Your Worldwide Box Office

The animated features' performance around the world:

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (World Totals)

ANIMATION

How To Train Dragon 2 -- $11,500,000 -- ($489,536,115)

Planes: F & R -- $3,500,000 -- ($90,450,000)

HALFWAY ANIMATION

Teenage Mutant Turtles -- $28,700,000 -- ($93,700,000)

Guardians of Galaxy -- $40,100,000 -- ($313,222,000)

Dawn of Apes -- $29,500,000 -- ($506,033,624)

Everything appears to be raking in nice coin here except for Planes Deux, which doesn't seem as if it will match the $$200 million worldwide gross of Planes Numero Uno. But maybe they just haven't hit the high-flying (pun intended) markets yet.

As Rentrak's Paul Dergerabedian says:

... Paramount's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" tops the worldwide chart with $93.7 million in just 20 territories including North America and $28.7 million from the 19 international markets. ...

Michael Bay and CG animation, they're doing well.

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Hot August Box Office

The grosses for animation and demi-animation:

August 8-10

1). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (PAR), 3,845 theaters / $25.7M Friday (includes $4.6M late nights) / 3-day est. cume: $64.5M to $65.1M+ / Wk 1

2). Guardians of the Galaxy (DIS), 4,088 theaters (+8) / $12.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $42M+ (-55%) / Total cume: $177M / Wk 2

3). Into The Storm (WB), 3,434 theaters / $6.4M Fri. (includes $800K late nights) / 3-day cume: $17.7M to $18.1M / Wk 1

4). The Hundred-Foot Journey (DIS), 2,023 theaters / $3.6M Fri. (includes $310K late nights) / 3-day cume: $11.5M / Wk 1

5). Lucy (UNI), 3,147 theaters (57) / $2.8M Fri. / 3-day cume: $9.2M / Total cume: $97.2M / Wk 3

6). Step Up All In (LGF), 2,072 theaters / $2.6M to $2.8M Fri. (includes $375K late nights) / 3-day cume: $6.3M to $6.7M / Wk 1

7). Hercules (MGM/PAR), 2,896 theaters (-699) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $5.6M to $5.9M / Total cume: $63.6M+ / Wk 3

8). Get On Up (UNI), 2,469 theaters (+1) / $1.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.8M to $5.1M (-63%) / Total cume: $22.7M to $23M / Wk 2

9). Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (FOX), 2,306 theaters (-977) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.4M / Total cume: $197.8M / Wk 5

10). Planes: Fire & Rescue (DIS), 2,280 theaters (-961) / $720K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.3M / Total cume: $52.9M / Wk 4

Planes Uno made over $90 million domestically. It doesn't appear that its year-later sequel (soon to drop out of the Top Ten) is likely to hit that number.

Apparently the wide-screen format didn't kick up the grosses.

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Too Little

A judge seems not to like the settlement for wage thievery.

Judge Rejects $324.5M Settlement of Tech Wage Case

A federal judge has decided a $324.5 million settlement isn't enough to cover the damages done to more than 60,000 high-tech workers in a class-action lawsuit alleging Google and Apple conspired with other technology companies to block their top employees from getting better job offers.

The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh scotches a settlement reached in April, prolonging a 3-year-old case that paints a mean-spirited picture of late Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs and other prominent Silicon Valley executives.

Koh estimated that the workers deserve at least $380 million, based on the evidence indicating their earning power was undermined by the collusion among their employers. ...

Earlier this week, I talked to an attorney who worked on the case. He said he was around for the lengthy depositions of Mr. Lucas and Dr. Catmull. And that neither appeared to have misgivings about the wage cartel they set up to suppress salaries of hundreds of tech employees.

I guess if you're shafting people for the greater good of the industry (as that good is defined by management), it's all fine.

Add On: Pando Daily, which has been eloquent in its coverage of the wage-theft cartel, notes this:

... As we’ve reported earlier, this is the first case experts know of in which antitrust law was used to successfully certify a class action wage theft lawsuit.

