total cume: $61.5M/ Wk 2

4). Storks (WB), 3,922 theaters / $3.2M Fri. (-45%) /3-day cume: $14M (-34%) /Total: $39M/ Wk 2

5). Sully (WB), 3,717 theaters (-238)/ $2.5M Fri. (-40%)/ 3-day cume: $8.2M (-39%)/Total: $105.2M / Wk 4

6). Masterminds (REL), 3,042 theaters / $2.3M Fri. (includes $265K previews)/ 3-day cume: $6.4M / Wk 1

7). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 1,653 theaters (-785) / $670K Fri. (-39%) / 3-day cume: $2.3M (-39%)/ Total cume: $84.7M / Wk 6

8). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,055 theaters (-875) / $712K Fri. (-52%)/ 3-day cume: $2.2M (-49%)/Total Cume:$20.9M/ Wk 3

9). Queen of Katwe (DIS), 1,242 theaters (+1190) / $706K Fri. (+7802%)/ 3-day cume: $2.1M (+6072%) / Total cume: $2.58M / Wk 2

10). Suicide Squad (WB), 1,638 theaters (-534) / $459K Fri. (-43%) / 3-day cume: $1.8M (-42%) / Total cume: $320.8M / Wk 9

The Secret Life of Pets, now in a mere 462 theaters, has a cume of 364,680,000 after 86 days of release. Kubo and the Two Strings has earned $46,451,000 after 44 days in theaters. It remains in 560.

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Kidneys And The Stones That Hate Them

So why no post yesterday?

 Because right in the middle of a busy workday with grievances and prep for a guild election, I came down with a kidney stone attack, and my universe became one of pain.

Right now I'm flat on my back in a Burbank hospital bed, so posts might be ... Ahm ... Spotty. . Click here to read entire post

Getting Into Cartoonland

The Huffington Post gives its version of the road map.

... According to the experts at Spiel, it is good to learn how to handle criticism and the weight of reality. In order to get paid, people expect that you will have some working experience, and even if your portfolio is amazing, they might expect you accept an internship first before you can get a permanent position in the company.

To put it bluntly, it will be easier for you to work for free for some time, than to go from one place to another in order to find someone who will immediately appreciate your skills. ....

We're not big proponents of working for free, but many people do it as they struggle to get into the business. Lot's of striving artists ask TAG, "So what's the best way to get a job in the animation business?"

The answer from the grizzled old union rep is a wee bit different than the one found on the Huffington Post, but neither route is wrong.

The animation biz is ever-changing. There are feature-length cartoon studios where story artists, scenic designers and CG animators and technicians are employed inside four walls. There are studios where the front ends of half-hour animated shows get made. Their staffs consist of of script writers, storyboard artists, designers, timing directors, color stylists and animation checkerr.

To get into any part of the biz, it's useful to own high-quality drawing and/or tech skills, a ferocious work ethic, a knack for working well with others and the patience of Job. The L.A. cartoon industry is bigger than it's ever been, but colleges and art schools are turning out graduates with animation degrees at a record clip and the competition is as fierce as it's ever been, so you need calling cards: a strong portfolio, a boffo student film, the ability to give good interviews, familiarity with Storyboard Pro and the willingness to take job tests that often go nowhere are just a few.

Even with strong credentials artists will likely get rejected. But the more arrows they have in their quivers, the more employable they will be. When a twenty-two-year-old artist who's just gotten to town asks for instructions about how to land her first job, the answer given by the business representative is the scenario above, plus this:

To get into animation long-term you need.

1) Marketable Skills

2) The ability to do sustained, high quality work.

3) Luck.

It comes down to having the kind of job chops a studio is looking for, and to be standing at the door ready to go to work when they need you. Then, when you finally get the dream job, to have a talent for playing well with others so that you can keep the dream job.

It's also good to know that nothing lasts forever. (Unless you're a staff member of The Simpsons).


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Boffo Box Office

WB's Storks might be under-performing, but there's another animated movie that isn't.

Animated fantasy film charms Japan and soars to top of box office

Your Name, Makoto Shinkai’s fantasy about two teenagers drawn together by gender-swapping dreams, has been seen by more than 8 million people since its release in August, beating the hugely popular Godzilla Resurgence to become the highest-grossing film in Japan this year, and the ninth highest of all time.

It has earned more than 10bn yen (£77m) in box office receipts, an anime milestone previously achieved only by Miyazaki’s films.

The film has made the 43-year-old Shinkai an obvious candidate to continue the anime legacy left by Miyazaki, the 75-year-old creator of global hits such as Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle. ...

The lesson, at least in Japan, is that animation doesn't have to be CG to make a pile of yen at the box office. Hand-drawn features can also be high-grossers, but since very few are, very few get produced.

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Hail and Farewell

A long-running series is wrapping things up:

“Adventure Time” will end its journey in 2018, Cartoon Network announced Thursday morning. ...

Since its debut, “Adventure Time” has become a cult and critical favorite for its color animation, creative storytelling and quirky sense of humor. Among its many accolades are the show’s six Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

The announcement follows one earlier this month that one of Cartoon Network’s other most recognizable properties, “The Regular Show” will end after its eighth season. ...

Cartoon Network will have 142 half-hours in the tote bag when Adventure Time ends its run, and the network undoubtedly thinks there are now more than enough episodes to syndicate and re-run into infinity.

For those keeping track, AT began life as a Nick project in collaboration with Fred Seibert's shop. But Nickelodeon decided the pilot wasn't there cup of entertainment, and let the produced short go into turn-around and Cartoon Network snapped it up ... much to Nick's subsequent sorrow.

So here we are, eight years further on, as the series ends its long and triumphant run.


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Jumping the Divide

Mr. Kaytis moves to the live-action side of the table:

Amblin Partners has acquired Deb Lucke’s YA novel The Lunch Witch, with Angry Birds co-director Clay Kaytis attached to make his live-action directing debut. ...

