Animation Guild Golden Awards Interviews #27 -- Ken O'Brien and Lars Calonius

Ken O'Brien, like a lot of veteran animators of his age group, broke into the animation business in the middle 1930s, during the Disney hiring frenzy that occurred when the studio was ramping up production on Snow White.



Ken worked on a plethora of Disney projects through the forties and fifties, the last being Winnie the Pooh and a Day For Eeyore, which was the last Pooh theatrical featurette, produced in the early eighties by Rick Reinert's small studio for Disney. Ken passed away at the age of 74 in 1990. ...

Lars Calonius launched his animation career in 1935. Like Ken O'Brien, his launching pad was also Walt Disney Productions. Lars felt he was fortunate to get into Walt's place, saying "It was the best grouping of skilled and dedicated people that I've ever met."



Drafted into the Army during World War II, Calonius was shipped back east to the Signal Corps Photographic Center in New York. After demobilization, he set up his own studio on the East Coast, eventually selling it and returning west. His last animation project was Bill Melendez’s mini-series This Is America, Charlie Brown.

Lars Calonius passed away in 1995.

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Sequel Sequel Sequlitis

The Rporter has some odd analysis of what ails the tentpole business.

Hollywood's New Problem: Sequels Moviegoers Don't Want

Sequel after sequel have disappointed at the box office this year. This weekend's underpowered opening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is just the latest example. And that is perplexing and alarming Hollywood studios, who are addicted to turning films of all sizes and genres into ongoing franchises, from comedies to the smallest horror films to tentpoles. ...

It's not unusual for franchise installments to dip, but the declines have become massive, both in terms of opening weekend and a film's ultimate global gross. The canary in the coal mine was Universal's Ride Along 2, the January comedy that grossed $90.9 million in North America, down 33 percent from Ride Along in 2014. February saw Paramount's Zoolander 2 gross 53 percent less domestically, and 32 percent less globally, than the 2001 film, when accounting for inflation.

Now, sequelitis is damaging the health of the summer box office, but it's too late for studios to inoculate themselves. Over the weekend, Turtles became the latest sequel to lag, opening to $35.3 million, compared to $65.6 million for the 2014 reboot. ...

If anyone thought sequel success to be a sure thing, a glance at the 2016 worldwide box-office chart proves the power of originals over sequels for Captain America: Civil War is the only sequel that's been able to out-gross a pair of original tentpoles: Disney Animation Studios Zootopia, which has just crossed $1 billion worldwide, and Disney's The Jungle Book ($895.1 million). ...

Tip for The Hollywood Reporter re The Jungle Book: An animated remake (CG) of an animated original (hand-drawn) doesn't constitute an "original tentpole" except in the fevered brain of an entertainment trade publication.

And though THR admits that some sequels have done real well this year (principally the super hero output), the trade journal tiptoes around the ever-present reality that when a studio turns out a pale echo of an original film, audiences tend not to go see it.

If box office declines "have become massive", it's because the drops are tied to features that simply aren't very compelling.




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Your International Box Office

Here's a surprise: It's super heroes (encrusted with animated visual effects), furry animals and feathered friends as far as the eye can see.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

X-Men: Apocalypse -- $84,400,000 -- ($402,500,000)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $34,000,000 -- ($69,200,000)

Alice Through The Looking Glass -- $30,900,000 -- ($176,300,000)

Warcraft -- $29,900,000 -- ($70,000,000)

Angry Birds Movie -- $16,700,000 -- ($283,500,000)

Zootopia -- $4,400,000 -- ($1,000,020,000) ,,,

And the House of Mouse has another big winner:

... Disney’s Zootopia has become the studio’s second $1B grosser of the year at the global box office. Judy Hopps & Co have an offshore cume of $662.8M and a domestic take of $337.22M for a total $1,000.020M. ...

And the other movies released beyond our shores?

... Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows ... led among offshore bows with $34M in 40 territories. That’s 8% below 2014’s TMNT which opened later in the summer. ...

Dropping just over 50% from its lackluster debut last week, the Disney sequel [Alice Through The Looking Glass] added France and Hungary to its roster of markets, and $30.9M for the weekend. ...

Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures’ Warcraft [did] ... a better than projected $29.9M this weekend. That takes the cume to $70M after two frames. ...

With a $59M start in China, Fox’s X-Men: Apocolypse grabbed the 2nd highest opening weekend ever for the studio, coming in behind the Titanic re-release. It was also the top IMAX Fox debut ever in the market. ...

[The Angry Birds Movie] added a total $16.7M from over 11,900 screens in 88 markets. After four rounds at the international box office, the cume is $196.8M. It will fly past $200M early this week. ...

[Deadpool's Japan] opening was a fantastic $6.5M for the biggest X-Men start ever in the market. Playing on 746 screens, it’s the No. 1 movie there and the No. 2 MPA debut this year. ...

With a global cume to date of $1,131.5M, Captain America: Civil War is now the 12th highest grossing movie of all time worldwide. Since last weekend, the Disney/Marvel pic passed Skyfall, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King and Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. This frame, it added $4.2M overseas to take the international total to $742.6M. ...
...

There's a theme here: if you are an animated feature or a super hero opus crammed with VFX, you can open your own mint.

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Back In 1938 ...

... On this date. President Emeritus Sito says:

June 4, 1938- Date of the famous Walt Disney Studio crew party at the Hotel Norconian to celebrate the success of Snow White.

The young single artists (average age 26), released of tension and filled with booze, swapped bedrooms and galloped horses through the Hotel hallways, sending Walt and Roy fleeing the scene for fear of bad publicity.

Walt picked the rural resort because when he first held a party at the studio, the animators trashed the place. One drunkenly fell out of a window (it was a first floor window). ...

Mr. Sito adds:

The story about Walt and Roy and their wives backing away from the wild goings-on were confirmed to me by Maurice Noble. He said he stood at the top of the main staircase and saw them. Maurice also said someone drunkenly galloped on a horse through the second floor hallways.

People knew how to party back then!

There were still a few old-timers around Walt Disney Productions in the 1970s who would admit to being at the Snow White party, but they would offer up few details.

More photographs of the wild, alcohol-saturated weekend here.

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The Weekend Box Office Derby

Viacom's rebooted franchise of an old property tops the charts.

WEEKEND MOVIE GROSSES

1). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (PAR), 4,071 theaters /$11.6M Fri. (includes $2M previews) / 3-day cume: $31.5M/Wk 1

2). X-Men: Apocalypse (FOX), 4,153 theaters / $6.4M Fri. (-76%) / 3-day cume: $22M (-67%) /Total cume: $116.1M/Wk 2

3). Me Before You (MGM/New Line/WB), 2,704 theaters / $7.6M Fri. (includes $1.37M previews) / 3-day cume: $18.4M /Wk 1

4). Alice Through the Looking Glass (Disney), 3,763 theaters (0)/ $3.15M Fri. (-68%) / 3-day cume: $11M (-59%)/Total: $51M/Wk 2

5). The Angry Birds Movie (SONY/ROVIO), 3,484 theaters (-448)/ $2.48M Fri. (-51%) / 3-day cume: $9M (-52%)/Total cume: $85.9M/ Wk 3

6). Captain America: Civil War (Disney), 3,084 theaters (-311) / $2M Fri. (-50%)/ 3-day cume: $7.2M (-53%) /Total cume: $388.5M/ Wk 5

7). Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping (UNI), 2,311 theaters / $1.7M Fri. (includes $322k previews) / 3-day cume: $4.45M/Wk 1

8). Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (UNI), 2,417 theaters (-999)/ $1.39M Fri. (-50%)/ 3-day cume: $4.57M (-51%)/Total cume: $48.4M/ Wk 3

9). The Jungle Book (DIS), 1,990 theaters (-533) / $1.18M Fri. (-34%) / 3-day cume: $4.5M (-36%)/ Total cume: $347.7M / Wk 8

10.) The Nice Guys (WB), 1,888 theaters (-977)/ $833K Fri. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $2.7M (-58%)/Total: $28.3M/ Wk 3 ...