Here are some excerpts from Judge Koh’s order denying the settlement:

“Plaintiffs are correct that there are particularly clear statements from Lucasfilm and Pixar executives regarding the nature and goals of the alleged conspiracy. Specifically, Edward Catmull (Pixar President) conceded in his deposition that anti- solicitation agreements were in place because solicitation ‘messes up the pay structure.’ Similarly, George Lucas (former Lucasfilm Chairman of the Board and CEO) stated, ‘we cannot get into a bidding war with other companies because we don’t have the margins for that sort of thing.’ ...

But Ed and George have a point: Markets are bad. Especially when they make poor struggling companies have to pay more.

"Long live free enterprise! But only when it makes the right people richer!"

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Sito's Month In Animation

Time once again for President Emeritus Tom Sito ... and his look-back at important August dates in cartoonland.

Animation In August

Aug 2, 1986 - Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky premieres.

Aug 5, 1924 - The first Little Orphan Annie comic strip drawn by Harold Gray premieres.

Aug 6, 1999 - Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant goes into wide release.

Aug 7, 1979 - THE RUNAWAY WARS - The Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE calls a citywide strike against studios sending animation work overseas. (The strike, after one week and change, is successful. -- Steve Hulett)

Aug 8, 1942 - Walt Disney’s Bambi premieres.

(Frank Thomas told me a story about an unfortunate sneak preview for the movie that he attended with Walt Disney: "We were to the part of the film where Bambi's mother had just been shot, and Bambi is wandering through the snow calling out "Mother!" And some kid in the balcony yells, "Here I am Bambii! Heere I aamm!" Laughter rolls through the audience. I look down the row at Walt, and he is seething." -- Steve Hulett)

Aug 9, 1930 - Max Fleischer’s cartoon Dizzy Dishes introduces Betty Boop. A singing star named Helen Kane sues Fleischer claiming that they stole the signature Boop-Ooop-a-Doop from her, but the case is thrown out when it's revealed Kane had stolen it herself from an African-American singer. (Betty was supposed to be a dog character to match her male counterpart Bimbo, but animator Grim Natwick had done a lot of drawing of girls in Paris and New York and turned the character into a saucy little flapper.)

Aug 10, 2001 – WB’s Osmosis Jones premieres.

Aug 11, 1934 - Mickey Mouse cartoon Orphan’s Benefit premieres. It’s the first cartoon where Donald Duck loses his temper and does his fighting stance. This is also the cartoon Dippy Dog is called by his new name- The Goof, or Goofy.

Aug 12, 1951 - Bob McKimson’s Warner Bros short Hillbilly Hair premieres. The short includes the long routine animated by Emery Hawkins where Bugs Bunny takes over calling a square dance and uses it to torture two twin brother hillbillies who are after him.

Aug 13, 1941 - The first animator, James Stuart-Blackton, is run over by a bus on Pico Blvd.

Aug 12, 1946 - MGM cartoon Northwest Hounded Police, the short in which Tex Avery perfects the ‘Tex Avery Take”, premieres.

Aug 13, 2004 - Craig McCracken’s Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends debuts.

Aug 15, 1843 - Tivoli Gardens opens in Copenhagen. One of the oldest amusement parks in the world. King Christian said “When people are amused, they don’t worry about politics.” Hans Christian Andersen was a frequent visitor. Walt Disney visited to get inspiration for Disneyland.

Aug 16, 1942 - Terrytoon’s short The Mouse of Tomorrow debuts. The first production to show Mighty Mouse.

Aug 17, 1941- EL GRUPO - Walt Disney and his artists arrive in Rio on a ten week goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to the Nazis, forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. Among other things, they wanted Donald Duck. Federal mediator Stanley White made an arrangement with Roy Disney stating that if they got Walt out of town, they could settle the Disney animators strike. The name comes from hotel footmen in Buenos Aires paging the artists as “El Grupo Disney!” The films The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos are inspired by the trip.

And the rest of the month ...

Aug 17, 1984 - The Walt Disney Company informs its chairman Ron Miller that they want his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by that time. Within two years of Roy Disney and Michael Eisner taking over, Disney was number one.

Aug 17, 1986 - John Lasseter’s award-winning short Luxo Jr., premieres at Siggraph’86 Dallas.

Aug 20, 1982 - Ralph Bakshi’s film Hey Good Lookin’ premieres.

Aug 22, 1929- Walt Disney’s first Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance, premieres.