Kaytis comes out of Disney where he worked as an animator on such films as Frozen, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph before Rovio hired him to helm the feature animation adaptation of its touchstone franchise. Angry Birds grossed $346 million worldwide for Sony. ...

Congratulations to Clay for having the talent (and stamina) to go where Frank Tashlin, Brad Bird, Rob Minkoff and several other animation artists have earlier ventured.

(Mr. Kaytis also conducted a series of animation podcast in the not-so-long-ago. Find them here).

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2016 WAGE SURVEY

It took a bit of time, but TAG has now compiled the data for wages in the last half of 2015 and first half of 2016.

The total return of survey forms was 33% (1,518 returned and tallied out of 4,650 sent out). The 2015 return rate was 30%, if you're wondering. The 2016 survey and some highlights: ...

------ 2016 Member Wage Survey ------

------ Minimum ------ Median ----- Maximum -----

Staff Writers (TV) -- $1,000 -- $2,200 -- $3,750

Timing Directors -- $1,500 -- $2,000 -- $2,865

Production Board -- $1,238.40 -- $2,047.20 -- $3,605

Revisionists -- $950 -- $1,570 -- $2,047.20

Character Layout -- $1,054.55 -- $1,900 -- $4,000

Backgrnd Layout/Design -- $1,000 -- $1,950 -- $2,400

Art Directors -- $1,243.75 -- $2,210.90 -- $3,570

Tech Directors -- $1,200 -- $1,780.08 -- $3,203.50

Character TDs -- $1,270 -- $1,961.53 -- $3,472

Lighters -- $1,040 -- $2,021.05 -- $,769.23

3D Compositors -- $1240 -- $1,884.60 -- $2,600

3D Animators -- $1,500 -- $2,060 -- $4,346

3D Modelers -- $1,100 -- $1,826.92 -- $2,500

This year's data shows a wage decline in 27% of the Guild's job categories, and a hike in 73% of them. Many of the declines were small; the drop for CG lighters, to cite one example, was a whopping 71 cents.

The 2015 and 2016 wage surveys can be found here. Feel free to burrow through the various numbers.

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TAG GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING -- NOMINATIONS

The Animation Guild held its September Membership Meeting with a packed meeting hall.

The agenda might have had something to do with it. There was a proposal to raise the Guild's annual dues. There were officer and board member nominations. The results ...

On the question: Shall the Animation Guild raise annual dues $100? (To be phased in over the next four years). -- the vote was a unanimous yes.

The nominations for Animation Guild officer and executive board positions were as follows:

Officers running unopposed; elected by white ballot:

President -- Laura Hohman

Vice President -- K.C. Johnson (incumbent)

Recording secretary -- Paula Spence

Contested Elections

Business Representative -- Tom Tataranowicz, Jason MacLeod, Larry Smith

Sergeant-At-Arms -- Robert St. Pierre, Ray Leong

Executive Board (11 board members) -- Jeanette Moreno King, Zack Atkinson, Lauren Hecht, Mike Morris, Phil Weinstein, Brandon Jarratt, Myoung Smith, David Chlystek, Spencer Knapp, Candice Stephenson, Dominic Polcino, Bronnie Barry, Cathy Jones, Kevin Moore, Andrew Jennings, Jason Mayer, Steve Kaplan, Lisa Anderson, Dave Thomas, Llyn Hunter, David Woo, J.J. Conway, Mark Banker, Bill Flores, David Shair.

Ballots for the new slate of Guild officers will be mailed to the membership on October 11th, and ballots counted on November 12th. The new officers will be installed at the Guild's Executive Board meeting on December 6th.

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"South Park" ... Still Impish

The Simpsons isn't the only cartoon series with two decades under its belt.

In an effort to promote the 20th season, which premiered Sept. 14, mobile billboards have been placed in seven locations around the country depicting scenes that coincide with the trucks' placements.

The marketing ploy did not go over so well with three locations: the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Church of Scientology.

"We knew it was risky," Walter Levitt, chief marketing officer for Comedy Central told The Hollywood Reporter. "We knew some locations might not be pleased to have us out there, but we thought this is a perfect way to celebrate everything the series has covered in its 19 seasons."

The billboard in front of the White House featured a cartoon President Barack and Michelle Obama. The Scientology truck featured a scene from the infamous 2005 episode "Trapped in the Closet" in which the church and its most famous follower, Tom Cruise, were skewered. ...

What keeps the show fresh is the topicality and envelope pushing. And the fact that it skewers various sacred cows at all points of the political compass, which endears it to cynical millenials, also near-millenials (you know, everyone up to about ... oh ... 59).

If the show hasn't offended you on some level in the course of 19 seasons, then you probably don't have a pulse.

And we would still like the production company to sign a Guild contract.


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Box Office At The End Of The Third

We're speaking of the third quarter of this year:

TOP GROSSERS OF '16

1 Captain America: Civil War -- $1,152.8m

2 Zootopia -- $1,023.6m

3 Finding Dory -- $970.1m

4 The Jungle Book (2016) -- $965.8m

5 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice -- $873.3m

6 The Secret Life of Pets -- $821.8m

7 Deadpool -- $782.6m

8 Suicide Squad -- $731.8m

9 The Mermaid (Mei ren yu) -- $553.8m

10 X-Men: Apocalypse -- $543.6m

11 Kung Fu Panda 3 -- $519.9m

What's startling about the motion pictures above is that all but one (The Mermaid) is an animated feature or super hero movie layered with animated visual effects.

Think about this. In the history of moviemaking, animation has never been so dominant. Animated features sit at #2, #3, #4, #6, and #11. VFX extravaganzas occupy most of the rest.





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Star Wars Cartoon

Off in another sector of the Disney empire ...

