The Girl is Numero Uno

The gift to Diz Co. that keeps on giving:

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's new 70th anniversary edition of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" topped the national video sales chart its first week in stores ...

Eight years ago, when "Snow White" was first released on the then-nascent DVD format, the release set a new one-day sales record for DVD of 1 million units ...

Snow White was released in December, 1937, became an immediate hit, and made Disney a major force in Hollywood. It also grossed $8 million. While this seems paltry today, it made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the highest grossing feature in Hollywood's (then) twenty-five year history*.

SW has been making big money ever since. Its theatrical gross, after re-releases that extended from the 1940s to the 1990s, totals $184,925,486.

And that, of course, is only part of the cash flow. There have been millions from merchandising and hit records, millions more from video releases. SW, rolled out on VHS in 1994, sold fifty million video cassettes worldwide. It sold millions of DVDs in 2001, and now hits the top of the charts yet again with its Blu-ray release.

There's only one other film from the 1930s that has had similar success to Snow White, and that's the big-budget Civil War epic titled Gone With the Wind. Outside of the Clark Gable picture, no other live-action film comes close.

Not bad for an 86-minute film that has no flesh-and-blood actors in it.

* Not counting Birth of a Nation, which probably made more, but for which there is no definitive accounting.

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New pictures of our lobby: 2 of 3

Courtesy of and © Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates, images of our lobby at 1105 N. Hollywood Way (click the thumbnails for full-sized pix):

Final installment on Saturday.

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Production Boards

Once every ten years this issue comes up, so I roll it out here.

The TAG contract has two similar-sounding classifications.

One is "Production Board."

The other is "Storyboard."

Here's the difference between the two classifications ...

Storyboard is a classification used in animated features. Storyboards are single drawings pinned up on a cork board and are usually closeups or medium shots used for continuity in a long form cartoon. They don't incorporate layouts or camera moves.

Production boards are two or three panel-type drawings on big sheets of paper with dialogue and action written below them on the production board sheet. The drawings contain camera directions, indications of action, and down-sized layouts. They also have the characters in longshot, medium shot or closeup, as needs dictate.

Here's an example of a Production board, grabbed off the intertubes, produced by Film Roman for Marvel ... long before Disney bought them.

The Production Board rate is a footnote in the contract with three (***) astericks that reads:

"Producer agrees to pay to the Production board classification the key rate of 15% above minimum at all times as provided."

What this means is that production board artists have minimums 15% above those for storyboard artists ... because they are doing all those extra little goodies: layouts, camera directions, actions for the characters.

Don't ask me why the classification is a footnote, because I have no idea. It was that way when I arrived. And if I'd had my wits about me three months ago during contract negotiations, I would have proposed that it stop being a footnote and start being an actual classification in the body of the contract.

So much clearer.

The reason I bring this up now is because studios -- every once in a while -- use the storyboard rate when it's Production board that's the correct choice. Rule of thumb: Production board = teevee; Storyboard = feature.

Thank you for your time.

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Handicapping the Oscar Race

The L.A. Times says the "Best Animated Feature" nominees will be Up and everybody else:

A lot will depend on what makes the official list, which will be revealed in mid-November. Deadline for entries is Nov. 2. Thereafter, a screening committee views submitted fare, grading the films with scores 10 (best) to 6 (poor). Movies with an average score of 7.5 or better are eligible for nomination.

The Times thinks Oscar dynamics are changing:

Animated films have been gaining esteem among Oscar voters in recent years. Until the early 1990s, none was ever nominated for best screenplay, but five animated movies pulled off screenplay bids since: "Wall-E" (2008), "Ratatouille" (2007), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Finding Nemo" (2003) and "Toy Story" (1995).

Since screenplay contenders often score noms for best picture too, it looks like an animated movie may cross over soon ....

Nominations are one thing. Actual awards are another. I don't see animated films winning any writing or Best Picture Oscars anytime before the turn of the next century. I just can't see actors voting for a movie with no actors in it. And I can't see writers giving the nod to a film not written under a WGA contract, no matter how good it is.

Maybe I'm too much of a cynic. I would really like to be wrong.

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Laying Down Enough Chips

A commenter below says: "If you lay down enough chips ... (you produce films that are successful)" ... or something.

That's a variant of the ancient and well-loved saying: "Put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters, and one will produce the works of Shakespeare." ...

Mais non ....

