Hybrids!

Not cars.

Animated films with live-action in them. Or the reverse.

Hybrids have become all the rage, what with Alvin and the Chipmunks, the oncoming Hop, Enchanted and now this:

... Sources say that producers are talking to Zach Galifianakis to take on the title role [of "The Incredible Mr. Limpet."] Talks are still ongoing, but if it all works out, Galifianakis will be called upon to bring his brand of weirdo comedy to a character on which Knotts brushed his trademark paint of wide-eyed wacko ...

I'm not a huge fan of hybrids (excepting Song of the South's animated/ live-action segments), but the hell with what I like. The general public loves these mashups of cg animation and real live actors. (Didn't Avatar just make a mint?)

Talking dogs, dancing chipmunks, gun-toting guinea pigs, it's all good. So the prospect of a remake of a talking fish picture must make movie executives' mouths salivate. (I recall when Limpit was being kicked around for a vehicle for Jim Carrey a decade ago; clearly the time wasn't right. The Alvin and Chihuahua franchises had not yet materialized. But now there is money in them those remakes.

Time to dust off my old pitch for a reboot of A Man Named Flintstone. Because everything old is new again. And profitable, into the bargain.

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Warner Bros. Well-Oiled Franchise

It's known here and there that Warner Bros. Animation has had less than a totally smooth development process with its latest incarnation of Looney Tunes.

But WBA has had a happier time with its super heroes, the latest evidence being this:

Judd Winick on Adapting BATMAN: RED HOOD

... In 2005, Winick presented his Red Hood storyline in the Batman comics and it was met with tremendous sales alongside powerful waves of controversy. He has evolved that story into the script for the all-new DC Universe film, Batman: Under the Red Hood.

QUESTION: What was the greatest challenge in taking your graphic novel to script format?

JUDD WINICK: I had to take two years of story and boil it down to 75 minutes of film, and that’s a challenge and liberating at the same time. It forces one to cut out all the fat and get to the heart of it. It’s about making a movie. And for those who know anything about movies, it’s about putting one foot in front of the other, building from one scene to the next to the next and so on. There are no cul-de-sacs or crossovers – it’s all about getting the story to its essence. ...

Whenever I amble through WB Animation, I'm always impressed with the professionalism of the Super Hero division. They always seem to have things under control. When staffers come up to me and gripe about the problems with other WB franchises, somehow the Batman and Justice League and Superman tent-poles never get talked about in negative ways.

Could it be there's a reason? (Naaah.)

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Buyers' Remorse

Traipsing around Disney today, I came across a former Sony Pictures Imageworks vet who wanted to talk about the failed campaign to get SPI under a union contract ...

I was one of the few supporters of the union in that election. I had been at Disney for seven years before Sony, and I went around telling people that they should vote "Yes," that even though they didn't think so, they needed the pension plan, they needed the portable health plan. And after they'd been in it for seven or more years, like I had, they would see how valuable it was.

I knew which way I'd vote, but I went to one of the meetings and the union and health plan people weren't selling the bennies too well. I didn't think they were explaining a lot of the stronger points of the Pension and Health Plan.

At the end, the permanent SPI staff didn't see things the union's that way. Everybody who'd been there at Sony as permanent staff liked the profit sharing and matching 401(k) Plan contributions they got from the company. So they voted "No," and convinced most of the temporary employees to cast their ballots the same way.

And some time after that, a lot of them got laid off and they lost their high-end benefits. The people who stayed on were told they had to go to production hire status, so they got none of the goodies they'd been getting before. And a bunch of them said to me, "You know, if we had this to do over again, we'd probably vote "yes." ...

I admitted that the meetings held by the IATSE and the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan reps could have been better, way better. One of the MPIPHP reps got into a shouting match with a couple of hostile questioners and the session deteriorated from there.

I said that the informational meetings left a lot to be desired, but the vote would have cut against the IA (and TAG) if we'd had the oratorical skills of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Because it's a very human trait to believe that the good deal you're getting will go on forever, and the matched 401(k), generous health benefits and spiffy salary are permanent realities. And people wanted to believe.