Aug 22, 1942 - Tex Avery’s first cartoon for MGM, The Blitz Wolf premieres.

Aug 23, 1994 - Jeffrey Katzenberg announces he's leaving Disney.

Aug 24, 1942 - Walt Disney’s film Saludos Amigos receives its world premiere in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Aug 26, 1918 - 17-year-old Walt Disney fakes his parents signature in order to enlist to fight in World War I. Assigned to the ambulance corps, he arrives in Europe as the war is ending.

Aug 26, 1980 - Director Tex Avery dies after collapsing in the parking lot of Hanna-Barbera.

Aug 27, 1968 - Former master animator Bill Tytla’s request to return to Disney is turned down. The artist who animated Grumpy, Dumbo and the Devil on Bald Mountain even offers to do a free “trial animation test” to show he still has it. Disney exec W.H. Anderson replies “We really have only enough animation for our present staff.” Bill Tytla dies later that year.

Aug 29, 1953 - Warner’s Cat Tails for Two introduces Speedy Gonzales. He's named for the nickname of assistant animator Frank Gonzales, who was one of the faster artists on the team.

Aug 29, 2004 - Atomic Betty debuts on Teletoon.

Aug 30, 1975 - Ralph Bakshi’s film Coonskin debuts. Bad boy Bakshi’s portrayal of African-American urban violence was deemed so offensive to civil rights groups like C.O.R.E. that it caused the first riot ever at the Museum of Modern Art. The film was retitled on video Streetfight.

Aug 31, 1935 - Disney cartoon Pluto’s Judgment Day debuts.

Aug 31, 1938 - Walt Disney puts ten thousand down to buy 51 acres on Buena Vista Street in Burbank. He will build his modern studio there.

(The staff moves from Hyperion to Burbank in the Fall of 1939. "Pinocchio", Disney's second feature, is completed in Burbank. -- Steve Hulett)

Aug 31, 1946 - Looney Toon short, Walky Talky Hawky, the first appearance for Foghorn Leghorn. The character is based on a Fred Allen radio character ‘Senator Clayton Langhorn’ that poked fun at bombastic Southern conservative politicians.

Aug 31, 1948 - Disney’s Melody Time premieres.

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David Weidman, RIP

One more UPA artist steps into history.

David Weidman, the UPA animation artist whose midcentury silkscreen prints found a new appreciation in recent years, died Wednesday. He was 93 and had lived in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in a house he built himself since the 1950s.

Weidman worked on the backgrounds and other paintings for UPA cartoons such as “The Boing Boing Show,” “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” and “The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo” that helped form the distinctive modern style for which the studio was known. He also worked on Jay Ward’s “Fractured Fairy Tales,” “Crusader Rabbit” and “Popeye” TV shorts. ...

David Weidman's cartoon career stretches back to the second incarnation of Crusader Rabbit in 1957, and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol in the early sixties. Today, of course, he's best known for his artistic work outside of animation.

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One Billion

Another banner quarter.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” pushed Walt Disney Studios over the $1 billion mark domestically this week.

Overseas, Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Marvel has continued to reap dividends, with the film arm hitting $2 billion in international ticket sales. The results mean that Disney has now surpassed Warner Bros. as the second-highest studio in terms of market share. ...

This is the ninth consecutive year that Disney has crossed $1 billion domestically and the fifth year in a row it has passed $2 billion. Disney said it’s the fastest it has reached those numbers.

The studio managed to hit these lofty heights without a release from one of its best-performing brands, Pixar. ...

Marvel turns out to be one of Robert Iger's value purchases. Marvel's flock of super heroes has made the subsidiary the Pixar of live-action, with release after release opening at #1.

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More Legos

Per the Reporter:

Warners' Lego franchise is heating up.

On Wednesday, the studio dated two untitled animated films for May 25, 2018, and May 24, 2019, the beginning of the lucrative Memorial Day weekend.

Insiders suggest there will be more follow-ups to this year's blockbuster The Lego Movie, which grossed $468 million worldwide earlier this year. They stress that things could always change, considering the dates are so far out.

The studio has already dated Lego 2 for May 26, 2017. It could be planning for a threequel for 2019, while a sequel to the Lego Ninjago spinoff could claim the 2018 date. (A first Ninjago film is already set for Sept. 23, 2016.) ...