Nitwits don't run large enterprises for very long because they tend to run those enterprises into the ground. It becomes fairly obvious, fairly fast, that these folks aren't up to the job and they get replaced. Even the competent, and borderline competent, often have short runs. The market is an unforgiving mistress.

What does happen -- further down the food chain -- is that middle managers are often promoted out of their area of competence and remain in place for years because the boss who promoted them doesn't want to admit her or his mistake.

But at the top? Life is often brutal, ruthless and short (much like a peasant's existence under Genghis Khan).

But let's crank it back to specifics; specifically, the movie industry. I give you, as Exhibit One, the Bubble Factory.

The founder of the Bubble Factory was Sidney J. Sheinberg, the respected longtime president of MCA Inc., who ran that company for decades with Lew Wasserman, the chairman, and an eminence grise in Hollywood ...

Mr. Sheinberg started the Bubble Factory with his two sons, Jon, 39, a former talent agent and studio executive, and Bill, 36, a lawyer and former television executive. The production company was fully financed by Seagram.

Even by Hollywood's lavish standards, the deal forming the Bubble Factory was, as Mr. Sheinberg told The Los Angeles Times in April, ''the most lucrative afforded an autonomous entity by a studio.'' Most details of the deal were never disclosed. But it included an extraordinary provision that gave the Bubble Factory the right to give a green light to three to four pictures a year, for five years, each costing $35 million to $40 million, without studio approval ...

So. Dear old Sid (et famille) was given plenty of chips. In fact, he was pretty much given a blank check, with which he could return to the cashier's cage again and again.

And what happened?

One flop followed another: ''Flipper,'' grossed $20 million; ''McHale's Navy,'' about $4 million; ''That Old Feeling,'' about $16 million. At Sony, the Bubble Factory produced ''The Pest,'' which grossed $3.6 million. The company also has a Tim Allen comedy, ''For Richer or Poorer,'' which will be released by Universal later this year ...

Anybody remember For Richer or Poorer? I thought not. And guess what happened to the Bubble Factory? As the New York Times wrote twelve years ago:

'BUBBLE POPS AT U'' shouted the front-page headline in The Daily Variety last week. To the world outside Hollywood, the words were gobbledygook. In Hollywood, the headline made perfect sense and confirmed the rumors: the Bubble Factory, a two-year-old production company, was severing its ties to Universal Pictures ....

Let's recap: The Bubble Factory was a company with money, prestige and freedom. It ended up failing because it wasn't headed by a person that was able to create entertainment that resonated with the people who went to the movies.

In the 1930s, producers thought they could replicate Walt Disney's success by hiring away his staff. An obvious idea, but one that didn't pan out too well. In the nineties, the money men believed that Sid Sheinberg, who had helped launch Stephen Spielberg and worked at Lew Wasserman's side to build a movie and television empire, could create motion pictures that people would flock to see. Turned out they were wrong again.

There's a reason that only a chosen few are showered with riches when they deliver hit features. Few can do it with consistency. It takes, in the final analysis, something more than an infinite number of poker chips or lots of monkeys at many typewriters. It's a matter of talent ... and timing ... and being in sync with popular tastes.

You don't have those qualities, all the chips in the world won't make you Master of the Movie Universe.

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The Amazing, Expanding DD

Wait a minute. Wasn't Digital Domain having a problem making money? Apparently that was then and this is now.

On the heels of the recent announcement of its plans to open a visual effects studio in Vancouver, BC, Digital Domain (DD) is enlarging its footprint further. The Venice-headquartered, Oscar-winning visual effects house is working with parent company Wyndcrest Holdings to build a digital production studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

The new studio will create original content for animated feature films and video games. Plans are in the early stages, and Digital Domain expects to begin operations in Florida next year. ...

You see? The power of animation is so great, so all encompassing, that even studios that never turn a profit expand to other countries and states, in search of that elusive positive cash flow.

And where better to do it than Florida, the Mumbai of the United States?

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Dindal Jumps to Live Action

Mark Dindal, director Cats Don't Dance, The Emperor's New Groove, and Chicken Little is saddling up to direct a live-action flick:

Walden Media is ... tapping Mark Dindal to helm live-action family comedy "Housebroken." ...

"Housebroken" will center around a newly married couple's talking pets, who must adjust to living together under one roof. Walden is looking for a scribe to work with Dindal ("Chicken Little") on the script, originally penned by Adam Sztykiel ...