... Ben Sherwood, the President of Disney-ABC Television Group, ... confirmed that there was development at Lucasfilm Animation at Disney XD regarding the next animated series set in a galaxy far, far away. Now some shuffling behind the scenes further confirms that some new Lucasfilm Animation projects are on the way, and with that also comes big changes at Star Wars Rebels.

... Dave Filoni is no longer the supervising director of Star Wars Rebels. The man who previously worked as supervising director on The Clone Wars hasn’t been fired from Star Wars Rebels though, as he will still act as executive producer and oversee the show. ...

The Star Wars properties created at Cartoon Network? Under Guild contract.

The cartoons made at Lucasfilm in northern California? Those, sadly, do not have the protection of a collective bargaining agreement, but there's no reason they have to continue that way. All it takes is a majority of representation cards. And sometimes a vote.

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Loren Bouchard Speaks

The creator/showrunner of Bob's Burgers says:

... I truly believe animation enters your brain differently.

I am fascinated by that. It would be really interesting to keep picking at that.

I’m hopeful that in a way, what it means is we can connect with the audience in a very deep way. Good storytelling connects, you don’t have to be making animation, obviously. But my optimistic hope is that there’s a light we can turn on, that we can reach, in the back of the brain that no one else can. As deep into your childhood or your lizard brain or whatever you want to call it, there’s a lightbulb in there that I want to get to and fool around with. I assume this is hard to do and do a show on a deadline, so in a lot of ways we just have to discover it together if I’m right ...

Animation comes at television or theater audiences by a separate route than live-action because people know what they're watching isn't real.

Old-style live-action, on the other hand, was real.

When you saw two characters fighting to the death, actual carbon-based life forms were flailing away at each other. When a squad of cavalry came thundering toward the camera, it was actual horses with actual human-type persons sitting atop them. And when you saw a man getting flung through a glass window, the window panes might have been spun sugar and balsa wood, but somebody was actually going through the damn window head first.

All those things impact nerve endings differently than Wiley Coyote going through a window ... or falling off a cliff ... or shooting past Mars on the nose of a rocket. The perception of risk and danger are different. There's a subliminal realization that with analog live-action, actual events in the space-time continuum, staged and choreographed though the events may be, are actually happening.

In the digital age, of course, it's different. When Captain America is duking it out with Ironman and knocking him the length of a football field, or Deadpool is jumping though the roof of a car from two hundred feet up, the action is so over the top and ludicrous, that nobody registers it as "live action" in the way that, say, the chariot races in the 1959 or 1926 versions of Ben Hur come across as flesh-and-blood occurrences: real people at real risk causing real sweat on the palms of audience members. (In the '26 edition, you look at a massive pile-up of chariots and know it's genuine; crew members in knickers are running out onto the track to tend to injured extras).


Chariots plow into each other at 10:02.

In 2016, much of live-action has become a cartoon, with gravity and physics distorted in ways similar to the world of Wiley and his Road Runner pal.

But Mr. Bouchard strikes a chord about good storytelling connecting with audiences. Otherwise audiences wouldn't weep when the dwarfs gather around the funeral bier of Snow White ... or clench with fear when Woody, Buzz and the rest of the Toy Story troupe is swept toward the fires of a furnace.

Are there differences between animation and live-action? Abso-freaking-lutely. But each has the capability to reach audiences.

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Foreign Box Office

A Western remake and a new animated feature roll onto the big international list.

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (WORLD TOTALS)

Bridget Jones's Baby -- $21,900,000 -- ($83,600,000)

The Magnificent Seven -- $19,200,000 -- ($59,800,000)

Storks -- $18,300,000 -- ($40,100,000)

The Secret Life Of Pets -- $8,100,000 -- ($820,900,000)

Sully -- $6,500,000 -- ($126,900,000)

Finding Dory -- $5,300,000 -- ($969,800,000)

As Deadline says:

... Storks swooped into 33 international markets for an estimated $18.3M debut. Family friendly Latin America was a strong play with about 40% of the total estimated weekend box office. The film came in No. 1 in nearly all markets there (save Peru and Argentina where it was No. 2 behind local pics). ...

Disney/Pixar’s Finding Dory found another $5.3M in 14 territories. With Germany still to come, the forgetful blue tang continues to swim closer to the $1B worldwide mark. Current stats are: $484.2M domestic, $485.6M international and $969.8M global. ...

Disney’s Pete's Dragon made $2.9M in 30 offshore markets this frame to get the international cume closer to $50M at $47.5M to date. The worldwide cume is $121.7M ahead of bows in Brazil and Kore next session. ...

Kubo an the Two String grossed an estimated $1.8M in 27 territories for an< international total of $12.6M. Combined with Focus Features’ U.S. total of $45.9M, the worldwide gross is $58.1M. France, which leans towards this sort of fare, opened 317 dates to $754K for the No. 2 Laika launch ever, 15% behind Coraline. ...

Bridget Jones’s Baby delivered a strong $21.9M in 47 territories. That takes the international total to $67.1M for a worldwide cume to date of $83.6M. ...

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Student Academy Awards

The winners have been known for a bit of a while, but the list of student academy awards honorees (animation) bears repeating:


Silver award -- "The Wishgranter"

Seventeen winners of Student Academy Awards were honored Thursday as the Academy unveiled the medal standings at its 43rd Student Academy Awards ceremony, held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. ...

Animation

Gold: “Once upon a Line,” Alicja Jasina, USC

Silver: “The Wishgranter,” Echo Wu, Ringling College of Art and Design

Bronze: “Die Flucht,” Carter Boyce, DePaul University

Left to right: Echo Wu, Alicja Jasina, Lucy Liu and Carter Boyce.




Alicja Jasina accepting the Gold.


Ringling student Echo Wu accepting the Silver.