So now many of Sony's (former) permanent employees, having discovered that the good deal they enjoyed was only temporary, have buyer's remorse. But it was bound to happen. When your employer isn't making much money, the good times can only roll on for so long. It's a lesson that artists in animation have learned many times before.

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Mickey's Place

Back at the hat building, there is still more Tangled animation up in the hallway and it looks damn good to me. The crew is sold on the picture and is working longer hours to hit the schedule (I'm sure there are dissenters who believe in it less, but I find few of them.) ...

The concern, spoken and unspoken, is what happens when the picture wraps? As one artist explained to me:

"DreamWorks seems to be a well-oiled machine with lots of projects in work, but here they like to have 'director-driven' projects. They want to have a director developing a film that he's passionate about, they don't want to develop something and assign somebody.

"But face it. The director-driven feature doesn't always work. Pixar cancelled Newt, they didn't go ahead and 'fix' it. They stopped it.

"Disney needs more stuff in the pipeline. Chris Buck is developing a new project. A couple of other directors are working on stuff. Ron and John are pitching different hand-drawn projects to Lasseter. But after Pooh and Tangled are done, we've got a gap in the flow of features. I don't see what's ready to go into production after the current two ..."

Which explains why people on the production crew appear concerned about what they might be doing after the current CG and hand-drawn features are wrapped up.

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It's the Conglomerates' World ...

... we just live in it (wherever we are):

Big Films Cost [New Zealand] Millions

Attempts to woo Hollywood film-makers have lost New Zealand tens of millions of dollars, confidential ministerial briefings say.

Now, critics are accusing Government ministers of having stars in their eyes.

A Cabinet paper prepared by Treasury in February and released to the Herald on Sunday under the Official Information Act, said subsidies for films such as Avatar and King Kong could not be economically justified. ...

"It's a transfer of wealth from the average New Zealander to the rich beggars of Hollywood," [Act finance spokesman Sir Roger Douglas] said. ...

Gee. This "Transfer of Wealth" thing, it sure is going around. Would Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers be moonlighting with the New Zealand guvmint, do you think?

And thanks to the visual effects guy for e-mailing a link to the article.

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The Fox

It might not have done much at the box office, but Mr. Anderson's stop motion opus has done splendidly in the critical hosannas and awards departments.

Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" outfoxed the competition at the 50th Annecy International Animation Film Festival with the film taking top prizes the Cristal for best feature and the Audience Award as the festival ended its six-day run on Saturday night.

The French, God love them, always march to their own drummer.

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The Derby in Foreign Lands

The movies you'd expect at the top of the heap are (surprise!) up there.

Warner Bros./New Line's "Sex 2" drew $23.7 million from about 7,900 screens in 56 markets. International gross total stands at $131.7 million in 16 days.

And as for animation? ...

The two DreamWorks animation titles released by Paramount continue to generate solid numbers offshore. "Shrek Forever After" in 3D pulled $4.3 million from 1,713 locations in 19 markets for a cume of $74.3 million. "How to Train Your Dragon," also in 3D, drew $2.6 million from 3,202 spots in 62 territories. Foreign gross cume stands at $258.1 million. ...

To now, Dragon has taken in $472.5 million worldwide, while Shrek has earned $284.3 million.

Lastly, Tim Burton and his Alice have crossed the magical barrier.

..."Alice in Wonderland" in 3D elicited $1.3 million on the weekend, its total foreign gross to $683.3 million, $4.9 million shy of the tally of the fourth biggest offshore release of all time, Fox's "Ice Age 3." Director Timothy Burton's "Alice" has grossed $1.017 billion to date worldwide. ...

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Allocation of Assets

Returning to the "stashing something away for a rainy day", Forbes Magazine presents a pithy think-piece on Asset Allocation (which should be the foundation for how you invest) ...

Five Myths About Asset Allocation

There is no perfect allocation and no absolute protection in a bear market. But it's still worth diversifying and rebalancing once a year.