Mark was a long-time Disney Feature Animation guy, departing the studio to direct Cats Don't Dance for the short-lived Turner Feature Animation. He then returned to Disney for the hand-drawn Emperor and the CGI cartoon feature Chicken Little.

CL is the Mouse Hose's highest domestic grosser in the c.g. feature department, and Emperor one of the few traditional Disney features that had a second weekend gross higher than the first. For my money, it was the last hand-drawn feature that really clicked, even though Michael Eisner is reputed not to have liked it.

Mark D. is the latest of a long line of animation artist/driectors who have made the leap to live-action. We wish him the best of luck with the project.

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New pictures of the new building: 1 of 3

Courtesy of Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates, a portfolio of pictures of the Guild's new building. Click on the thumbnails for a full view.

All photos © Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates. More to come on Thursday.

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They Dream of Works ...

... that will leave a lasting impression on the movie-going public..

I bopped around the DreamWorks facility this afternoon, and various artists told me various things. To wit:

"We got the accelerated greenlight for The Croods. They've moved up the release date, so we have to get the picture up on boards by next month, so editorial can get working on it. The first act is up. Jeffrey looks at the whole thing after the holidays ..."

And I got told:

"I saw all of Shrek Forever After for the first time. I think it's as good as the first one, which I liked, and a bunch better than II, which I didn't. It's got a nice storyline and Rumplestiltskin is great. He really steals the show. I don't usually look at the pictures twice, but I'd see Forever After a second time, just to see Rumplestiltskin.

And then ...

How to Train Your Dragon is really a darker, more adult picture. I'd put it in Kung Fu Panda's territory, in terms of not being what's thought of as a standard, DreamWorks feature ..."

Wandering around, I'm always kind of amazed at the number of projects happening on the DWA campus. Beside the dozen or so feature projects feature projects going on, there are a bunch of television specials in work.

It's a veritable bee hive there on Flower Street.

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The Dentist Gets Another Twenty ...

... episodes, not dollars or teeth.

I'm falling down on the job, since this is semi-old news (but important).

Nickelodeon has picked up a 20-episode second season of "Glenn Martin, DDS," the stop-motion series from Michael Eisner's Tornante Animation.

With a voice cast led by Kevin Nealon, Catherine O'Hara and Judy Greer, "Glenn" ranked as Nick at Nite's No. 1 offering in the third quarter of 2009, averaging 2.1 million viewers per week.

I'm told that Mr. Eisner is heavily involved with this Tornante-produced comedy, and I'm glad it's working out. (TAG has a contract with the production company.)

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WB Animation Reboots

I missed this, bad me.

Peter Girardi joins the studio as senior VP of series and alternative animation ... Girardi will oversee creative and spearhead production for all series while also trying to find nontraditional animated outlets for the WB's programming. He arrives on the lot after being exec creative director of interactive content provider Funny Garbage ...

It's bright day after a long night at Warners Animation. A year ago WBA was a ghost town. I could walk through the building and encounter empty cubicle after empty cubicle. Nothing much was going on.

Today every cubicle is filled, and series and direct-to-video features are in production. Staffers tell me that production will be churning along for a good twelve to fourteen months.

Warners, after a long hibernation, is serious again about animation.

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The Foreign Derby

And let's not forget the overseas horse races:

Buoyed by a substantial first-place U.K. debut, Pixar/Disney's "Up" reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the foreign circuit over the weekend, generating $21 million overall from 3,500 locations in 25 markets and pushing its overseas gross total to $257.1 million.

... The U.K. gross for "Up" ($9.7 million from 550 spots) accounted for nearly half the film's total tally, and beat the comparable market opening grosses of Pixar predecessors "Wall-E" (by 39%) and "Ratatouille" (by 41%) ...

Fourth was "G-Force," Disney's animation outing from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, which grossed $7.8 million from 2,575 locations in 21 territories for an international cume to date of $111.4 million. A France opening is set for this week.

Other international cumes: Fox's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," $685 million

Animation continues to more than hold its own in lands across the sea.

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Pension Plans, Pension Saving

Now a short side trip into the land of retirement pensions.

Time Magazine has a new article out about how 401(k) Plans aren't all they're cracked up to be:

The ugly truth ... is that the 401(k) is a lousy idea, a financial flop, a rotten repository for our retirement reserves. In the past two years, that has become all too clear. From the end of 2007 to the end of March 2009, the average 401(k) balance fell 31%, according to Fidelity. The accounts have rebounded, along with the rest of the market, but that's little help for those who retired — or were forced to — during the recession. In a system in which one year's gains build on the next, the disaster of 2008 will dent retirement savings long after the recession ends ....