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The Box Office of the Weekend

A Western (of all things) tops the charts, with WB's Storks a distant second:

WEEKEND GROSSES

1). Magnificent Seven (SONY), 3,121 theaters / $12.7M Fri. / $13.8M Sat. / $8.5M Sun. / 3-day cume: $35M / Wk 1

2). Storks (WB), 3,922 theaters / $5.7M Fri. / $9.4M Sat. / $6.6M Sun. / 3-day cume: $21.8M / Wk 1

3). Sully (WB), 3,955 theaters (+430)/ $4.2M Fri. / $6M Sat./ $3.6M Sun. / 3-day cume: $13.8M (-36%)/Total: $92.4M / Wk 3

4). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,930 theaters (+3) / $1.47M Fri. / $1.97M Sat. / $1.1M Sun. / 3-day cume: $4.5M (-47%)/Total Cume:$16.5M/ Wk 2

5). Snowden (OR), 2,443 theaters / $1.2M Fri. / $1.8M Sat. / $1.1M Sun. / 3-day cume: $4.1M (-49%)/Total Cume: $15.1M/ Wk 2

6). Blair Witch (LG), 3,121 theaters / $1.27M Fri. / $1.75M Sat. / $930K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.95M (-59%)/Total cume: $16.1M/ Wk 2

7). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 2,438 theaters (-770) / $1.1M Fri. / $1.7M Sat. / $955K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.8M (-33%)/ Total cume: $81.1M / Wk 5

8). Suicide Squad (WB), 2,172 theaters (-568) / $800K Fri. / $1.5M Sat./ $820K Sun. / 3-day cume: $3.1M (-34%) / Total cume: $318.1M / Wk 8

9). When the Bough Breaks (SONY), 1,444 theaters (-802) /$715K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. / $565K Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.5M (-54%)/Total: $26.6M/ Wk 3

10/11). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 1,209 theaters (-548) / $261K Fri. / $510K Sat. / $332K Sun. / 3-day cume: $1.1M (-57%) / Total cume: $45.9M / Wk 6 ...

So remakes are still gold (with the right actors), but some animated features fly much lower than others.

As Deadline notes:

... Storks opening is reminiscent of Sony’s Open Season which made $23.6M, earned an A- CinemaScore (which isn’t good for an animated movie when its opening is this low), had a similar cost to Storks of $85M, and did a 3.6x multiple with a final stateside take of $85.1M. Overseas was $112.2M.

Though Open Season created a launchpad for animated pics in late September, property/cost/box office-wise, it didn’t warrant a theatrical sequel (just video), and that might be the case here with Storks. The fact that it skews way younger to the under 10 crowd, and is not a ‘five-quad’ animated film will slow its pace. If you’re a frosh toon brand, you have to have wide appeal if you’re going to be a studio cornerstone franchise.

DreamWorks Animation’s The Penguins of Madagascar was another handholder-skewing movie that opened in this Storks range ($25.4M FSS, with an A- CinemaScore and an $83M final stateside take). Though Penguins was pained by its $132M production cost, the reason why it made 78% of its global tally overseas ($289.7M/$373M) stemmed from the fact that it was an established DWA brand. It would be a shocker if Storks hits those foreign B.O. numbers even with a $18.3M launch this weekend in 33 territories (including China). ...

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Thirty-Three Years Back ...

President Emeritus Tom Sito tells us:

Sept 23, 1984 --- Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and are pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Up to now their thinking had been to dismantle the animation department and earn income from the licensees of the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain. Eisner dictates memos to start the television animation division. ...

Well, something like that.

Walt Disney Productions animation division was on pins and needles about whether the production group was going to get shuttered or was going to continue. Rumors abounded. Rectums were tight.

Then word came down that the animation department was still in business and the new guys (Eisner, Wells, Katzenberg) okayed opening a TV animation division. Michael Eisner came up with the idea for The Gummi Bears (okay, he wanted a cartoon developed around the candy) and the resulting series became Disney Television Animation's first hit.

A lot of water has passed beneath Diz Co.'s bridge since those nerve-wracking days in the early eighties. It's good to see the place has prospered, even if most of the personnel at the studio in 1984 have moved on ... including Frank, Michael and Jeffrey.

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Union Vote

For some odd reason, a group of entertainment workers want improved wages and benefits.

By a vote of 43-20, employees of Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema tonight voted to join IATSE and its postproduction local the Motion Picture Editors Guild. This comes a year after postproduction technicians and artists at Deluxe’s Culver City unit on the Sony lot overwhelmingly jumped into the union game. ...

This particular further unionization of Deluxe employees comes after what sources tell me was a very heated campaign on both sides. ...

There's a lot of pushback right now from people who have to work for a living. When the standard of living slips year by year by year, folks working long hours in front of the flat screens commence taking action that will push the trend line in a different direction.

So why would this be happening in this best of all possible worlds? ...

... Over the past three decades, the share of household wealth owned by the top 0.1% has increased from 7% to 22%. For the bottom 90% of families, a combination of rising debt, the collapse of the value of their assets during the financial crisis, and stagnant real wages have led to the erosion of wealth.

The share of wealth owned by the top 0.1% is almost the same as the bottom 90%. ...

So this union vote? A small step to alter the maldistribution at the base of the pyramid.

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Handicapping Weekend Box Office

B.O. Mojo tells us:

... Industry expectations for Magnificent Seven and Storks have both films opening around $30+ million. For Storks this number appears to be about right on target, but for Magnificent Seven it seems grossly conservative. Sony is projecting a $30-32 million weekend, but if it doesn't top $40 million it would be a bit of a surprise. ...

For Warner Bros., Storks is the second film for the newly formed Warner Animation Group, which so far has only The LEGO Movie to its credit. Storks, of course, doesn't have the name recognition of LEGO so don't expect a $69 million opening, instead we're looking at titles such as Mr. Peabody & Sherman ($32.2m opening), Hotel Transylvania ($42.5m opening) and Rio ($39m opening) for comparison and, with Storks opening in 3,922 theaters, a $30 million weekend or just a bit more seems inevitable, the question is can it go any higher?

