"The Snow Queen" trailer
"Arrietty" Will Be Ghibli's Biggest US Release Yet
How Much is a Ward Kimball Painting Worth?
Ricky Garduno, RIP
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TAG FOR “Feature Film”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
August 9, 2011 3:46 am
Check out this impressive preview of one of the “cast members” from the upcoming $20 million-plus How to Train Your Dragon arena show that opens next March in Melbourne and Sydney. After striking out with the Shrek musical (which is performing better in London than New York), DreamWorks appears to be on the right track with its second stage effort. They’ve outsourced the show’s creative direction to the Sydney, Australia firm Creature Technology Company, the animatronics arm of Global Creatures, which previously created a successful arena show based on the BBC series “Walking with Dinosaurs.” From the Brisbane Times:
25 Comments » posted in Feature Film, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, How to Train Your Dragon, Theater 
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
August 2, 2011 5:12 pm
The drama beween DreamWorks Animation and its distributor Paramount continues with plenty of unsubstantiated rumors, but no hard details of the negotiations. Paramount, of course, recently launched its own in-house animation studio, which strikes me as a bargaining chip more than anything else. We’ve also heard rumors that Paramount has just appointed a new studio president, and if it’s who people are claiming, it’s someone with one of the most disastrous track records of any recent executive to work in the animation industry. The situation reminds me a lot of what Disney did when they started contract renewal talks with Pixar some years ago. Disney launched a new studio, Circle 7, and tried to make their own Toy Story sequel before coming to the conclusion that Pixar’s creative culture couldn’t be replicated with deep pockets alone. I’m not suggesting that Paramount will buy DreamWorks, but I am saying that Paramount is sorely mistaken if they think they can just launch an animation studio and start churning out consistent box office winners like DreamWorks. This morning, an anonymous commenter on the Animation Guild blog posted a list of thirty properties currently optioned or in development at DreamWorks. The list is printed below. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but I’ve heard of at least half of the projects on the list. Allowing for some fluctuations in the nebulous nature of options and development, it appears to be fairly accurate. This list to me is indicative of the infrastructure that DreamWorks has built and the underlying strength of the company. In spite of personal reservations about the creative content of the studio’s films, it would be foolish to not acknowledge that the studio has one of the strongest creative foundations of any animation company currently in operation. It would take Paramount years, if not decades, to develop as robust a development slate as DreamWorks. In nearly a decade of operations, Sony Pictures Animation has managed to release a handful of middling features and doesn’t appear to have a development slate anywhere near the size of DreamWorks’s. I don’t think anybody on the outside knows for certain how the deal between DreamWorks and Paramount will conclude, but looking at what DreamWorks Animation has achieved, I’d like to believe that the cards are stacked in its favor over the long term. What follows is the list of DreamWorks films in development: 32 Comments » posted in Feature Film, Ideas/Commentary, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures
July 27, 2011 10:30 am
More Penguins, more dancing, more rap music… Here’s the full theatrical trailer for Warner Bros. Happy Feet 2 which opens on November 18th. 54 Comments » posted in CGI, Feature Film, Happy Feet 2
July 25, 2011 10:30 am
Something good has come from this new Smurfs movie: Katy Perry and her Smurfette dress. More hot photos from The Smurfs World Premiere at The Huffington Post. 53 Comments » posted in Feature Film, The Smurfs
July 25, 2011 12:46 am
If the Mexican Top Cat feature isn’t your cup of tea, here’s the slick trailer for Ana, a 3-D CG feature directed by Carlos Carrera currently being produced in Mexico. The production company Lo Coloco Films has a placeholder website for now. A Hollywood Reporter piece from three years ago suggested the film’s budget was only $3.2 million which I find kind of hard to believe. But even if it that number doubles or triples, it’s still a bargain compared to American and European animated features. There’s not much to go by in this trailer, but Carrera has a strong track record as a director. He was nominated for an Oscar for his 2002 live-action film El crimen del Padre Amaro, and earlier he made animated shorts, like El héroe (below) which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. UPDATE: A five-minute clip from Ana was posted today on the film’s Facebook page. The release date on Facebook is listed as May, 2013. (Thanks, Elisa H. García) 16 Comments » posted in 3-D, CGI, Feature Film, Carlos Carrera, Lo Coloco Films, Mexico
July 21, 2011 8:35 am
One more time. I promise its the last. Here’s the final version of the upcoming Mexican 3D “Top Cat” feature, coming to theaters in South America this fall: 83 Comments » posted in Feature Film, Don Gato, Top Cat
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? |
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