I'm not as down on 401(k) Pensions Savings Plans as TIME-Warner is, although I concede that if you think a 401(k) and Social Security are going to be all you'll need for a comfortable, secure retirement, you're kidding yourself.

Animation artists who manage to work twenty or thirty years in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan and tuck away money in a 401(k) are going to be in relatively good shape when they hit sixty-five and their high earning years have drifted astern.

They'll end up with three Pension accounts plus Social Security. That won't land them at parity with their industry salary, but they'll (hopefully) be at the 60% mark. Of course, my advice is monotonously the same, year in and year out: Put as much loot away as you can, as early as you can. Diversify. And try like hell not to touch your core retirement stuff, because you don't know what the morrow brings.

Plan for the Best and expect the Worst.

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Linkage of Autumn

Some Fridays you don't get to links like you should.

The L.A. Times tells how some of Wes Anderson's animation crew came to hate him:

... Anderson had no idea that his ignorance of stop-motion (the animation technique in which a stationary object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames) and exacting ideas concerning the film's look would so exasperate his crew.

"Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable," the film's director of animation, Mark Gustafson, said during a break in shooting. He gave a weary chuckle. "I probably shouldn't say that." ...

Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the writer-directors of Cloudy with Meatballs, spent a hectic night on the day their movie opened:.

... in an industry tradition for first-time filmmakers, they had invited a dozen friends and family members to check out audience reactions at theaters all over town ...

“This is the best night of our lives,” Mr. Lord declared after reading an e-mail message from their animation professor comparing them to Chekhov.

By 11 p.m., they were celebrating with a swelling entourage by the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Pete Huyck, a fellow writer and director, presented the newest successful auteurs with fake gold statues with plaques that read, “Hollywood Best Person Award.”

Imagi is encouraged by its initial Astro Boy rollout:

"Astro Boy" was released this week in Hong Kong and Saturday in Japan. Over the next fortnight it will roll out across much of the Asia-Pacific region. The China debut is set for Oct. 23, the same day as it begins a wide release through Summit Entertainment in North America.

Initial reactions from the Tokyo premiere Monday suggest that the careful modernization of the Atom character has kept the film true to the original concept and acceptable to the millions of Japanese who watched the TV series. Meanwhile, for Americans and international audiences beyond Asia, the film appears to be American, or at least fashioned in the same way as a Pixar original. That’s because Imagi’s unique modus operandi is to hire former Disney and DreamWorks Animation creatives in the U.S. who originate the script and storyboard before turning it over to the company’s 500 multi-cultural animators in Hong Kong...

ASIFA Archives gies us an illustrated history of Alvin and the Chipmunks, still going strong after fifty glorious years.

Okay, she's on the cover, but will she shave in strategic areas?

Simpsons matriarch Marge Simpson is gracing the cover of Playboy magazine, becoming the first cartoon character in the publication's history.

The November issue sees Marge posing on a chair with the distinctive Playboy Bunny logo.

The oft-told tale of how the dwarfs of Snow White became The Seven Dwarfs. (No doubt being told again because the BluRay edition of the mega-hit is out to make new millions for Diz Co.)

"Dave Hand who was Directing Supervisor kept saying to the artist, ‘I can’t tell them apart, we’ve got to work on a way to tell the Dwarfs apart.’”

I was worried sick it wouldn't happen; now I can breathe easy:

The Toy Industry Association, Inc. (TIA) announced the selection of its 2010 inductees into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame:

- John Lasseter, chief creative officer, Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios, and principal creative advisor of Walt Disney Imagineering ...

- Sam Walton, founder, Walmart Stores (posthumous award)

Sam and John, together at last. Have a fine fettled weekend.

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Cloudy Hangs In

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs appears on its way to bust the $100 million curse Sony Picture Animation has so far endured at the domestic box office.

Auds looking for laughs found their fix in "Couples Retreat" Friday as the Universal pic raked in $12.3 million, breaking the opening day record for an October live-action comedy ... Sony’s pics "Zombieland" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" filed second and third respectively yesterday with $4.8 million and $3.1 million while Disney’s toon double feature "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" ranked fifth with $2 million ...