The holds on box office for animated features has varied widely of late (Jungle Book drops a mere 34% in its eighth week, while Angry Birds declines 51% from second week to third. And Alice Through The Looking Glass -- not exactly animated but hey; it's Disney -- drops 59% in its second outing.)

The old axiom remains true: You need to have a picture that has a compelling story and connects with an audience. The Jungle Book and Zootopia owned those things. Alice, Angry Birds and (before them) Good Dinosaur seemed to have a shakier grip on those winning commercial qualities.

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Breaking Away From the Mouse

When you win an Academy Award, your life changes.

“Pearl” is the latest animated short from animator and director Patrick Osborne (Disney’s “Feast”). It follows the relationship of a father and his daughter throughout the years as they pursue their musical dreams, and it’s all set inside a hatchback [in virtual reality]. ...

When you go out with a film like ‘Feast’, the doors do sort of open up,” Osborne said. “It’s the jump into the world of feature film development where nothing is a guarantee. It’s really fun to be a part of that world, but in the meantime, I wanted to be doing some of these other shorts again to hone my skills and to keep making things while the features get off the ground.” ...

Osborne isn’t working under Walt Disney Animation Studios as an animator anymore since he’s busy working on projects for Fox, Paramount and ABC. He reveals how his life has changed.

“It’s very different. At Disney I was the head of their animation department. I was used to having a lot of people around me all the time. Now I am mostly by myself all day,” Osborne laughs. “Most of my days now are spent hanging out with one of the writers on one of the two projects or traveling around to do publicity for stuff like ‘Pearl’, or I’m doing a television show on ABC for next season… It’s a live-action show, so I have to go to Vancouver in a couple of weeks to start working on that. Your life becomes a lot more scattered. ...

It's good to see Mr. Osborne branching out. The easy course would have been to stay in Diz Co.'s warm and semi-smothering embrace. But he's traveling a new and different road, taking chances.

That's a gutsy thing to do. Many people only go to a new job when they're thrown off the old one.


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Willis Pyle, RIP

Retired TAG staffer Jeff Massie let us know that Willis Pyle, veteran animator, fine artist, and one of the last of the pre-war Disney animators, has passed away at 101 years of age. Jerry Beck writes:

... [M]aster animator Willis Pyle has passed away. He would’ve been 102 years old upon his next birthday.

Born in 1914, Pyle began his career at the Disney studio in 1937 as a office boy, delivering supplies to the animators. He began drawing for the studio on Pinocchio (1940), as Milt Kahl’s assistant. He also worked on Fantasia and Bambi before leaving the studio to work for Walter Lantz, and then with the First Motion Picture Unit during World War II. Pyle joined UPA after the war animating on Mr. Magoo, and on films such as Gerald McBoing Boing. Moving to New York in the 1950s, Pyle became a successful freelance animator and working on dozens of commercials for studios on both coasts. Further credits included Richard Williams feature Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977); DePatie Freleng’s TV Special Halloween Is Grinch Night; Murakami-Wolf’s The Mouse and His Child (1978); numerous Charlie Brown specials and his animation of the classic 1966 CBS “Season’s Greetings” spot designed by R.O. Blechman. ...

There are almost no Disney pre-World War II animators left, here in the second decade of the 21st century. Don Lusk, who assisted and animated on Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia is still with us, but he is ... so far as I know ... the lone survivor from the First Golden Age of animation.

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Tuppence

Diz Co. is proceeding with a new Mary Poppins project, to wit:

Mary Poppins Returns will, in fact, be based on further titles written by P.L. Travers. ... The press release indicates that the movie takes place 20 years after the original in Depression-era London. Michael and Jane are now adults, and Poppins revisits them after a family tragedy. Julie Andrews will not reprise her iconic role, but rather another English actress who has never truly gotten her due for her range of work: Emily Blunt. ...

This story about the new Poppins has been in the news the last three days.

Work on the picture has proceeded in the United Kingdom and the United States. No idea where the movie might ultimately be shot, but we're told that the Animation Guild will be repping some of the production work. So ... animation is involved?

The full Disney press release:

Golden Globe Award® winner Emily Blunt (Into the Woods, the upcoming Girl on the Train) and Emmy®, GRAMMY®, Tony Award® and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights) are set to star in Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the studio’s 1964 classic, Mary Poppins, which will be released on December 25, 2018.

