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While Iranian live-action cinema has achieved vast acclaim throughout the years, the country has yet to produce an animated feature that has made a similar impact on the international scene. That may change soon with multiple animated features currently in production and rapidly rising production standards.
Before I got hired at Disney Features, I sold a few magazine articles and developed a love of writing for print, where there was nothing between writer and reader but words on a page. When I became a Disney employee, I realized I was surrounded by animation veterans with vivid memories of the rambunctious days at the old Hyperion studio, and the creative struggles that went into making "Snow White," "Pinocchio," and the other early features. Talking to older Mouse House staffers, it dawned on me they could provide great source material for articles.
Sony Pictures Animation is exploring new directions with the announcement of the stop motion/live-action hybrid feature "Superbago." The superhero-themed film will be directed by John Harvatine and Eric Towner, both veterans of "Robot Chicken" among other animated TV shows.
Disney is developing a live-action feature based on the 1941 animated film Dumbo. Ehren Kruger, who has written or co-written three of the four Michael Bay "Transformers" films, will write the script
On a couple occasions throughout the years, people have asked me, Why do so many animated films have dead mothers in them?
Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park," along with other early-to-mid-Nineties films like "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "Toy Story," were all part of a breakthrough era in CGI filmmaking. What many people may not realize, however, is that the decision to create computer-animated dinosaurs wasn't made until the film was well into production.
Disney veteran Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on "Frozen" who gained notoriety for comments about animating women, has left Disney to join Paramount Animation as its creative director. He is also slated to direct an upcoming animated feature at the studio.
I was back in Don Duckwall's office, exchanging insincere smiles with him. I had been on "The Fox and the Hound" with Larry, Woolie, and everybody else for half a year. But now Don wanted me to go on another assignment.
In its second weekend, "How to Train your Dragon 2" eased 49% to an estimated $25.3 million. The drop was significantly greater than the 34% second-weekend decline of the original film in the series. Combined with the lower-than-expected opening weekend, the sequel is now all but guaranteed to finish below the original film's $217.6 million domestic gross.
DreamWorks Animation's "How to Train Your Dragon 2" opened in second place this weekend with an estimated $50 million. The film trailed the $60 million debut of another sequel, the R-rated "22 Jump Street," directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who also directed "The LEGO Movie," which opened to $69 million earlier this year.
"It's kind of like "The Lion King" meets "The Avengers," says Nancy Kanter, general manager of Disney Junior, when describing their upcoming preschool series "The Lion Guard."
At least one DreamWorks animated film has lost money for the past three years in a row: "Rise of the Guardians" in 2012 had an $87 million writedown; "Turbo" in 2013 resulted in a $13.5 million writedown; and this year's "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" caused a $57 million writedown. This is rather obviously not a sustainable trend from a business standpoint, and investors are beginning to worry about the studio's long-term prospects.
Larry had me writing sequence scripts for "The Fox and the Hound," which turned out to be my assignment for the next six months. Part of the package was attending Woolie Reitherman's marathon story sessions, which often left me drained and dazed. There were also Woolie's marathon take-selection meetings, which left me drained and bewildered.
Last weekend at the U.S. box office, two films with strong animation ties opened in very different fashions. Disney's "Maleficent," a dark fantasy reimagining of the 1959 animated feature from the perspective of the villain, launched with $69.4 million.
Animation and visual effects studio Sony Pictures Imageworks has confirmed what many in the industry had suspected for a long while: the studio is moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Vancouver, Canada to take advantage of generous tax credits provided by the Canadian government. This move, combined with Digital Domain's jump to Vancouver and Rhythm & Hues' bankruptcy, prompted "Variety'"s VFX chronicler David S. Cohen to say that the Los Angeles feature film visual effects industry is "in full collapse."
Disney's head animation writer in 1977 was cartoon veteran Larry Clemmons, who had first been hired at the studio in 1930. At the time of his hiring, he was a Yale graduate with a degree in architecture, but an Ivy League education was of little value in 1930 when the economy was collapsing...and few buildings were being erected.
A look at animation history via Cartoon Brew's archives.
The producer of this year's most intriguing and visually eclectic animated feature may well end up being the Mexican/Arabic actress Salma Hayek, who screened a work-in-progress version of her pet project, "The Prophet," last week in Cannes.
The first chapter of Steve Hulett's memoir about working as a writer at Disney in the late-Seventies and Eighties.
Although Greg Centineo, the producer of "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return," had hoped for a big second weekend, the film plummeted 48% this weekend and ended up with a sophomore frame of $1.9 million. The movie has struggled to find a fan following, except for the film's Facebook page which is filled with a curiously large number of middle-aged and elderly people who absolutely adore the film.