Myth 1: Asset allocation protects you from the bear. ... Asset allocation reduces the probability of a large loss in a down market, but it doesn't prevent a loss. In an economic downturn your portfolio will go down according to the amount of total risk you hold. ...

Myth 2: Tactical allocation is best in volatile markets. ... Tactical asset allocation is the biggest con game on Wall Street. ... To be blunt, tactical allocation is just a form of market timing, which for average investors is a losing game ...

Myth 3: There is an optimal strategic asset allocation. The perfect allocation doesn't exist, at least not one that can be known in advance. ...Finding an appropriate asset allocation requires you to know your own financial and life situation and yourself.

Myth 4: Constant rebalancing is needed. Not true ... Over the past ten years a broadly diversified portfolio that included U.S. stocks, international stocks, REITs and bonds that was rebalanced annually returned one percentage point more a year, on average, than a portfolio that wasn't rebalanced.

Myth 5: More funds equals more diversification. Being diversified means owning asset classes that have fundamentally different risks. These asset classes should also have expected returns that are higher than the inflation rate. U.S. stocks and U.S. government bonds have expected returns higher than inflation. The same is true for REITs and international stocks....

Here's the story I tell to 401(k) enrollees:

Be broadly diversified, and keep it simple. (Target funds, anyone?)

Keep your costs down.

Be disciplined. Don't freak out every time the market takes a dive. You're putting money in now with years ahead of you, so if you're buying into a down market, you're buying at a discount.

(Genius that I am, I don't always follow my own advice. A few years ago, I made the mistake of buying Goldman Sachs shares, then bailed out hurriedly as everything went to hell in a hand-basket during the Fall of 2008. If the Bush Administration hadn't gone Socialist all of a sudden, GS would have gone from $80 per share to $0 in about a week. Happily, Hank Paulson and G.W. Bush did decide it was okay for the State to intrude on the Free Enterprise system, and everything is fine now. At least for Goldman Sachs ...)

So I have learned, even as I have dispensed information. Now I stick with diversified, low-cost mutual funds and leave the stock-picking to Warren Buffet.

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The Mid-June Derby

Now with the Add Ons.

The Nikkster, always the hostess with the mostest, let's us know that, at the starting gate of this middle of the month weekend, the ogre won't be finishing at #1 this time.

... [S]tudio sources tell me that very early numbers show that Sony's kid-friendly Karate Kid reboot starring Will Smith's son and Jackie Chan and updating the action to kung fu will be #1 this weekend with $50+M. ...

Nikki informs us that the A-Team looks to be a distant second, but I'm wondering if it ends up third.

Add On: Sure enough, Shrek IV comes in third with $4.4 million as it lumbers across the $200 million marker ...

Add On Too:The Top Five come out pretty much as predicted:

1. Karate Kid (Sony) NEW [3,663 Theaters] -- Friday $19M, Saturday $21.5M, Weekend $56M

2. The A-Team (Fox) NEW [3,535 Theaters] -- Friday $9.6M, Saturday $10M, Weekend $26M

3. Shrek Forever After (DWA/Par) Week 4 [3,868 Theaters] -- Friday $4.3M, Saturday $6.7M, Weekend $15.8M, Cume $210.3M

4. Get Him To The Greek (Universal) Week 2 [2,702 Theaters] -- Friday $3.3 (-47%), Saturday $3.8M, Weekend $10M, Cume $36.5M

5. Killers (Lionsgate) Week 2 [2,859 Theaters] -- Friday $2.7M (-52%), Saturday $3.3M, Weekend $8M, Cume $30.7M

Shrek IV had the lowest drop (-38%) of any of the top-of-list movies. It will undoubtedly take a bigger hit next week when Toy Story 3 rides into the mix. But I'm still figuring Shrek to have a 4+ multiple of its first weekend gross after all the dust settles.

Summer, after all, has barely begun.

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Minnesota Stop Motion

Young Sam Ekren of Golden Valley Minnesota is getting noticed for his stop motion/ live-action You Tube movie.