Reuniting the director and producing team behind Disney’s hit film musical Into the Woods, the film will be directed by Oscar® nominee, Emmy and DGA Award winner Rob Marshall and produced by Marshall, Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee John DeLuca and Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Marc Platt. The screenplay will be written by Oscar nominee David Magee based on The Mary Poppins Stories by P.L. Travers, with Oscar nominee and Tony Award winner Marc Shaiman composing an all-new score and Shaiman and Emmy nominee and Tony Award winner Scott Wittman writing original songs.

Blunt has been cast as Mary Poppins and Miranda will play a new character, a street lamplighter named Jack. Drawing from the wealth of material in P.L. Travers’ seven additional novels, the story will take place in Depression-era London (when the books were originally written) and follows a now-grown Jane and Michael Banks, who, along with Michael’s three children, are visited by the enigmatic Mary Poppins following a personal loss. Through her unique magical skills, and with the aid of her friend Jack, she helps the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives.

“I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by Disney to bring P.L. Travers’ further adventures to the screen. The iconic original film means so much to me personally, and I look forward to creating an original movie musical that can bring Mary Poppins, and her message that childlike wonder can be found in even the most challenging of times, to a whole new generation,” says Marshall.

P.L. Travers introduced the world to the no-nonsense nanny in her 1934 book Mary Poppins, which Disney adapted for the screen and released in August, 1964. The film, which was directed by Robert Stevenson and starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, won five Academy Awards®, including Best Actress for Andrews. However, the subsequent adventures of Mary Poppins remained only on the pages of P.L. Travers’ seven additional books, which she published between 1935 and 1988.

Lastly: There's a production company named "Tuppence a Bag" on IMDb. Some connection, perhaps?

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But of Course ...

This is a total and complete non-surprise.

Zootopia directors talk sequel, TV potential

With the box office-busting Disney film set for home entertainment release on June 7, the most pressing question surrounding Zootopia — which opened on March 4 and has since grossed a whopping $993 million worldwide — is what comes next for the anthropomorphic world of bunny cops, crooked foxes, and cheetahs with short attention spans. ...

Evidently, there’s no timeline nor rush to the second lives of these properties — all of which are part of an arguable revival this decade for Disney Animation — and Howard and Moore say there’s no lack of material to revisit should Zootopia indeed take its next step into sequel, series, or beyond.

“We cut a lot out during the making of the film,” says Howard. “We introduced districts that we talked about that couldn’t fit in, other characters that we eliminated from the movie. There’s a vast potential for this world, so I’d love to see something more come from it.” (And for what it’s worth, several of those axed characters will be revealed in bonus materials on the DVD.)

One of the most promising elements of Zootopia’s potential future is that the original film has already overcome a difficult creative hurdle that now offers a prime advantage for television in particular: The tedious art of world-building. Largely unseen to audiences but ingrained in the film’s narrative are the boundless rules and complexities for the filmmakers’ devised society of anthropomorphized creatures living in a modern metropolis. “So much of the time spent on Zootopia was inventing it,” says Moore. “What does it look like? How does it work? And it would be great to go back to it and explore farther, more of it, rather than being theoretical and having to invent it [again].” ...

Z was ... stripped down to its essence ... a cop procedural with furry animals, in a furry animal universe. Cop procedurals, particularly ones as charming and inventive as Zootopia, are part of a genre on which can be done many riffs. (See Willis, Bruce at the Internet Movie Data Base if you don't believe me. Or check the later career of Karl Malden.)

But there is also the fact that Zootopia will be grossing more than a billion dollars before it's all through. And it'll sell a good many Little Silver Disks after the theatrical run, even though Little Silver Disks are steadily going out of fashion.

So yeah. Will there be a sequel? Is the Pope Catholic?

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Layoffs, Buyouts

Variety reports.

Between 300 and 400 TV and film employees have taken voluntary buyouts at 21st Century Fox, part of an effort to cut $250 million annually from the conglomerate's expenses.