Feature Cartoons now hold down the third and fifth positions in the box office derby. Cloudy dropped a minimal 15%, while Toy Stories declined 39%. Apparently the 3-D enthusiasts have gawked at the TSes and moved on.

1. Couples Retreat (Universal) NEW [3,000 theaters] $12.3M Fri, Est Wkd $37M

2. Zombieland (Sony) Week 2 [3,038] $4.7M Fri (-50%), Est Wkd $15M

3. Cloudy/Meatballs (Sony) Week 3 [2,992] $3.1M Fri, Est Wkd $13M

4. Paranormal Activity (Paramount) Week 3 [159] $2.5M Fri, Est Wkd $5.5M

5. Toy Story 3D (Disney) Week 2 [1,752] $1.9M Fri, Est Wkd $8.5M

6. Surrogates (Disney) Week 3 [2,992] $1.2M Fri, Est Wkd $4.5M

7. Invention Of Lying (Warner Bros) Week 2 [1,743] $1M Fri, Est Wkd

8. Whip It (Fox Searchlight) Week 2 [1,738] $885K Fri

9. Fame (MGM) Week 3 [3,110] $780K Fri

10. Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture) Week 3 [995] $760K Fri

Add On: And at the derby's wire, Cloudy and Toy Stories 3-D end up in the 3rd/4th positions, with CLoud-Meatballs just shy of the $100 million mark, and TSes at $22.6 million.

The big news, to my mind, isn't that Vince Vaughn triumphed in a comedy that collected lousy reviews, (Vince does that almost every Fall, bless his heart), but that Paranormal Activity swept up $7 million from 160 theaters.

Talk about a front-loaded horror flick.

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My Afternoon Romp at Cartoon Network

I spent the after-lunch hour bouncing between buildings at the Network of Cartoons, where there is work going on with different series within the skyscraper adjacent to CN's regular studio, even as the third floor of the original facility stands mostly empty.

A young artist informed me:

"The seventeen Cartoonstitute shorts that the studio hadn't released showed up on You Tube a bit over a week ago. Cartoon Network (or somebody) hauled them down, but many of us think they were put up by a person who got their hands on the DVD disk the studio had made up.

"Half of them popped back up on You Tube real fast, because people liked them and ripped them from the internet. Some of the shorts are really funny. Uncle Grandpa got a huge number of hits before it was taken down the first time. The interesting thing is that all these cartoons are now eligible for Emmys because they appeared on the internet. And there's a new Emmy category for animated shorts ..."

I've got no idea if any of these shorts will win a pretty gold statue, but I certainly hope one of them gets the nod. You Tube is a pretty good distribution system.

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Political Post I: Michael Moore, Union Buster

In the interest of being fair and balanced, let me here snark on Michael Moore for stiffing IA crew members on his most recent film:

Michael Moore used some non-union crewmembers when union workers were available in the production of his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story," a documentary that argues the capitalist system allows for greedy corporations to exploit working-class people.

"For all of the different jobs on the movie that could have used union labor, he used union labor, except for one job, the stagehands, represented by IATSE," said a labor source ...

In a statement issued to ABCNews.com, Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said the filmmaker wished the union included more documentary crew people -- but he did not deny that IATSE members were snubbed in favor of non-union employees.

"This is a Writer's Guild, Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild film, as all of Michael's films are. He is a proud, dues-paying member of all three of these unions," said Emanuel.

So you got that, everybody? Big Mike is hooked up with the important labor organizations. But the one that reps editors, camera people, makeup artists, costumers, animators, grips, people like that?

Not so much.

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Political Post II: Astro Boy a Leftie??

Moviefone raises the horrid spectre of brave little Astro Boy being a commie simp:

Crude posters of Lenin and Trotsky adorn the threadbare walls of an office in a desolate part of town, and a group of outcast revolutionaries hatch a scheme to overthrow the ruling powers and bring equality and a classless society to mankind. The beginning of an Eisenstein film? Bunuel? Renoir?

Try 'Astro Boy,' the upcoming animated film featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage and Kristen Bell about a boy robot (Freddie Highmore) that leaves his scientist father after finding out he isn't human.

This is, of course, a sad turn of events for America's youth.

But ... I donno ... the fact that the movie is produced in communist China could have something to do with it, right?

Happily, our corporate masters teach us that Red China is a good communist country, as opposed to Cuba, which is a bad Communist country.

It's important that we keep out good commies and bad commies straight. Otherwise we might get stress headaches and hypertension.