The newly graduated Minnesota teen's animation short is a hit at film festivals nationwide. ...

Q: What are your favorite films?

A: The type of movies that really inspire me are ones about awkward, real-life situations. What comes to mind are films like "The Savages" or "Garden State" or "(500) Days of Summer." Those are the mainstream movies that inspire me.

This first semester at Perpich, I took a class, and it was all foreign films. That was eye-opening about the variety of cinema there is and the depth. It pushed me and I'm more interested now in going into the independent side of things instead of the Hollywood side ....

Mr. Ekren makes an interesting movie, with an interesting technique. But when I watched it, the piece tickled a memory ...

This. From 1967. Created by young, up-and-coming animation artists in the L.A. cartoon business.

A different story and sensibility, of course, but the same creative approach. Everything old is new again.

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Magnolia

Not the boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, but an award in the Middle Kingdom.

... [A]t the closing night of the 16th Shanghai Television Festival ... the Magnolia Award for Best Animation went to Toonmax Media for its popular "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf," a series whose characters are widely known and merchandized around China and one that runs on Nickelodeon's dedicated regional channel for Chinese animation.

I keep hearing about "Pleasant Goat" but haven't ever seen it. I'm starting to think I live a cloistered life.

I wasn't even up on the Magnolia Awards. If you'd have asked me, I would've guessed they took place somewhere in Van Nuys.

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Cleveland Times Three

Fox Animation over on Wilshire is going to have its full complement of shows in production during the coming year:

... On Thursday, the Fox network said that it had ordered a third season of “The Cleveland Show,” the cartoon comedy spun off from its animated hit “Family Guy.” ...

For Season 3, [actor and producer Mike] Henry said, the goal is to “take things to the next level. Now that we’ve established our form, we want to break the form. More guest stars, more music, more high energy. We just want to pack more into our shows.” ...

This leads me to believe that Fox wants to keep its Animation Domination Sunday night block together. Which means that the other two MacFarlane shows, along with The Simpsons, will keep on trucking into new seasons.

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Back at Starz

A large part of my later afternoon was spent at the Starz Media building, where there are now multiple studios residing within ....

The Hasbro Studio has moved in its administration but as yet no artists. Hasbro execs inform me they come over from Beverly Hills (where they have temporary digs) at the end of the month.

Marvel is working on super hero shows in another part of the building ...

In yet another area story development on Dan Vs. is going on. (Board artists, directors and designers busily working away.) And the [deleted to be on the safe side] ...

And of course The Simpsons takes up a major chunk of square footage, where many have come back from hiatus and a highly placed person today told me:

"I don't see how this show [Simpsons] doesn't go several more seasons. Fox wants to keep its Sunday night Animation Domination block together. [The Yellow Family] might be as potent as it used to be, but their still an anchor to the whole thing ..."

I pointed out (as I generally do), that if Fox stops making original Simpsons episodes, the whole franchise (merchandise, dynidication deals, DVDs, foreign markets, etc.) being winding down. And Fox is unlikely to want that to happen.

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Fifteen Seconds Two Minutes

Now with Add On.

... doesn't tell you much. But hey, it's something.

Add On: And here's the longer version. Encouraging.

I've seen larger chunks of animation, and there are comical sidekicks, sneering villains, brawls and other fool-tomery. This doesn't particularly show-case it, but the lighting and art direction are strong.

And Rapunzel's "Best. Day. Ever!" is right up there with the line "You are so busted!" in the How To Train Your Dragon trailer ...

Add On: The first of the buffoons weigh in, with this particular buffoon making sure his head is buried deep in his large intestine.

Here's a trailer for Tangled, Disney's terribly titled Rapunzel animated movie musical. The look of the film is inspired by "The Swing," though it's rendered in cold 3D computer animation. This is something of a disappointment. ...