According to insiders, the number represents about half of the workers who were offered the buyout. Even so, there aren't any layoffs planned, the insider said Wednesday, as other cost-saving measures can make up the difference.

The conglomerate has about 20,000 employees worldwide and said in February that it would take steps to rein in spending. ...

Belt tightening appears to be going on in various corners of Hollywood.

Even in Los Angeles animation, where employment numbers have been rising for several years, a lot of artists work as daily employees, or under unit rates. That way, when the projects are completed, Nickelodeon or Warners or Disney TV Animation can rid themselves of those storyboard artists and designers with a snap of the fingers.

There might be a record amount of work and experienced staff is increasingly difficult to come by, but that doesn't mean that our fine, entertainment conglomerates won't squeeze schedules and accompanying pay rates to keep costs down.

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Larrikins

From a fine, entertainment journal:

Larrikins, which is Aussie slang for “maverick” or “rebel,” is digging deep Down Under. DreamWorks Animation has culled together an all-Aussie cast of Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Rose Byrne and Ben Mendelsohn to join previously announced fellow Aussie Margot Robbie as voice actors for its new film.

Tim Minchin and Chris Miller are directing the animal rock ‘n’ roll musical. Minchin, composer-lyricist of the five-time Tony-winning Matilda The Musical, is composing the music for Larrikins. The film is expected to shift over from Fox to Universal for release, given the NBCUni acquisition of DWA two months ago. It was originally scheduled to hit theaters on February 16, 2018. ...

Last time I was at DWA's Glendale campus, staffers told me Larrikins has good buzz around the studio, and that development has been solid. It might be a good time for DreamWorks Animation to roll out a musical. They Have enjoyed a surge in popularity.

Nobody thought Frozen would be a billion dollar property when it got started: Who wants another musical Disney fairy tale?".

But apparently a lot of people do.

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Where Have You Gone, Sam of Yosemite?

Snopes, when it's not debunking politicians, sniffs out false info regarding cartoons.

A Facebook meme falsely claims the Looney Tunes character Yosemite Sam has been banned from television due to his use of guns and violence.

... On 26 May 2016 the Facebook page "Politically Incorrect America" shared the self-created meme displayed above, holding that the popular Looney Tunes character Yosemite Sam, whose most prominent characteristic is his aggressive gunslinging,
had been banned from television for being too violent:

I was banned from television for being to [sic] violent. Like & Share, if you grew up watching me on television, carry a gun, and haven't shot or killed anyone!

A large number of commenters expressed skepticism about the meme's claim, and when [we] attempted to turn up even a single anecdotal report of Yosemite Sam's having been banned from the airwaves, we came up short. If such a ban has ever been in place, no trace of it exists in any news archive we could locate. ...

We had never heard of Sam being banned from general circulation. Disney's Song of the South, yes. And various Warners cartoons containing over-the-top racial stereotypes. But Sam? Why would a little gun-play get you voted off the continent? It's what America does.

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The Animation Guild Golden Award Interviews #26 -- Frank 'n Ollie

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston: Disney legends, Disney supervising animators, and 2/9ths of Disney's "Nine Old Men".
They had been retired for 8+ years when these interviews were done ...



They were both extraordinarily talented and had the kinds of professional careers that are exceedingly rare in the 21st century: working at one company for close to fifty years.



The only Disney employees who are remotely comparable are Ron Clements and John Musker -- Ron 'n John. But of course, they have spent most of their careers as directors, not animators.

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The Studio Overview

The Hollywood Reporter presents various studios' scorecards for the oncoming avalanche of summer movies:

... A Disney executive was ruminating about what made his bosses different. "They're not looking for a movie that earns $100 million or even $200 million," he said. "They're looking at $1 billion each time."

With a record $4 billion at the global box office so far this year, his bosses might just get their wish. Captain America: Civil War has already raced past the $1 billion mark globally, the first 2016 release to hit that milestone, while Zootopia ($984.2 million) and The Jungle Book ($863.2 million) are smash successes. "Think about it — what other studio is looking to go five for five this summer?" said Bock, speaking somewhat prematurely before the weekend box-office results. "That's all-star-level ability."