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On Arbitration

A commenter says:

This arbitration business has been in the news lately, and it doesn't seem like a particularly fair, equitable setup ...

Third party arbitration has been the standard way to resolve union/company conflicts since forever. Are they fair and equitable? I would tell you that on smaller issues they're not too bad. TAG has won as many arbitration as it's lost; in fact, it's probably won more.

But on big ticket items, group grievances that impact a division, company or a whole part of the entertainment issue, guilds and unions are rodents, and conglomerates are the equivalent of a T. Rex. They seldom if ever win those arbitrations ...

...Since I've never had any experience with [arbitrations], I'm curious as to your experience, and whether you feel there is any built-in advantage to the studios over the employee/union. Do you feel the system is fair, and a level playing field?

Forget the "level playing field" thing, and "fair" is a word I'm always suspicious of, since it's in the eye of the beholder.

There was only a ten-year period in U.S. history when the turf wasn't heavily slanted against labor, and that was from the time of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the mid 1930s, to the Taft-Hartley Act in 1946. Aside from that one decade, companies have had the upper hand.

As I say, TAG has won its share of garden variety grievance arbitrations. (There's the wrinkle that many potential grievants fear getting black or gray-listed, and so don't file full-bore grievances, but that's a slightly different issue.) However, the one huge grievance that the local has had, an Disney-TAG grievance/arbitration that took two years and cost (on TAG's side) $200,000+ dollars. The grievance was over the layoffs of 200 Disney staffers in 2001-2002, and whether those layoffs were actually "technological change" displacements that required x number of weeks of "displacement pay."

The grievance went on for the better part of two years, and I won't bore you with endless details. In the end, we lost.

The arbitrator was a very nice person from northern California. Drove a Prius. Was a college prof. And he ruled against us. After his ruling, a Vice-President at Warner Bros, a lawyer, took me to lunch. The Veep told me:

"Steve? Do you know that unions have never won a big, sweeping grievance? Never? The Writers Guild of America just finished a big arbitration about payments for rewrites. The same arbitrator who did your case did the writers' case too. And he ruled against the WGA, just like he ruled against you.

"Unions have never won a big award against companies. It just doesn't happen."

I'm a strong union guy (duh). I believe in what unions do, believe in their mission. But one thing I'm not is delusional. Corporations benefit from an arbitration system. (To be fair, unions also benefit in many instances. Going through courts is time-consuming and expensive.) And arbitrators aren't stupid. They know that if they hand down too many rulings against a given company, that company won't agree to use them on future arbitrations. (Unions and companies choose arbitrators off a list of people acceptable to both sides.)

Here's the bottom line: If the arbitration system in union collective bargaining agreements weren't helpful to corporations, they wouldn't be there. And unions find arbitrations useful as well, because the alternative -- lots of court cases -- would be way more costly. And labor organizations are not creatures with endless amounts of money.

We live in a corporatist age, and I don't think union arbitration is going to change anytime soon. The arbitration system in place is the arbitration system we'll continue to have.

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Simpsons and Film Roman

I wandered around the Starz/Film Roman facility this morning, asking about this:

Simpsons creator Matt Groening has revealed that the Simpson family will have to wait a while for their second big-screen outing.

"It took 18 years to get around to doing the movie, we got very frustrated, we thought it would take two years but it ended up taking four - some day maybe we'll do another one, but don't hold your breath" ...

I got mostly blank looks from the crew when I mentioned Matt G.'s comments. One artist perked up when I mentioned that Mr. Groening doesn't know how much longer the series will run. (They're commited to two more years.)

"I've been here five years now and I didn't think it would last this long! I thought I would have a job for a couple of years, then it would be over."

But a savvy animation veteran at Film Roman had a different take on Matt G.'s "no new feature" quote:

"I read what Groening said at MIPCOM, but I think Fox might have other ideas. They made a lot of money with The Simpsons Movie. I don't think Fox wants to wait forever for a second one, because the first feature really extended and strengthened the brand around the world.

"I think this 'no new movie' quote is a shot across Fox's bow. I think maybe this is Groening's way of angling for an incentive to start a movie sooner rather than later ..."

I've got no take on this subject. But I do know this: large entertainment conglomerates aren't in the habit of letting profitable movie tent poles lie inactive for seven or eight years. My guess is Rupert and Co. will start applying pressure for a new ninety-minute extravaganza of the Yellow Family in short order.

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

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