File this under “People who don’t know when to quit while they’re ahead”: The producers of Delgo - the biggest bomb of 2008 - are considering a lawsuit against James Cameron over the similarities between their film and his Avatar.

(Cue the laughter).

(Thanks, Mark Mayerson)

Following up on the report of Robert Zemeckis’ plans for a mo-cap remake of Yellow Submarine, Brew reader Chris Smigliano points out that the Yellow Sub characters have ALREADY been done in CGI for a thrill ride that opened in Berlin and Tokyo in the year 2000. There was a pre-ride intro, as well as four diffrent ride variations, each with the same beginning and ending but with a different middle (Sea of Holes, Sea of Time, Sea of Science). You can watch all of them on You Tube.

Is this what we’re in for?

We interrupt our bashing of Cartoon Network to get upset about something else:

Variety is reporting that Robert Zemeckis is about to remake Yellow Submarine for Disney, in motion capture.

Read all about it here. Someone tell me this isn’t true.

(Thanks, Kent Butterworth)

UPDATE: That was quick! A Facebook group called “Don’t let Robert Zemeckis remake and ruin The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine”.

I nominate this exchange between director/illustrator Ward Jenkins and his daughter, Ava, as the best animation-related tweet of the day:

The trend toward remaking animated shows into live action, taken to its most illogical extreme:

(Thanks, Adam Blake)

This may be the cutest ad I’ve ever seen… albeit one that urges people to save water by urinating in the shower. Kill two birds with one stone, or something like that. Also a cool website.

Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, posted an entry earlier this week on his deviantART page, in which he wrote the following:

NO, CARTOON NETWORK isn’t changing its name. Not anytime soon anyways… they were gonna… But I think their reality show idea didn’t go as well as they had hoped, so… they’re kinda backing out of that idea. Yay for cartoons!

His perspective on what is happening at Cartoon Network is wildly different than that of Chowder creator C.H. Greenblatt. Care to make a guess which one of them still has a show at the network and which one of them has had their show cancelled?

Granted, it’s true that Cartoon Network has removed their Andrew W.K. video from YouTube (600 negative comments will do that), but I wouldn’t read too much into that token gesture. From where I’m standing, it appears to be little more than a carefully calculated effort to quell their viewership’s outrage and not representative of a meaningful shift in direction. If any doubt remains about the network’s true intentions, look no further than this recent Broadcasting & Cable article in which the architects of the live-action strategy speak about their goals. The piece details at length why they’re switching to live-action, and describes the network’s “360 degree” marketing campaign to usher in live-action, including the distribution of 8 million copies of a free CN Real magazine at theme parks and movie theaters.

One of the figureheads in their brand-wrecking transition is Stuart Snyder, executive VP and COO of Turner animation, young adults and kids media. The article states that Snyder made switching to live-action a priority when he came on board in 2007. “I think these new shows, whether reality or live scripted, really open up and broaden the audience, so you can be thinking about new advertising categories,” Snyder said. “It opens up more categories for us than just being in shows specifically [targeting] 6- to 11-year-olds.”

Cartoon Network’s Chief Content Officer Rob Sorcher acknowledged in the same article that inserting live-action into a brand called Cartoon Network will take time for audiences to accept: “Anytime you do something new at a network, particularly at one with a very specific niche, there will be a reaction. People will say, is this appropriate? We are doing something that is very different than anything in the nearly 20 years of history of the channel. It is possible that this is going to take a while.”

Animation fans meanwhile continue to mobilize. Over 2,500 people have now joined the Boycott Cartoon Network’s CN Real Block on Facebook. A new website has launched called “Stop the Madness” that encourages people to take specific actions to protest the network. A quick search for “Cartoon Network” on Twitter also reveals a steady stream of complaints. (Cartoon Brew suggests using the hashtag #CNFail to organize all the complaints on Twitter.) Finally, if you’d like to register your complaints directly with Stuart Snyder, try sending him a friend request on Facebook. I’m sure he’d love to hear from a few fans of the channel.

More to come…

How imbecilic is Cartoon Network’s new push towards live-action? Even the people who worked on this Andrew W.K. video promo think it’s stupid. Somebody who worked on it surreptitiously inserted the word “FAIL” into the piece at the 1:11 mark. It’s only there for a few frames, but the message comes through loud and clear.

(Thanks to YouTube user ColorTheBlue for pointing this out)