Alice Through the Looking Glass' disastrous U.S. debut (the movie grossed $27 million over the three-day weekend for an estimated $34.2 million four-day debut) will spoil that streak, but Pixar's Finding Dory (June 17), Steven Spielberg's The BFG (July 1) and a live-action Pete's Dragon (Aug. 12) likely will be solid hits. ...

You will note that Diz Co. is relying heavily on sequels and remakes for many of its soon-to-be released films, but it still sprinkles in some originals.

Animation, of course, continues to play a BIG part of the Mouse's releases, but it's not just the Walt Disney Company. Universal will be releasing The Secret Life of Pets from Illumination Entertainment and expects big things, and Fox has Blue Sky Studios' cartoon output forever and DreamWorks Animation's slate of movies until 2018.

So the difference between now and a couple of decades ago? Every studio relies heavily on animated features. Animation and super heroes appears to be, in the year 2016, seventy percent of the ballgame.

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The Changing Demographics of the Game Industry

From the Houston Chronicle:

... The male-dominated video game industry is changing as more women develop games, play games and take jobs reviewing games. While the ongoing cyber harassment of female gamers known as "Gamergate" indicates a reluctance by some to accept the growing number of women in the industry, mainstream institutions are welcoming all to the console.

[Philadelphia's Moore College of Art & Design. animation and gaming arts program] will see its first class of game developers graduate next year. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology created its Game Lab in 2012. New York University's Tisch School began offering a video game design degree last year.

"There's going to be a huge boom of women entering the industry in the next 10 years," said Stephen Wood, Moore's gaming arts professor, who took over the fledging program when he joined the faculty in 2014. "In the '80s and '90s, video games were seen as things boys do. But in the '90s and early 2000s, girls said, 'We're going to play, too.' Now those girls are going to college and studying video games. We're helping close that gender gap and being part of the solution."

"Much dialogue has occurred in the past couple of years around the topic, (with) a strong majority recognizing that greater diversity on development teams . creates a stronger foundation for the team to create games that may maximize their global appeal," said Kate Edwards, executive director of the association. ...

The video game industry, non-union though it may be, tracks the employment ratios of the animation business quite closely. As the employment of women in video games has gone from 11% (2009) to 21% (2016), so have women in animation risen to almost exactly the same percentage:

A week ago, we posted the most recent employment percentages of women working in the cartoon business. The figures went like this:

Out of a total of 3190 artists, writers, and technicians employed under a TAG contract, 658 are female, while 2,532 are male. This breaks down to

20.63% -- female employment

79.37% -- male employment

Eight days later, the numbers haven't changed much (except that women are 20.72% of the total now, with two more women employed and a half dozen men laid off.) ...

There's a reason for this, of course. Women make up a greater proportion of student positions at art schools and university animation programs across the country. Inside Cal Arts, women now represent more than half of the animation department's student body. Two decades ago, women were a small minority.

The times, they do change.

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Robert S. Birchard, RIP

Caricature by Ed Wexler; h/t Jerry Beck.

Bob Birchard, a sturdy pillar of the L.A. animation industry and one of the most knowledgeable film historians in the U.S. of A., has departed.

Bob was "the film's buff's film buff", and knew almost everything there was to know about silent films. (He had interviewed an immense number of silent movie actors and directors, so it stood to reason. If you needed to know what film titles had come out of the the "Flying A" movie studio in Santa Barbara circa 1915, he was the go-to guy. I mean, who the hell has even HEARD of the Flying A studio in Santa Barbara?)

Mr. Birchard was also a hugely talented film editor. In the 1990s, he edited close to half the output of Walt Disney Television Animation, including series and direct-to-video features. (He was the editor of Disney's first direct-to-video feature, "The Return of Jafar"). He did all this while writing books and articles on the old movies that he loved, and watching a half dozen films a week. (I get tired just thinking about it).

He exited the confines of the planet at 5:20 this morning at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Burbank. He leaves behind his brother Paul, his nieces Amy, Rosie, Nina, his nephew Ross, and a monumental body of work. He will be sorely missed. ...