If anything will hold it back it could be the 51% rating the film currently holds at RottenTomatoes. Of course, a 45% rating for Hotel Transylvania didn't prevent it from opening over $42 million and Hotel Transylvania 2 carried its 54% rating to a September record. All things considered, Mojo's projected $31.7 million opening seems relatively safe, but to go much higher would go against the majority of the data available. ...

Storks did its pre-production here in Los Angeles, its production at Sony Imageworks Vancouver, where the Free Money roams. As a member of Storks production team related:

"Sony Imageworks has enough Vancouver staff to do three features at once. There was a lot of communication between L.A. and Vancouver as the movie was made. You can do a lot of supervision over vide up-links. It's totally feasible to have production sites in different parts of the world and make the movie. It's a wave that's coming."

The question is, however the production was done, will audiences like the story enough to flock to Storks? If the move hits $33 or $36 million on opening weekend, it will probably be viewed as a success.

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Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan Annual Reports

Artists, writers and technicians under TAG contracts receive pension and health benefits from the MPIPHP (Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan).

TAG has been getting an increasing number of calls from members asking, "So where are the Annual Reports? I need to know how my Individual Account Plan* and Defined Benefit Plan** are doing."

Today there is good news: trustees of the Plan say that the Annual Reports will be out in October. That's a few months late, but better late than not getting the reports at all. ....

Unlike the Guild's 401(k) Plan, where members self-manage their investments ... or hand the job off to Vanguard Mutual Funds ... the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan has a squad of investment experts that invest in a wide array of stocks, bonds, real estate and alternative investments (commodities, private equity, futures, etc.)

Here's how the IAP investments break down:

INVESTMENTS - INDVIDUAL ACCOUNT PLAN

U.S. Core Equity - 4.5%
U.S. Growth Equity - 3.1%
U.S. Value Equity - 1.2%
Global Equity - 14.8%
Emerging Markets - 1.8%
Total Equity - 25.4%

Fixed Income - 32.2%

Alternative Investments - 36.4%

Real Estate - 6%

The percentages above are not static. They can grow or shrink on direction from trustees of the MPIPHP. (Prior to the 2008 meltdown, the Plan's investment were more heavily weighted to fixed income. The financial experts saw at least some of the disaster coming, and shifted the Plan's portfolios to more conservative investments).

* Individual Account Plan = a big basket of investments, directed by the MPIPHP, that earns interest and capital gains.

** Defined Benefit Plan = a monthly annuity (much like Social Security) that pays you X amount of dollars twelve times per year. The amount you receive is based on the total number of qualified pension years and total number of contribution hours in your account.
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Cartoon Interstitials

From a fine entertainment journal:

Disney Channels Worldwide is set to launch interstitial programming designed to help kids lead healthy lives. Starting on Friday, animated shorts featuring characters from such series as The Lion Guard, Miles from Tomorrowland and Star Wars Rebels will start airing in rotation on Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior.

Created by animators including James Curran (Star Wars Rebels, Gravity Falls) and David Calcano (The Adventures of Papchu and Dr. Kapatoo), the shorts are designed to inspire, inform and motivate kids’ nutritious food choices and physical activities. ...

Physical fitness and nutrition are good things.

Artists having more projects to work on? Also a good thing. (The assumption here: some of this work is being done in L.A.)


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2016 Wage Survey Preview

TAG has completed compilation of 2016 wage data and is in the process of formatting and laying out the info.

Until the full survey is complete, some selected numbers:

2016 SURVEY DATA

Writers:

Feature Writers 2016 Median: $3100 (weekly)
Feature Writers 2015 Median: $3,157.89 (weekly)

TV Writers 2016 Median: $2,267.24 (weekly)
TV Writers 2015 Median: $2,200.00 (weekly)

Directors:

Feature 2016 Median: $3,752.10 (weekly)
Feature 2015 Median: $2,743.87 (weekly)

TV 2016 Median: $2,493.87 (weekly)
TV 2015 Median: $2,414.06 (weekly)

Story Art:

Storyboard Artist 2016 Median: $2,378.50 (weekly)
Storyboard Artist 2015 Median: $2,227.27 (weekly)

Production Board 2016 Median: $2,038.11 (weekly)
Production Board 2015 Median: $2,000.00 (weekly)

Animation:

3D Animator 2016 Median: $2088.96 (weekly)
3D Animator 2016 Median: $2021.05 (weekly)

Over the past few years, pay rates have been relatively stable. With the surge in employment, there's some upward push on overscale wages, but that's countered by:

1) The continuing flow of new artists and technicians from universities and art schools to entry level animation positions with lower salaries. This tends to slow upward trajectories of other rates.

2) The desire of animation studios to keep wages as close to minimum contract rates as possible.

3) Lower-compensated non-union work.

Though there's been a record level of employment, 1990s-style bidding wars for artistic talent have not reemerged.

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Blue People Not From Avatar

As we all know, humankind can NEVER get enough animation.



Sony is getting seriously involved in animated features. Probably because Sony is making money with them.


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Craft Meeting #5 -- Animation Writers

The Animation Guild's fifth craft meeting took place Tuesday night in the Guild meeting hall at 1105 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank California.

It was noted that TAG Vice President Earl Kress passed away five years ago yesterday at age 60. Earl was a prolific, talented writer who was instrumental in securing better conditions for freelance writers, negotiating health benefits for freelancers who wrote two half-hour outlines and scripts.

New Media: There were discussions regarding the Guild's New Media sideletter (pp 99-113 of the CBA), how its production budget tiers are tied to live-action that don't reflect the budgets for animation. New Media will likely be a central issue in 2018 negotiations, and there will be early indications where New Media language is going when the WGA and DGA negotiate their contracts next year.

Some writers at DreamWorks Animation TV are writing at below minimum rates, which is allowed under the sideletter. Animation work that's distributed over the internet (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) comes under New Media. If a negotiated contract fails to be ratified, then contract talks resume until a new agreement is reached or the talks reach impasse. ...

