"Daffy's Rhapsody" talkback
"The Snow Queen" trailer
"Arrietty" Will Be Ghibli's Biggest US Release Yet
Ricky Garduno, RIP
Never judge a book by its cover – especially the one pictured at left. The artwork inside is more like the fantastic painting above. I haven’t seen the new 
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TAG FOR “dreamworks”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
January 2, 2012 12:05 am
Let’s ring in the new year with a look ahead at the animated features of 2012. The animated feature glass was half-full last year. Whereas in 2010, five of the top ten highest-grossing features in the US were animated, last year only one animated film ranked in the US top 10—Cars 2. Around the world, however, animation fared better in 2011, earning 3 of the top 10 spots at the global box office (and if you count The Smurfs, four of the top ten). Our 2011 list focuses primarily on films set for release in the United States, but we’ve also rounded it out with a few foreign films. Of course, we’ll be covering dozens of other foreign and indie feature productions throughout the year, but even with the films below, 2012 is already looking like a decent year. If you know of other must-see animated films this year, please let us know in the comments. LIST OF 2012 FEATURES BY SCHEDULED RELEASE DATE
The Secret World of Arriety Release Date: 2/17 Plenty more films after the jump 67 Comments » posted in Disney, Feature Film, Pixar, aardman, Brave, dreamworks, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, Ice age: Continental Drift, Le Magasin des Suicides, Madagascar 3, Okami kodomo no ame to yuki, Paranorman, Ribbit, Rise of the Guardians, Secret World of Arriety, The Lorax, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Wreck-it Ralph 
October 17, 2011 10:30 am
Never judge a movie spin-off by its preceding Shrek connections, nor how good its “Art-of” book looks – but once again the concept art connected to a new Dreamworks film looks amazing. My friend Ramin Zahed has penned an informative text to accompany the gorgeous inspirational pieces (Richard Daskas, Ronald A. Kurniawan, Guillaume Aretos, etc.), character designs (Patrick Maté), storyboards (Bob Logan, Paul Fisher, Bob Persichetti), color script (Nate Wragg), and all the paintings, paintings, paintings (by Nathan Fowkes, Dominique Louis, Kirsten Kawamura and so many others) collected in the new The Art of Puss In Boots. I just got a copy and highly recommend it – a worthy addition to the collection. Now, let’s hope the film lives up to all this great visual material. 23 Comments » posted in Books, dreamworks, Puss in Boots
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
June 21, 2011 11:25 am
This is looking better and better to me.
(Thanks to Ed Austin and Ed Himmel) 72 Comments » posted in Feature Film, dreamworks, Puss in Boots
June 5, 2011 9:53 pm
The story of Kung Fu Panda 2’s second weekend is much like its first: a success overseas and an underperformer in the US. Around the world, the film took in an estimated $40 million in its second frame, including $1.3 million in the United Arab Emirates, the highest-grossing animated opening in that country. Its overseas gross now totals $125M. In the United States, it is the weakest performing DreamWorks movie in recent years. The film had a 49.9% drop in its second weekend, which is steep by DreamWorks standards. According to Box Office Mojo, audiences still avoided the 3-D version of Kung Fu Panda 2 in the second week, with only 44% of viewers choosing the enhanced imagery. Its $23.9 million weekend earnings pushed its domestic total to $100.4 million. For perspective, here are the second weekend drops and grosses for DreamWorks features in the previous three years: (2010) Shrek Forever After: -38.9% ($43.3M) 34 Comments » posted in 3-D, CGI, Feature Film, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, Kung Fu Panda 2
May 31, 2011 12:52 pm
Shares of DreamWorks Animation dropped today to their lowest point in two years, and equally significant, shares of 3D hardware firm Real D plummeted over 12% (as of this writing). The stock market was reacting to the weak domestic debut of Kung Fu Panda 2. The film’s three-day weekend gross of $47.8 million compared unfavorably to the original Kung Fu Panda’s $60.2 million opening in 2008. The decline in attendance was even more pronounced: 6.1 million viewers for the sequel versus 8.4 million viewers for the original, or a loss of over one-third of the audience. Only 45% of the audience opted to pay the higher 3-D ticket premium. According to Box Office Mojo: “A 3D share in the 60 percent range would have been healthy. That’s what Shrek Forever After had last May with fewer 3D venues.” The news is especially troubling for DreamWorks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg who has touted 3-D as the most revolutionary advance in filmmaking since sound and color and whose studio now makes films exclusively in 3-D. This time around, the majority of viewers chose to forgo the revolution to save a few dollars. Kung Fu Panda 2 ended up with $68 million over the five-day holiday period, which looks especially weak compared to the four-day $61 million Memorial Day gross of Madagascar back in 2005. The bright spot: Kung Fu Panda 2 posted strong openings around the world, banking $57 million in its opening weekend from eleven countries, including powerful starts in China and Russia, and opening weekend records for an animated feature in South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and India. |
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