Warners has had lots of luck with animated features.

Unfortunately, most of it has been shitty.

Their feature animation studio in Glendale, on multiple floors of a bank high-rise, went belly up in the 1990s. They had a reputation for being the movie conglomerate where feature animation went to die.

But that's changed now. Lego 1 was a sizable hit, and the studio is going to leverage its new franchise. The first installment cost a fraction of other CG animated features' budgets, so it's a logical move to produce more. Strike while the branding iron is hot, isn't that Hollywood's motto?

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Layoffs at Toons

A Disney Toons Studio employee told me today that there's a new round of layoffs at the Mouse's direct-to-video division in Glendale:

"They had people together this morning for a group announcement. With no advance announcement. Then people had one-on-ones with administration and a new bunch of people were let go. The new Planes hasn't done the business they hoped for and so another group is getting laid off. The shorts department is still going, but there won't be a lot of people there. ..."

Disney Toons went through a round of layoffs a few months ago. Then, the Tinkerbell movies ended and staff got reduced. Now it looks though there is more belt tightening going on. (Some Walt Disney Animation Studio staff -- residents of the Hat Building on Riverside Drive -- has moved over to the Disney Toons studio because Glendale has space and Burbank, with Big Hero 6 going full bore, doesn't.)

The staff reductions aren't a huge surprise. The home video market is a shadow of its former self, and the little silver disks won't be coming back anytime soon.

And Planes 2 doesn't seem to be the theatrical smasheroo Diz Co. hoped it would be. To date, it's made $79,012,671, worldwide. (The original made over $219 million.)

So it looks like Disney is doing some preemptive cutbacks and rethinking strategies. Not every cartoon entity is enjoying a growth spurt.

Add On: The history of DisneyToons Studio is interesting. It began as a spoke in the wheel of Disney TVA, with The Return of Jafar selling $100 million worth of VHS tapes lickety-split.

Diz TVA continued to make long-form, home-video animation, and the unit was soon spun off into its own division, where it continued to create sequels of older animated features. These were inexpensive at first -- Jafar only cost a few million to produce -- but budgets steadily went up. Every year or three, one of DisneyToons' projects got extra money and became a theatrical release. (Return to Neverland, Jungle Book II, etc.)

The bottom has been crumbling out from under the home video market for some time. Sharon Morril, DisneyToon Studio's top executive from its beginning, was handed her walking papers a few years ago, and John Lasseter now runs the division. The company had fair results with its Tinkerbell series, but the market that DTS serves continues to deteriorate, and management is probably trying to puzzle out a newer mission for the division.

I don't think the home video market -- as it existed in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s -- is going to do it for the division. Lower cost theatrical sequels and prequels also seem problematic.


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TAG 401(k) Plan Conversion

Time for a brief narrow-cast.

The Animation Guild's 401(k) Plan has now transferred from Mass Mutual (an insurance company) to The Vanguard Group (a mutual fund family). ...

As of this morning, individual participants could view their accounts on-line at Vanguard.com. You have to have a log-in password, or already be a Vanguard customer, in which case you can view your 401(k) account with your older retail accounts.

We're informed that most participants elected to have Vanguard map their Mass Mutual holdings to an age-appropriate Target Retirement funds, and frankly, for most people this is far and away the best move for their money. (It's the retirement investors who try to get tricky -- we're looking at YOU, Hulett! -- that end up blowing it.)

The Plan should be fully operational at Vanguard within the next week.

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U-Turn

Add On ... with the reversal.

Not particularly good.

... With little more than three weeks left in the legislative session, Kevin De Leon is demanding big changes to efforts to expand California’s $100 million Film and TV Tax Credit Program. If the influential state Senate Appropriations Committee chairman doesn’t get his eleventh-hour way, I’ve learned that he intends to kneecap the multi-sponsored Film and Television Job Creation and Retention Act before it reaches the Legislature’s floor for a vote this month. “Following a long meeting this weekend, and numerous conversations over the past year, Senator De Leon has decided he will not support the extension of the current lottery allocation system,” said a curt email that went out earlier today from De Leon’s Chief of Staff to politicians and industry leaders. ...