On a personal note, I was friends with Bob from the time we were elementary school kids until early today. He was passionate about silent films for as long as I can remember. In high school, a bunch of us sat in my living room watching Bob's Blackhawk Films' 8mm print of "Birth of a Nation". I was still watching Bob's silent movies (in 16 millimeter format, no more 8mm for us!) half a century later.

Rest in peace, Robert. I'll miss you a lot. I already do.

(Some of Bob's prolific output, including his seminal work on Cecil B. DeMille, can be found here.)

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Connecticut Trims Free Money Handouts??

Canadian provinces aren't the only one scaling back the money donations to movie companies.

... In recent years, the state [of Connecticut] has focused more on productions that appear on much smaller screens.

“We still have films that are shooting here, but really the lion’s share of the production activity in the state is split between television and digital media. It’s sort of our niche. That’s sort of where we hunt,” said George Norfleet, director of Connecticut’s Office of Film, Television and Digital Media. ...

Filmmakers are also dismayed by the decision to suspend the state tax credits for feature films for two years, starting July 1, 2015. A group urged state legislators this year to exempt small productions that cost less than $2 million from the suspension.

While the provision didn’t make it into the final budget deal this year, it will likely be resurrected in the next legislative session. ...

State subsidies that governments like to hand out are always susceptible to political pressure. Some politicians says "Why are we doing all these subsidies?!" and voters say Right on!" and put the mouthy politician into office.

And next thing you know, more like-minded pols get catapulted into office and suddenly the tax subsidies are melting away.

But hey! Free money forever! Or until the disgruntled citizenry rises as one to throw the subsidizers out.

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World Box Office

Animation and super heroes (with a sprinkling of fantasy) continue to propel global markets.

WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (WORLD TOTALS)

X-Men: Apocalypse -- $55,300,000 -- ($250,800,000

Alice Through The Looking Glass -- $65,000,000 -- ($100,600,000)

The Angry Birds Movie -- $31,800,000 -- ($223,6000,000)

Captain America: Civil War -- $12,500,000 -- $1,107,600,000

Warcraft -- $31,600,000 -- ($31,600,000)

The Jungle Book -- $5,300,000 -- ($877,578,909)

Zootopia -- $4,000,000 -- ($991,474,645) ...

And the trades tell us:

... Alice Through The Looking Glass slid down the rabbithole into 43 material offshore markets for a $65M debut. The result mirrors the opening of last year’s comp, Cinderella, in the same suite of markets and at today’s exchange rates. China was predictably the biggest overseas play with $27.1M, making it the second highest Disney Live Action opening (non-Marvel or Lucasfilm) ever in the Middle Kingdom. ...

Booting up in 20 territories, Warcraft, the adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s juggernaut video game franchise scored $31.6M. Fans rushed out to see it, notably in Russia where the weekend cume was an Orc-sized $10M. Alice, by comparison, grossed $4.6M in Russia this session. ...

With $55.3M from 17,259 screens in 79 international markets, Fox’s latest, X-Men: Apocalypse, brings its cume to $185.8M overseas. Korea was a major debut with $12M from 1,258 screens (including previews). ...

[The Angry Birds Movie added] four new markets this frame, landing $31.8M from over 18,500 screens in 87 total. The offshore cume for the Columbia Pictures/Rovio Animation/Sony Pictures Imageworks adaptation of Rovio’s mobile game franchise is now $157.2M. ...

Zootopia has taken its offshore cume to $655.6M. With a foxy global total of $991.8M, another $1B worldwide grosser looks all but assured. ...

Captain America: Civil War continue to duke it out at the international box office, adding $12.5M in the Disney/Marvel’s film’s 5th offshore weekend. Holds were good in Germany (-33M%), France (-45%) and the UK (-55%). The overseas total is now $730.7M for a $1.108B global cume. ...

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The Animation Guild Golden Awards Interview #25 -- Claude Coats

Claude Coats was one of the ace background painters on Disney features during Disney's first Golden Age (1937-1942) ... and on through to Lady and the Tramp in 1955, when Mr. Coats moved over to WED Enterprises to work full-tine on attractions for Disneyland park.