Script Fees: Only one studio has script fees (payments on top of salaries); that studio is Nickelodeon.

General Membership Meeting: Members were encouraged to attend the September 27th General Membership Meeting and run for the board or an officer position, since several officers and board members are departing.

Bank of Hours: Why hasn't the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan's Bank of Hours been raised? Because the bargaining parties (AMPTP and IATSE) haven't negotiated a hike. The 450 hours has been in place for a number of years, though the threshold for health coverage was raised eight years ago from 300 hours to 400 hours per 6-month period. This had the effect of knocking some participants off the Plan and there was some anger from members about it. Five years ago, premium payments of $25/month for participants with one dependent and $50/month for participants with 2 or more dependents were introduced.

Writer Categories: Animation Writer is a job classification in the contract. Story Editor in not in the contract, though the AMPTP told the Guild in negotiations four years ago it was part of the writer classification.

Discussion of how story editors get paid: Some writer/story editors in attendance liked total fees divided over 26 episodes and being paid weekly, and didn't want the fees tied to a weekly salary because payments would be lower. It was noted that TAG negotiates wage floors, that individuals are free to negotiate better pay and conditions.

Discussion about animation writers forming their own union. Mechanics of this are difficult, there would have to be de-certification then a new union created. There was also talk about making the Animation Guild into a national union that covers the whole country, the better to organize studios in Atlanta and elsewhere.

Screen Credits: It was noted that the contract requires screen credits for story on features and half-hour broadcast "non-segmented" half-hour television shows. It was suggested that screen credits should be required for all lengths of programs, since screen credits trigger foreign levies.

Storyboard artists should be allies with writers; where storyboard artists/writers and outline writers work together on non-scripted shows, they should share script fees.

Production Schedules: Writers/producers and show runners need to insist on reasonable production schedules. Story editors need to do the math and build reasonable time lines for scripts (and storyboards).

Many studios are using freelance writers, but some studios have staff writers. There's beginning to be more integration. DWA tv has staff story editors and small staffs of writers. Writers are in demand so studios are starting to employ staff writers to have their services full time.

Writers who know what the board artists can do are more effective because they can write scripts that reflect what can be achieved on storyboards.


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Netflix

Going for originals.

Three years after it entered the original content business, Netflix looks to have originals make up about half of its offerings. ...

“It will take us a couple more years” to hit that target, CFO David Wells says. “We’re a third to half way to where we want to be…We’ve got a ways to go” as the company looks for “a mixture of production models” — although not sports or ad-supported offerings.

But he warned the Street that Netflix likely will burn more than $1 billion a year to satisfy its growing appetite for content, and may borrow more money. The streaming video power will be “a consumer of cash” for the next year and a half, and it “could take longer building content.” ...

What's important to note here: Lots of Netflix original content is animation. The service wants to rope three-to-six year-olds into the wacky cartoons it has to offer with the expectation that the pre and elementary schoolers will stick around to consume adult fare as the years roll on.

That's the theory, anyway. And Netflix is acting on it. (As is Amazon).

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Down at the SPA

Sony Pictures Animation is (and has been) kinda busy.

There are six editorial crews working on different movies on the Sony Imageworks lot and at nearby Culver Studios. Artists are in three different buildings at Imageworks, and some will also be moving into offices at Culver. ...

Sony Pictures Animation is as busy as it's ever been. Smurfs: The Lost Village is finishing up, and Hotel Transylvania 3 awaits Genndy Tartakovsky to finish up Samurai Jack at Cartoon Network so that it can kick into high gear. (There might be some commuting back and forth for awhile).

Most of Sony Imageworks is up in Vancouver, scarfing down the Free Money. But some Imageworks employees remain in Culver City, working on various projects. If schedules hold, the company will be releasing three animated project in '17 (Smurfs, Emojimovie and The Star, and two animated features and a hybrid the following year (Hotel Transylvania 3 the live-action animated hybrid Peter Rabbit, and Spiderman).

In all the time Sony Pictures Animation has been open, its slates have never been this ambitious, but Sony animated features have been on a recent roll, with Hotel Transylvania 2 bringing in $473 million last year, bettering the original's grosses by over $100 million.

So yeah. Sony Pictures Animation is working on a lot of projects.

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Guild Elections

Not TAG, but the WGA west.

... [F]our newcomers have been elected to the guild’s 2016 board of directors along with four incumbents. The newly seated quartet includes former "Walking Dead" showrunner and Damien creator Glen Mazzara (1,732 votes of 2,440 ballots cast), "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner (1,597), longtime "Grey’s Anatomy" writer-producer Zoanne Clack (1,393) and 10-year guild veteran Courtney Ellinger (1,281). ...

The guild reported a 26.7% percent turnout among its 9,120 eligible voting members. ...

The Animation Guild has nominations for a new slate of officers in a week's time, then elections that run until mid-November.

TAG will also have a lot of newcomers, since multiple board members and four officers will be departing.

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The Awards!!

The Emmys were on tonight, and yeah, we already know some of the them, but here they are again anyway (with the newbies).

EMMY AWARDS

OUTSTANDING CHILDREN’S PROGRAM
It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
Game of Thrones

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (Masterpiece)

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ANIMATION (JURIED)
Jason Kolowski (Adventure Time, “Bad Jubies”)
Tom Herpich (Adventure Time, “Stakes Pt. 8: The Dark”)
Jason Carpenter (He Named Me Malala)
Chris Tsirgiotis (Long Live the Royals, “Punk Show”)
Scott Daros (Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship)
OUTSTANDING ANIMATED PROGRAM
Archer

OUTSTANDING SHORT FORM ANIMATED PROGRAM
Robot Chicken

OUTSTANDING CHARACTER VOICE-OVER PERFORMANCE
Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) ...

There is always a bajillion categories, but to each and every sinner (also too, the runners up) TAG blog offers sincere congratulations.

