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TAG FOR “Business”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
August 5, 2011 4:06 am
The standoff between DreamWorks Animation and Paramount is explored in this piece in the Hollywood Reporter. It’s a good primer on the situation, and interestingly, positions it mostly as a battle of egos between Jeffrey Katzenberg and Paramount head Brad Grey. Unidentified insiders in the piece also support my contention from earlier this week that Paramount is kidding itself if it thinks it can start producing animated blockbusters like DreamWorks by 2014. COMMENTARY: Thoughts on DreamWorks Negotiations with Paramount 11 Comments » posted in Business, Feature Film, Brad Grey, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Paramount Pictures 
July 30, 2011 3:15 am
Cartoon Brew readers might have seen this coming a mile away, but not Wall Street. The business world is finally realizing that 3-D may not be the revolution that Hollywood’s snake oil salesmen promised it would be. Yesterday, shares in 3-D technology licensor provider RealD sank nearly 16% to $15.48. It’s significant because this is the first time the stock is trading below its 2010 IPO price of $16 a share. The stock was trading at over $35 just two months ago. The stock plunged following the company’s first quarter report which topped analysts’ expectations but fell short of estimates on Wall Street. Analysts have already begun asking whether it’s game over for 3-D. Another big loser in the film technology arena this week was IMAX. Its shares slipped 6% yesterday to under $19. IMAX’s stock is down a whopping 41% in the month of July, though some analysts are still bullish on the company’s future. The problem with RealD’s approach (as well as IMAX’s to some extent) is that it up-sells movies without adding significant value to the experience. I’ve seen 3-D films only a handful of times and I’d be hard-pressed to recall which films they were, much less point out a moment where the 3-D made the film richer or more fulfilling. 79 Comments » posted in 3-D, Business, Tech, IMAX, Real D
July 18, 2011 8:38 am
Winnie the Pooh, Disney’s first hand-drawn animated feature since 2009’s The Princess and the Frog, opened in 6th place with $7.85 million dollars. Cars 2, another Disney release, pocketed $8.4M in its fourth weekend, good enough for a 5th place finish and an overall gross of $165.4M. Below are the openings for the other recent films in the Pooh franchise: The Tigger Movie (2000): $9.4M The film’s reason for existence has nothing to do with box office, however. Like Cars 2, it appears to be a corporate obligation first and foremost. Winnie the Pooh is the second-largest character franchise in the world, earning $5.7 billion in revenue last year. To put that into perspective, Pooh earned more in 2010 than the combined Toy Story and Cars franchises, which are the fifth and sixth highest-earning character franchises. The world’s most valuable franchise is Disney’s Mickey Mouse, which took in $9 billion last year. If the company’s approach to its other top-earning franchises like Pooh, Cars and Toy Story is any indication, could a Mickey Mouse feature be that far off? 73 Comments » posted in Business, Feature Film, Cars 2, Winnie the Pooh
July 13, 2011 1:02 pm
Last weekend, Cars 2 grossed $15.2 million boosting its total to $148.8 million. The film is currently on a pace to be one of Pixar’s lowest grossing films, and it will almost certainly be the studio’s least-attended film ever in the United States. Cars 2 is performing better overseas than its predecessor with $121.6 million to date, breaking Disney’s opening record in Argentina with $3.3 million and accruing $21.1 million to date in Mexico. The film appears to be following a similar trajectory to a recent sequel from another studio, Kung Fu Panda 2, which also failed to meet US expectations but performed respectably overseas. Kung Fu Panda 2 has brought in just $159.3 million in the US after eight weekends, which puts it in the range of Shark Tale’s 2004 gross. The $400 million from overseas softens the blow, but the message is clear: 3-D or not, audiences in the US are tired of animated sequels that don’t have anything new to offer. That may not be good news for Happy Feet 2 which opens in a few months. 61 Comments » posted in Business, Feature Film, Pixar, Cars 2, Kung Fu Panda 2
June 22, 2011 9:47 am
An article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal deemed Cars 2 a Hit Already—in Stores. The article made it clear that the franchise earns an obscene amount of money for Pixar’s parent company, Disney, and that basically means they’re going to continue making sequels and spin-offs until the cows come home (or until kids stop buying crap related to the film, whichever comes first). Below are some of the key facts and financial figures from the WSJ piece: 52 Comments » posted in Business, Disney, Pixar, Cars 2
June 21, 2011 11:00 pm