Apparently Senator De Leon thinks that a blue-ribbon board granting green lights to chosen productions is the way to go.

No problem with that, except for the risk of bribery, malfeasance and general incompetence that a standing committee of movie deciders would entail. And why this issue is being raised when the bill is midway through the legislative process, is known to the Senator, but not to others. (Others are probably going, "What the Faaa ...?!")

Add On: Twenty-four hours later, a change of heart:

Looks like one of the biggest stakeholders in the expansion of California’s $100 million Film and TV Tax Credit Program have forgiven Kevin De Leon for temporarily turning against the issue. Soon after the influential state Senator did an about face from yesterday’s lack of support for the widely supported and multi-sponsored Film and Television Job Creation and Retention Act and today said he was “100% committed” to seeing the legislation passed, the California Film and Television Production Alliance came out with a statement of their own saying they are “pleased that Senator De Leon has clearly expressed his strong and unequivocal commitment to passing an expanded and extended California Film and Television production incentive this year.

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Profits

Animation helps a bottom line.

Operating income at the conglomerate's film studio more than doubles to $411 million as "Frozen" outperforms internationally and in home entertainment.

Walt Disney reported Tuesday that it earned $1.28 per share in the most recent quarter on $12.46 billion revenue, besting the expectations of analysts on both the top line and bottom line as the conglomerate's film studio rode a wave of solid hits, including Maleficent and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Wall Street analysts had predicted Disney would post earnings-per-share of $1.16 on revenue of about $12.2 billion in its fiscal third quarter.

Disney said its earnings per share are a record for any quarter in the company's history. By that metric, the first three quarters of the fiscal year have already set a full-year record. ...

The Diz Co. has three animated features coming out in the next twenty months, two from Pixar and one from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Between the super heroes, cartoons, and Star Wars sequels, the company should be pulling in plenty of money. Click here to read entire post

Synergy

Even as shooting on Episode VII continues, there is this.

... Rebels was the only shard of the Star Wars franchise at Comic-Con this year, and in terms of its timeline in the franchise, its frosh characters won’t be crossing over to the Episode VII feature film. The cartoon series, which includes Star Wars: The Clone Wars executive producer Dave Filoni and X-Men: Days Of Future Past scribe and producer Simon Kinberg behind the scenes, is set five years prior to the original 1977 Star Wars. ...

The Diz Co. does not miss a trick. Don't know what they're going for here beyond building the franchise. Sort of interesting look. Sort of cheesy animation that bellows "television!" at you.

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Studios' Market Shares

Happily, cartoons are a large part of our fine entertainment conglomerates' money piles.

2014 STUDIO MARKET SHARE to August 3

1) FOX---$1.157 BILLION

2) WARNER BROTHERS---$997 MILLION

3) BUENA VISTA---$970 MILLION

4) SONY---$919 MILLION

5) UNIVERSAL---$738 MILLION

6) PARAMOUNT---$615 MILLION

... and then, the small fry.

7) LIONSGATE---$300 MILLION

8) OPEN ROAD---$123 MILLION

9) RELATIVITY---$117 MILLION

10) WEINSTEIN---$90 MILLION

The Lego Movie, Rio 2, How To Train Your Dragon 2, and of course Frozen have all fattened bottom lines. There should be similar or better results next year when releases from Pixar and other animation studios crop up. (There be sequels ahead!)
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The Next Big Thing

Globalization. Of a sort.

A familiar issue for many businesses these days is a scarcity of top talent.

Chinese film studio Light Chaser Animation has taken an unusual approach to help to solve this problem - it bought a robot.

The device is a "telepresence robot", which it acquired from California-based Double Robotics. It consists of a battery-powered mobile platform to which an iPad is attached.

The wi-fi controlled device can move around the company's offices and it allows animation director Colin Brady - who lives in Los Angeles and did not want to move to China - to communicate with the rest of the team in Beijing. ...

Company founder Gary Wang says the robot is just one example of the new communication tools that are now available to make working easier for teams that are dispersed across the world. ...

Mr Wang says the goal of the company is to produce animated movies like those made by Pixar and Dreamworks, aiming to achieve the same level of quality as the giant US studios. ...