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Your Foreign Box Office

The usual mix of genre titles, animated titles, and big studio movies with lots of animated effects.

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (World Totals)

Bridget Jones's Baby -- $29,900,000 -- ($38,100,000)

The Age Of Shadows -- $21,500,000 -- )$45,000,000)

Chinese Odyssey Part Three -- $17,300,000 -- ($35,800,000)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $9,600,000 -- ($900,000,000)

Finding Dory -- $8,300,000 -- ($961,100,000)

Sully -- $7,000,000 -- ($93,900,000)

Suicide Squad -- $5,800,000 -- ($718,900,000)

Pete's Dragon -- $5,200,000 -- ($113,000,000)

Blair Witch -- $4,900,000 -- ($14,600,000)

Star Trek Beyond -- $4,800,000 -- ($333,153,686)

Ice Age: Collision Course -- $2,300,000 -- ($402,629,990)

Sausage Party -- $2,100,000 -- ($119,559,861) ...

Kindly note that Ice Age: Collision Course, after making only a few small ripples in the United States, has cleaned up overseas. 85.2% of its take comes from abroad. This pretty well explains why Fox-Blue sky does one Ice Age picture after another.

And as a fine entertainment journal tells us:

... The fish that just won’t quit [Finding Dory] swam to another $8.3M in her 13th weekend of overseas play. ...

Grossing $5.8M this weekend, Warner Bros’ DC superhero adaption Suicide Squad climbed past the $400M mark with a $405.1M overseas cume. The biggest play of the frame was Japan with a sophomore hold of $2.3M on 682 screens. The total there is now $9.4M. All markets are open with play currently in 62. The worldwide cume is now $718.9M. ...

Disney’s Dragon had a solid $5.2M 6th weekend, hitting No. 2 in Mexico with a $2.1M start behind local pic No Manches Frida. Elsewhere in Latin America, the live-action/CGI mix bowed to No. 1 in Ecuador, Bolivia and Central America; and held the top spot in Chile for Week 2. Pete picked up $700K in Australia, just ahead of school vacations. The international cume is now $40.2M for a global total of $113M ...

Putting $2.1M in the grocery basket, Sony and Seth Rogen’s [Sausage Party] has rung up $24.2M so far overseas. The weekend was in 27 markets with Portugal the highlight at $125K from 50 screens. The UK is the top offshore play with $8.6M after three frames. ...

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Jeffrey K.'s Future

Mr. Katzenberg departed DreamWorks Animation just shy of a month ago. Why did he agree to exit after 22 years? Could it be the price was right?

... The day after selling his company to Comcast for $3.8 billion, Jeffrey Katzenberg is doing what he’s always done — presiding over back-to-back breakfast meetings. ... It’s clear Katzenberg isn’t planning on spending the rest of his life bobbing around on a yacht in the Bahamas. In fact, he’s champing at the bit to start his next chapter: running his own investment firm. Over a bowl of seeded pecan granola and a Diet Coke, he is simultaneously taking calls on his cell phone and answering questions. ...

Sources close to Katzenberg say he’s intrigued by the model his longtime mentor, Barry Diller, has built. IAC, Diller’s conglomerate, owns everything from dating services like Match.com and Tinder to video sites like College Humor and Vimeo. How Katzenberg will put his own spin on that model remains to be seen.

What’s absolutely clear is that he has zero plans of retiring. Ever. “No, not possible,” he says incredulously when asked. “My work is my happiness.” ...

To J.K's credit, a decade ago he saw that smaller, stand-alone companies were spiraling down to extinction. He was interested in selling DWA not long after Pixar was snapped up by Diz Co. but the financial meltdown in 2009-2009 put an end to the possibility of a Pixar-sized sale.

Years passed and the economy recovered, even as DreamWorks Animation hit a rough patch with a string of animated features that failed to turn a profit. (It's tough to survive on a business model that dictates creating nothing but theatrical blockbusters. The odds are high that this particular biz model will, sooner or later, fail).

To the company's credit, it reacted to its movie under-performers by diversifying in multiple directions, by getting into television, amusement parks, and merchandise, and building a Chinese partnership. All of these strategies were steps in the right directions, but DreamWorks Animation was, at the end of the diversification, still a smallish company.

And DreamWorks was likely to remain smallish. Given all that, Katzenberg's decision to cash in with a sale makes perfect sense. Better to take a bundle of cash and strike out in new directions than plow the same old fields in the hopes gold will sprout under your feet.

Here's hoping Comcast-Universal does right by its new acquisition.

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Your American Box Office

The miracle on the Hudson continues to reside at the top of the heap.

WEEKEND GROSSES

1). Sully (WB), 3,525 theaters / $6.6M Fri. / $9.6M Sat./ $5.8M Sun. / 3-day cume: $22M (-37%)/Total: $70.5M / Wk 2

2). Blair Witch (LG), 3,121 theaters / $4M Fri. / $3.6M Sat. / $1.9M Sun. / 3-day cume: $9.65M / Wk 1

3). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,927 theaters / $3M Fri. / $3.25M Sat. / $1.95M Sun. / 3-day cume: $8.24M / Wk 1

4). Snowden (OR), 2,443 theaters / $3M Fri. / $3M Sat. / $1.97M Sun. / 3-day cume: $8M / Wk 1

5). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 3,208 theaters (-176) / $1.6M Fri. / $2.5M Sat. / $1.3M Sun. / 3-day cume: $5.6M (-32%)/ Total cume: $75.3M / Wk 4

6). When the Bough Breaks (SONY), 2,246 theaters /$1.6M Fri. / $2.6M Sat. / $1.2M Sun. / 3-day cume: $5.5M (-61%)/Total: $22.7M Wk 2

7). Suicide Squad (WB), 2,740 theaters (-363) / $1.1M Fri. / $2.2M Sat./ $1.25M Sun. (-45%) / 3-day cume: $4.7M (-18%) / Total cume: $313.8M / Wk 7

8). The Wild Life (LG), 2,493 theaters / $530K Fri. / $1.3M Sat. / $797k Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.65M (-21%)/Total:$6.7M/ Wk 1

9). Kubo and the Two Strings (FOC), 1,757 theaters (-578) / $521K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. / $783M Sun. / 3-day cume: $2.5M (-24%) / Total cume: $44.2M / Wk 5

10). Pete’s Dragon (DIS), 1,948 theaters (-737) / $459K Fri. / $1M Sat. / $520K Sun. / 3-day cume: $2M (-34%) / Total cume: $72.8M / Wk 6 ...