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Le Despicable Moi

While we're on the subject of oncoming animated features, here's one of the earliest reviews that I've seen of Universal's first CGI animated feature:

Working without apology from the Pixar game book, Universal's first 3D-animated movie, "Despicable Me," captures much of what one likes about Pixar cartoons.

Starting with a cute yellow creature who appears before the opening credits mimicking Pixar's bouncy table lamp, "Despicable" adopts the Pixar principle that all things which populate a child's fantasia -- whether toys on a bed, monsters in dreams or the robots and superheroes of science fiction -- are very, very real.

So in this twist on "The Incredibles," a story about superheroes longing for the quiet life, "Despicable" takes a playful poke at supervillains ...

Chris Meledandri's Illumination Entertainment has a flexible business model. On Despicable they jobbed much of everything out, engaging the French animation studio McGuff to create the character animation and images, and bring the feature in for under a $100 million.

So how does the strategy work? I guess we find out in July, when the movie comes out.

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The Animation of the Brothers Warner

Part of the morning of Your Faithful Servant was spent at the Warner Bros. Animation facility on the picturesque Warner (formerly Columbia) Ranch, located in the San Fernando Valley hamlet of Burbank ...

A WBA staffer told me:

"Other studios are doing lots of CGI shows. We're doing Green Lantern, and we'll probably be doing more CG series in the next few years. But we'll also keep doing hand-drawn shows. I don't think hand-drawn series on television are going to go out of style. Hand-drawn is beautiful ..."

Would that more executives felt this way.

My thinking is that every studio doing t.v. animation will be wading deeper into CGI episodics as the decade goes on. It just seems to be the trend now, after the false start back at the turn of the century. (Remember Starship Troopers? I didn't suppose you did.)

The conundrum for the conglomerates: CGI isn't cheap, and if higher ratings don't result from the CG rendering, then the extra money spent might have been pointless.

Meanwhile, the production board crew for Looney Tunes is settled in and moving briskly along. And delighted to be working. "May this show last multiple seasons ..."

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Your Midweek Cartoon Linkage

Disney Channel (which runs Disney TVA) renews one of its animated winners.

A second season of Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Disney XD's number one series, has been ordered for a spring 2011 launch.

Kick Buttowski, which had a record-setting launch in February, is Disney XD's top series in total viewers and across all key kid and boy demographics

Mr. Sarnoff might have departed Sony Pictures Imageworks and Warner Bros. Animation, but he's still in the cartoon game:

Technicolor shows its creative side

The longtime film processing firm is venturing into the highly competitive business of making animated TV series ... Leading the effort is [Tim] Sarnoff, the former head of the visual effects house Sony Pictures Imageworks, who was recruited by Technicolor last year. Since then, he has been assembling a team of high-profile animation executives, hiring industry veterans Jean MacCurdy, a former president of Warner Bros. Animation who helped launch the Kids WB network, and Fonda Snyder, a former Disney Channel executive and co-founder of Storyopolis Productions

Comics Continuum and MTV are reporting that Warners is doing a new animated Batman feature:

Batman: Year One, the comic-book story by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchilli, is being adapted into one of Warner Home Video's DC Universe animated movies, The Continuum has learned.

According to sources, the film will be directed by Sam Liu, who co-directed Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

Warner Bros. did not confirm the film's existence. The studio has not commented on projects until their announced release.

(Happily, TAG blog isn't revealing this news item, and so will not be sternly reprimanded by a Warner Bros. executive.)

Scott Steinberg of CNN asks:

Why do video games make such bad movies?

Answer: Guys running and jumping through exotic landscapes, shooting and stabbing things, don't lend themselves to riveting, high-concept movies.

The Hollywood Reporter surveys the Annecy Animation festival.

This year's official selection will showcase 213 films in competition including features, short films, TV movies, educational programming, commercials, music videos and student films.

Organizers have gathered more than 50 animated personalities to bring life to the South-Eastern French commune. David Silverman, Patrice Leconte, Nick Park, Peter Lord, Peter de Seve, Alain Chabat, Sylvain Chomet, Bill Plympton, Michel Ocelot, Raoul Servais, Florence Miailhe, Elie Semoun and others are set to make appearances. ...