Claude Coats spent longer working on various Disney amusement parks than he did painting backgrounds for Disney shorts and animated features. But in the thirties, forties and early fifties, he was a key artist in the background department. About Disney's second feature Pinocchio, he had this to say:

Claude Coats: Gustaf Tenggren did a lot of work on "Pinocchio." He was really kind of a fairy-tale book illustrator, and a very capable guy. He had that nice style. In fact, I think I worked with him just before "Pinocchio" on "Little Hiawatha." He did some drawings on that and I did backgrounds for it. We kind of worked along with him, and we tried to get a kind of pen-and-ink style on that.

["Litte Hiawatha"] was a little bit the forerunner of the style of "Pinocchio." Tenggren's style was really pen-and-ink and wash. But it turned out that pen-and-ink at that time didn't feel quite right. Now we're into it with the Xerox process, but at that time it felt like it didn't have any depth to it. It had that line kind of hanging around everything. Of course, we accept it now.

But Tenggren got into the style of architecture in the buildings [on "Pinocchio"]. He was following right after "Snow White" where it had a little of the carved work, so this was a litte more colorful and a little more like the painted villages and the Bavarian architecture of a fairy-tale land.

I think Gufstaf left before "Pinocchio" was finished. He didn't really get into the backgrounds at all. He was mostly involved in the early style of the picture. In background, we'd take Tenggren's reasonable ideas or concepts for a scene. The layout people had already used them in doing their work, and we'd look for coloring and ideas of decoration. ...

Claude worked at WED-Imagineering until 1989, when he retired after fifty-four years with the company. He passed away in 1992, age 78.

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Box Office Animation Fest

Look at the Top Ten movies, and it's thick with animation, either of the undiluted variety or the kind you find in fantasy and super hero movies.

BIG BOX OFFICE TEN

1). X-Men: Apocalypse (FOX), 4,150 theaters / $26.3M Fri. (includes $8.2M previews) / 3-day cume: $65M-$66.4M /4-day: $80M-$80.6M Wk 1

2). Alice Through the Looking Glass (Disney), 3,763 theaters / $9.8M Fri. (includes $1.5M previews) / 3-day cume: $29M-32.5M /4-day: $38M-$42M/Wk 1

3). The Angry Birds Movie (SONY/ROVIO), 3,932 theaters (0)/ $5M Fri. (-53%) / 3-day cume: $20.1M (-47%)/4-day: $26.4M /Total cume: $74M/ Wk 2

4). Captain America: Civil War (Disney), 3,395 theaters (-831) / $4.1M Fri. (-53%)/ 3-day cume: $16.5M (-50%) /4-day: $21.4M/ Total cume: $378.9M/ Wk 4

5). Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (UNI), 3,416 theaters (+32)/ $2.8M Fri. (-68%)/ 3-day cume: $9.4M (-57%)/4-day:$11.7M/Total cume: $40.9M/ Wk 2

6). The Jungle Book (DIS), 2,523 theaters (-937) / $1.8M Fri. (-34%) / 3-day cume: $7.6M (-31%)/4-day: $10.2M/ Total cume: $341.7M / Wk 7

7). The Nice Guys (WB), 2,865 theaters (0)/ $1.8M Fri. (-55%) / 3-day cume: $6.8M (-40%)/4-day: $8.6M/Total: $24M/ Wk 2

8). Money Monster (SONY), 2,315 theaters (-789) / $1.1M Fri. (-44%) / 3-day cume: $4.3M (-38%)/4-day: $5.5M/Total cume: $35.1M/Wk 3

9.) Love & Friendship (AMZ/RSA), 493 theaters (+446) / $669K Fri. (+338%) / 3-day cume: $2.7M (+386%)/4-day: $3.5M /Total cume: $4.5M/Wk 3

10.) Zootopia (DIS), 572 theaters (-805) / $188K Fri. (-51%) / 3-day cume: $866K (-49%) / 4-day: $1.2M/Total cume: $336.2M / Wk 13 ...

The are two animated features on The List (three if you count The Jungle Book, and I do). Zootopia, now in its fourth month of release, clings to the tenth rung of the ladder, and has a worldwide cume of $984,434,645, nudging up against a billion dollar gross.

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