As happens from time to time, animation can under-perform at the box office. Kubo and the Two Strings has yet to break $50 million after five weeks of release, and The Wild Life, dead on arrival last weekend, looks to pick up $2.5 million at #8 in its second weekend of release.

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Trailer ... Late To The Game

This has been out a few days so TAG blog is slow out of the blocks (especially since millions of people have SEEN it already). But TAG blog would be remiss in ignoring it since .... you know ... we represent the artists and technicians and writers who are making Moana. ...

And as the interwebs say:

... Over the last five years, [Walt Disney Animation Studios'] output has consisted of Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia, each of them creative triumphs that are at the head of the class for family films over that time. Hot streaks like that are hard to sustain, but if Disney falters, it doesn't look like it's going to happen with Moana. ...

Every department is pretty much done except for lighting, which will be done with the last of its shots in a few weeks (the picture comes out at Thanksgiving). Crew members have been moving out of the big building at the end of the Burbank/Bob Hope runway was their jobs wrap up, returning to the Hat Building on Riverside Drive.

Moana, from the looks of it, will be doing well.

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One More Feature In Release

Because you can never have too much toonage.

CGI Australian toon Blinky Bill: The Movie will get a platform release starting October 7 in Los Angeles. The character is widely popular Down Under — with credits including a 1992 film and a local TV series the following year — and the distributor is hoping to ride that wave to American shores. The pic originally was set to arrive here this month. ...

The new Blinky pic was directed by Deane Taylor and co-directed by Alexs Stadermann. The screenplay was written by Fin Edquist.

BBTM currently tracks at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, twenty points lower for audiences' "want to see". Come October, audiences will determine how the picture opens.

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... And One More Feature Into Early Prep?

20th Century Fox Animation buys material for a long-form animated movie:

The Littlest Bigfoot, author Jennifer Weiner’s latest book for kids, will be made into an animated feature by Chris Bender (We’re the Millers) and Jennifer’s brother Jake Weiner (Leap Year), courtesy of 20th Century Fox Animation in a deal that was negotiated by another in the Weiner family, brother Joe. The IP seems set for a sequel as the author is writing the next installment called Little Bigfoot, Big City. ...

Bender and Jake Weiner will produce via the newly launched Good Fear Film production company, and Jennifer Weiner will serve as executive producer. Andrea Miloro will oversee the project at Fox Animation. ...

So many animate features have done so well over the past few years (though some have flamed out) that our fine entertainment conglomerates are eager to step up and create more.

This is a long way from the 1970s and 1980s, when long-form animation was shunned by big studios and left to Disney. Success at the box office turned earlier avoidance into passionate embraces. But some of these new features will fail, because failure is the lot of many movies, no matter how successful the segment in which they exist happens to be.

So will see if all the hugs the majors now give animation turn less ardent as some movies come out and bomb.

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Batman In All Directions

Netflix is so ... yesterday.

Batman: The Animated Series is coming to a Mattel’s View-Master VR Viewer, the toy company announced today. Batman will be brought to View-Master VR Viewer through a partnership with Warner Bros. and the use of OTOY Inc cinematic rendering technology. ...

Batman: The Animated Series producer/director Bruce Timm and writer/producer Paul Dini collaborated with OTOY’s artists and engineers on the VR project. The original voice cast of Kevin Conroy (Batman), Mark Hamill (The Joker) Loren Lester (Robin) and Tara Strong (Batgirl) also reprised their roles, with the guidance of Batman: The Animated Series voice director Andrea Romano.

Sam Register, President, Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Digital Series, said: “We are extremely excited for our fans to be able to experience Batman: The Animated Series in a new and immersive way. ...

I've been told by more than one industry guru that virtual reality is the latest big Thing.

Third Floor is working on a VR project; various animation studios are toying with it. So maybe the guru is right. Virtual Reality is what all the thirteen-year-olds will be doing (the hell with binge-watching on the computer flat screen!) in the next thirty-six months.

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The Power of Free Money -- Part 52

Apparently France hears the siren call of Canadian cash ... like many others

Paris-based On Entertainment, the company behind recent feature-film release The Little Prince, says it plans to hire a staff of 300 over the next three years to run a new studio in Montréal, Québec.

"Our new Montréal studio gives us a foothold in North America and provides us with the resources we need to ramp up production and extend our reach with films intended for international release," said On Entertainment co-founder Thierry Pasquet in a prepared statement. The company expects to ramp up production and release one animated feature every two years.

On Animation Studio will receive about $3.7 million (U.S.) in government loans, split between the governments of Canada and Québec (the latter granted through financing corporation Investissement Québec) to help fund the studio's opening, the company said. ...

Generous subsidies won't be going away anytime soon. They are now embedded into the fabric of Canada, the great state of Georgia, Britain, France, and to a somewhat more limited degree, California.

As an IATSE Vice President who studies tax subsidy cultures said to me a week ago:

"Tax subsidies are pretty well established in a lot of countries now, and a bunch of states. Georgia has a big subsidy program and they've done studies so they know the subsidy doesn't pay for itself, but they're all in. They've got studios and sound stages and they're going to keep on giving the money away. Because they want the industry to be there."

And there you have it, our free enterprise system at its finest. "Pay us, and we will come. Otherwise we go to Montreal or Vancouver."

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