Seeing Max Howard’s name as one of the judges of Animation Magazine’s Pitch Party reminded me of a link I’d been meaning to share. First, a little background: back in the Eighties and Nineties, for reasons nobody fully understands, almost anybody who worked in musical theater could become an animation executive at Disney. Someday, someone will write about it and explain this weird aberration of animation history. Until then, we can piece it together through bits and pieces, like this three-page Orlando Sentinel article from July, 1990, about Max Howard’s beginnings in the animation industry. The article reveals that Howard had an impressive background in British theater, but was thoroughly unqualified to be running an animation studio, which is what Disney animation v-p Peter Schneider hired him to do during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Howard says in the article (a bit indiscreetly) that, “They thought I was the person to run their London animation studio; incidentally, I didn’t. I told Disney I had spent my years in the theater and didn’t know a thing about animation.” As a historian, I find it fascinating to revisit articles like this decades later. The piece is especially interesting now that Howard has aggressively begun to promote himself as an animation consultant and all-knowing guru who flies around the world to share his wisdom. In his lectures, I’m sure he doesn’t use many examples from his stint as president of Warner Bros. Animation where he oversaw the legendarily inept production of Quest for Camelot. He also doesn’t mention the film in his official bio, though he does make sure to take responsibility for The Iron Giant. Thankfully, that means he’s learned a few things throughout the years about what constitutes quality animated filmmaking. 41 Comments » posted in Business, Max Howard, Quest for Camelot
May 28, 2011 1:50 pm
Visual effects house Digital Domain is building a $40 million, 120,000-square foot studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida. The plan: expand beyond service work for live-action features and create “extremely clean, family films that are memorable, strong, powerful stories.” Since feature animation is quite nearly the most lucrative thing going in Hollywood right now, everybody wants a piece of the action. Digital Domain is moving in the direction of vfx shops like Sony Imageworks and more recently ILM, which released its first original production, Rango, earlier this year. DD has already greenlit an idea for its first feature (what is it?) and hopes to have it in theaters by 2014. The only hitch is that Digital Domain has been talking about creating original content since the mid-1990s. The company tried to launch an IPO a few years back which failed to ignite interest from investors. Now, they’re getting ready to try the IPO again. This time they hope the results will be different. For starters, the state of Florida and the city of Port St. Lucie has awarded them $70 million worth of incentive grants to set up shop down there. Second, they’ve hired Disney animator and Brother Bear co-director Aaron Blaise to helm their first feature, presumably so that he will recreate some of that Brother Bear magic. They’ve also hired the executive producer of Brother Bear, Chuck Williams, who told the TCPalm that, “As Pixar is struggling with sequels and Disney’s struggling to find itself, I think it’s a good time for us to come in with a different point of view with great family films.” Frankly, other studios would kill to struggle as much as Disney/Pixar, which created the top grossing film at the worldwide box office last year, plus another animated feature in the top ten. Plenty more details about DD’s plans in this TCPalm article, including this bit:
According to the article, only 15 of those employees work in its feature animation division. The photo up top is of (l. to r.) Chuck Williams, Aaron Blaise, and Craig Grasso. There’s also a solo photo of Aaron Blaise accompanying the TCPalm piece which has a special surprise that I’ve highlighted below:
I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything, but as a rule of thumb, if you’re launching a new animation studio, it’s a smart idea to make sure that logos of other studios’ animated films aren’t visible in publicity shots. 69 Comments » posted in Business, CGI, Aaron Blaise, Chuck Williams, Digital Domain
March 4, 2011 6:28 pm
A Brew reader who preferred to remain anonymous e-mailed his thoughts about this week’s lawsuit filed against The Weinstein Company and Rainmaker Entertainment. This reader, who worked at Rainmaker Entertainment on the aborted feature, feels that the director Tony Leech, who is currently suing The Weinstein Company and Rainmaker, is partly responsible for the mess. I don’t think anybody truly knows who deserves the lion’s share of the blame, but as I hinted at earlier, it does appear that every party involved exhibited incompetence to some degree:
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