I have every confidence this will go really, really well.

(But why should I be a smart-aleck about this? Illumination Entertainment makes a version of this business model work, so who knows? No doubt the day will soon come when L.A.-based story artists and directors have their remote-controlled droids supervising and snapping off orders on the other side of the world. And we'll all be working for $15.50 per hour.

If we're lucky.)

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Cash Flows From Elsewhere

This wee factoid caught my eye:

Aladdin, Newsies and the unsinkable Lion King tallied up box office receipts of $5,048,322 for the week ending Sunday. That’s a hair shy of 20% of the total box office of $26,391,544 for all 26 shows, according to the trade group Broadway League. The Lion King, pumped by an extra. ninth performance, took in a Street-leading $2,559,076 at the Minskoff. Newcomer Aladdin continues to improve weekly at the New Amsterdam flagship, taking in $1,570,266, up $57,802 from the week before.

Let's take these stats over to the light for closer examination.

Three Disney movie properties, two of them hit animated musicals and one of them a failed live-action tuner starring Christian Bale long before he was Batman, raked in almost one-fifth of Broadway's ticket sales.

One fifth. Most of that from animated features that have already made huge amounts of money for Diz Co. Small wonder that analysts keep upping the company's profit margins, even as Disney prepares to announce quarterly earnings.

Newsies,, though closing, is going up ... and up:

... "Newsies" -- which surprised even Disney Theatrical with the positive reception it received from audiences and critics -- has seen box office rise consistently over the past month and last week hit $919,050. ...

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Nickelodeon's Newer Digital Products

Heated competition is causing changes:

... Following their viewers’ lead, Nickelodeon has started a number of initiatives that increasingly blur the lines among an ever-proliferating number of screens. “Welcome to The Wayne” is the first web-exclusive series produced by the network’s new animated shorts program, which seeks to create a pipeline of fresh content for the web, mobile and, potentially, television. The network also is introducing a left-to-right scrolling Nick.com, featuring videos and games and designed for children to navigate the same way they swipe through mobile apps. ...

It is unclear whether Nickelodeon’s strategy is the right one. Its primary competitor, the Disney Channel, was first to introduce apps that streamed shows. But Disney Channel has taken a more cautious approach to overhauling its television offerings. While Nickelodeon has been experimenting with programs like “AwesomenessTV,” a sketch comedy show stocked with YouTube personalities, the Disney Channel has remained focused on its signature brand of polished sitcoms.

Regardless, Nickelodeon still has its work cut out for it. Ratings are about flat this year, and traffic to Nickelodeon’s desktop and mobile sites declined to 11 million unique United States visitors in June, down 30 percent from the same period last year. ...

Nick's animation studio has certainly undergone changes. It's cut back on CG shows, and ordered more hand-drawn series (they're less expensive to do and pull similar ratings). The studio department that was doing internet apps has been restructured (some would say eliminated).

Nick, like every other large entertainment conglomerate, is struggling to find the best way to create and monetize product for the worldwide web. And like Disney, Warner Bros., and everybody else, Nick-Viacom is groping its way along, searching for the right mix of elements.

I don't think anyone has licked the many challenges as of yet. Maybe in the next ten years.

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Okay, So Not Closing

From Variety:

Veteran Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki discussed the famed animation house’s future in a documentary broadcast by the TBS network on its “Jonetsu Tairiku” program on Sunday evening.

Suzuki talked about the need for “big changes in all aspects of our operations.” One possibility he mentioned was a hiatus in the production department and taking what he described as a “short break” to assess the studio’s future.

He added that it “would be possible for us to keep making films indefinitely.”

So they're keeping all options open, and not shutting down. On the other hand, now that Miyazaki has retired, Studio Ghibli's movie grosses have shrunk a bit. Click here to read entire post

Worldwide Box Office

The totals from various animated movies:

Foreign Weekend Box Office -- (Worldwide Totals)

ANIMATION

How To Train Dragon 2 -- $20,000,000 -- ($465,269,057)

Planes -- $3,500,000 -- ($77,596,000)

DEMI-ANIMATION

Dawn of Apes -- $47,500,000 -- ($449,329,673)

Transformers Extinct -- $19,100,000 -- ($1,004,965,915)

Godzilla -- $3,200,000 -- ($507,222,103)

Although its near the end of its run domestically, Dragons 2 is still moving into new international territories and racking up bucks. Meantime, Planes remains subdued in overseas venues.