Thailand, if you don't know, has been having problems. Riots. Killings. Burning and looting. But the Bangkok Post details one area of Thailand's economy that continues to grow and thrive.

The animation industry is apparently one of the few markets to remain unaffected by the political turmoil in Thailand. Boasting plenty of potential and a portfolio of successful projects, Thai animation entrepreneurs are reporting skyrocketing growth.

A number of successful stories came out of the MIPTV 2010 industry event in Cannes, France, in April, in both co-production and licensing sales, with 10 Thai companies attracting business worth at least 860 baht ....

Have yourself a productive Wednesday.

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At the Mouse House (Feature Division)

So I spent part of my morning at the hat building, and either there is new (unfinished) animation for Tangled up in the long entry hall or I haven't been paying attention ...

The stuff looks good, but since there is no sound nor final texturing or lighting, it is difficult to tell much of anything.

(Or maybe my imagination has grown dull from age and overuse.)

Upstairs the animators are putting in looong days. "It's been a grind. And we've got six more weeks of it ..." (Sixty-plus hour weeks, if my sources are correct.) I have found artists in the building who aren't totally enthusiastic about Tangled story and arcs, but one animator told me today:

"I'm pretty hyper-critical, but I think Tangled's story really works. I didn't always think that, but they've gone on tweaking and refining it, and yeah. It's good."

(Note that I have no opinion myself, since beyond the gorgeous images on various computer screens -- and everyone is pretty unanimous about those -- I know next to nothing about T's plot and characters. The only detail I'll point out (yet again) is that Flynn Rider's costume is close to Geoffrey Thorpe's outfit in The Sea Hawk. Intentional? You be the judge.)

And for the first time I saw some color images of Winnie the Pooh. The background and color styling are solid. A staffer who's working on it thinks the feature is beautiful, charming and that the story works well. Since I've heard no dissenting opinions, I'll go with it here.

Lastly, some Disney employees wondered aloud to me what's next in the production pipeline, since there seems to be a gap in the work-flow after Tangled and Pooh get completed.

"John and Ron are supposedly developing something, but nothing's greenlit. So we don't know what happens next ..."

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WGA Foreign Levies Settlement

The lawsuit over foreign levies has been settled, to wit:

A state court judge has finalized the settlement in the tangled 5-year-old WGA West foreign levies case -- including a promise that he'll closely monitor how those funds are distributed.

... The WGA has agreed to use its "best efforts" to pay all foreign funds within three years.

... The WGA will have to allow the foreign money to "escheat" to the state for works not covered under WGA contracts if it can't locate the writers or their heirs after three years.

... The WGA West will hire consultants for a one-time review to make recommendations on how to improve the processing and distribution of the funds.

... The final settlement, which followed extensive objections to last fall's preliminary settlement, is much narrower than the WGA had sought. It covers only the 50% of funds that foreign collecting societies have allocated to the WGA for distribution to writers -- but not the 50% of funds allocated to producers under agreements approved by the WGA but never submitted to members for ratification. ...

The thing I found most interesting when reading up on the case and attending one of the hearings?

In foreign lands -- places like France or Australia or Britain -- writers get 100% of foreign levies. But here in the Land of the Free, our fine conglomerates pick up half of the booty.

Just one more benefit to living in our charming, corporatist state.

{Meanwhile, TAG is working to track down addresses for non-WGA animation writers and hand them over to the WGA for distribution of funds. More on that as it unfolds.)

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The one that got away

The Misfits by Patrick Maté. Click on the thumbnail for a high-res image.

At the silent auction Saturday night at Pres Aid, I had my heart set on getting this picture, but such was not to be ...

A Disney exec outbid me. (Kudos to the Mouse House employees who showed up and bought lots of stuff.)

And the full-on auction is June 20th. Be there.

Add On: That's Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift up in the picture there, in case you're wondering. From (as stated) "The Misfits", circa 1961. It was Gable's and Monroe's last picture.

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