And the giant robots have crossed the billion dollar barrier.

The trade press notes:

“Guardians of the Galaxy” dominated the international box office this weekend, powered by the global strength of the Marvel brand. ...

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” continued to hold strong in its fourth week of release, generating $47.5 million from 11,714 screens in 70 markets. ...

In fifth place, “How to Train Your Dragon 2″ tried to cushion its disappointing domestic performance by attracting foreign crowds. The animated sequel racked up $20 million from 6,755 screens in 36 markets. Its worldwide haul now stands at $465.3 million. ... China, with its burgeoning population of moviegoers, beckons later this month. ...

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Don Mirisch, RIP

Animation exec Jonathan Dern told me about this sad event a couple of days ago:

Veteran business affairs executive Donald I. Mirisch, who senior executive positions at Fox Studios, Universal Studios, Embassy Home Entertainment, Hanna-Barbera Productions and MGM over the course of his career, died of brain cancer at his home on July 26. He was 67.

At MGM, where he served as executive vice president of MGM Animation, Mirisch re-established the storied animation unit that had been shuttered after the departure of Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna in the late ’50s. Taking charge of all production and operations of the revitalized division, he exec produced “All Dogs Go to Heaven 2,” “The Pebble and the Penguin,” “James Bond, Jr.,” “The Pink Panther” and “Babes in Toyland.”

Met Don a few times at M-G-M. Sixty-seven is way too young to exit, but sometimes God lays out plans we wouldn't make ourselves. Click here to read entire post

Your American B.O.

One more Marvelous weekend at the box office.

Ticket Sales -- August 1-3, 2014

1). Guardians of the Galaxy (DIS), 4,080 theaters / $37.8M Friday (includes $11.2M late nights) / $30.3M to $32.2M Sat (-15% to -20%) / 3-day est. cume: $92.2M to $95.5M

2). Lucy (UNI), 3,202 theaters (+29) / $5.4M Fri. / $6.8M Sat. (+25%) / 3-day cume: $17.4M to $18.3M (-60%) / Total cume: $78.2M / Wk 2

3). Get On Up (UNI), 2,468 theaters / $4.9M Fri. (includes $371K late nights) / $5.8M Sat. (+20%) / 3-day cume: $14.7M / Wk 1

4). Hercules (MGM/PAR), 3,595 theaters (0) / $3.18M Fri. / $4.2M Sat. (+35%) / 3-day cume: $10.6M (-65%) / Total est. cume: $52.3M / Wk 2

5). Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (FOX), 3,283 theaters (-385) / $2.4M Fri. / $3.3M (+40%) / 3-day cume: $8.4M / Total cume: $189M / Wk 4

6). Planes: Fire & Rescue (DIS), 3,241 theaters (-598) / $1.79M Fri. / $2.45M Sat. (+35%) / 3-day cume: $6.1M / Total cume: $47.2M / Wk 3

7). The Purge: Anarchy (UNI), 2,656 theaters (-200) / $1.8M Fri. / 3-day cume: $5.4M / Total cume: $62.8 M / Wk 3

8). Sex Tape (SONY), 2,500 theaters (-562) / $1M Fri. / $1.3M Sat. (+25%) / 3-day cume: $3.4M / Total cume: $33.8M / Wk 3

9). A Most Wanted Man (RSA), 729 theaters (+368) / $841K Fri. / $1.3M Sat. (+60%) / 3-day cume: $2.6M to $3.1M (+15%) / Per screen average: $4,200 / Total cume: $6.5M / Wk 2

10). And So It Goes (CLARIUS), 1,816 theaters (+54) / $915K Fri. / $1.2M Sat. (+40%) / 3-day cume: $3M+ (-34%) / Total cume: $10.3M / Wk 2 ...

Planes might approach $75 or $80 million before the movie runs its theatrical course. Not a barn burner in ticket sales, but a fine long-form ad for toys and other merchandise.

And let's not even think what kind of money the Marvel unit is earning for the Mouse. Every release seems to be a blockbuster.

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