Emeryville, Springfield, the box office... Some stuff happened...

Tucked away in an interview was a significant update on Pixar...


Do you remember when their president Jim Morris said last year that four originals are slated to be released in a row after the summer 2019 release of Toy Story 4? Well, up until now, we knew of three. One of which is the wonderfully outlandish Suburban Fantasy World (not the title, for those of you who are new here, it's just half of the working title), an inventive feature that Monsters University director Dan Scanlon has been developing for a long while. We also know that Mark Andrews, who has been with Pixar for a while and finished Brave after its original director departed, has something in the works. A five-year-old report said his project was going to be a science fiction film, I don't know if that's still the case. The third picture in question is from Pete Docter, the powerhouse director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out. Said to be just as wacky and weird as his mind movie, he will re-team with producer Jonas Rivera for this project.

These three currently cover three slots on Pixar's slate. Nowadays, Pixar claims dates for upcoming pictures, but doesn't assign any specific movie to each slot until said movie happens to be ready. So right now, the 3/13/2020 slot has not been filled by the just announced Suburban Fantasy World project. In about a year or so, should everything go as planned, it'll be officially named the studio's 3/13/2020 release. The other two dates they snatched were 6/19/2020 and 6/18/2021. Theoretically, the former could go to Mark Andrews' film, and the latter could go to Pete Docter's film. Again, it all depends on how things are going on each of these films.

So, the fourth original... Who is directing that?

It turns out, the director of Cars 3 is doing that one... Brian Fee.

Fee confirmed to Empire in a podcast that his next film for the Emeryville studio is indeed going to be an original. Fee also happened to make his directorial debut with the anthropomorphic autos threequel. His story is quite something, out of nowhere John Lasseter just straight up told him he was going to the director's chair because of his strong storyboarding work on the first two Cars films. Fee did a good job, for his Cars entry didn't get the scorn the previous film got (also the work of a first-time director who ultimately ended up having to be removed) and some even regard it as the best one in the series. I liked it a great deal, myself.

I feel that Fee showed his strengths with Cars 3, though he was following guidelines and was basically making sure that the picture aligned with the tone and style of the first Cars movie. Now that he's doing his own thing, we'll see what he's really made of. The same could be said about Scanlon, who actually had directed a live-action film (called Tracy) before tackling Monsters University. He took over that project from another director, too, but that was during early development.

So that's four for four: Scanlon, Andrews, Docter, Fee. In some form of development, if we are to believe an older report, is a new project from Pixar veteran Bob Peterson. So in a way, that's five originals. And they said the studio sold their souls to satanic call of the sequel...

Speaking of sequels...


A few days ago was the tenth anniversary of The Simpsons Movie, which happened to debut 20 years after the first Simpsons short films were shown on The Tracy Ullman Show. Of course, that film took an awfully long time to become a thing, and numerous changes were made to it after animation production began. According to reports, hours of finished animation was left on the cutting room floor, some of this footage even showed up in trailers! The Blu-ray only has a handful of snipped scenes, though. I remember hoping back in the day that we'd get a full disc with all the deleted scenes, but alas no cigar.

The Simpsons Movie came on like an event back in the summer of 2007, the hype was seemingly through-the-roof. At last, a movie based on one of the world's most iconic shows! Its early marketing even took potshots at CGI, happily touting itself as an "ugly" 2D movie. At the same time, however, there was the mindset that The Simpsons took a real dive around the late 1990s. Perhaps if The Simpsons Movie had been readied sometime around 1997, it would've had a shot at becoming the biggest animated film of all time? Reviews were mostly positive, and some felt the writing channeled the show's heyday. I remember a whole other crowd dismissing it as schlock, not dissimilar to where the show was at that point and now.


Me? I found it to be pretty good, maybe not a "great"Simpsons movie per se, but a very solid animated feature on its own. Plus, a much-needed adult-oriented, 2D (!) film in a family-friendly CGI landscape. 2007 was like an awkward bridge year for animation, for 2006 pelted us (and I mean *pelted*) with so many tossaway movies while 2008 packed some real surprise punches. In 2006, nearly everyone who had wanted in on the game that Pixar and DreamWorks dominated found themselves floundering. 2007 saw some more of that shovelware come around, but mixed in with some genuinely good-to-great films: This, Sony Animation's Surf's Up (proof that they *are* capable of making good films), Pixar's Ratatouille, Disney's Enchanted, and Disney Animation's Meet The Robinsons.

The Simpsons Movie opened with a strong $74 million domestically, but had rather weak legs and didn't cross $200 million domestically. Worldwide was a different story, it cracked $527 million. For many years, we heard rumblings of a sequel. It has been in the show-runners' interests, for sure. Heck, even the movie itself hinted at one in a not-so-subtle way.

Director and Simpsons veteran David Silverman said in an interview...

"I’d love for there to be another one. We’re still a ways away from it. We talk about this and that. We’re thinking it over, but nothing’s happening just yet.…. It’s still daunting because it really knocked the stuffing out of us to do the movie and the show at the same time."

Al Jean, Simpsons longtimer, stated that the film is in "the very earliest stages." Over time, various ideas for a movie ended up becoming episodes.

I'm sure another film will happen somewhere down the line... Maybe another 20 years later, in 2037! They waited long enough to do the first one, so who knows. I think more than anything, a second Simpsons would come out near the series' end, or it would close the whole series. The latter option would be ideal, but of course, if they want to get it right, I say let them wait.

Now, onto the box office!


'Tis the weekend... The Emoji Movie has been out for three days. How has it done? Has it proven that audiences all around the country will shell out their money for shovelware? Or did audiences do the "right" thing by avoiding it?

Estimates have it at $25 million, as it narrowly lost the top spot to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, which miraculously pulled ahead despite Emoji winning on Friday. In terms of opening weekend grosses, the $25 million take is halfway up the Sony Animation ladder. Certainly better than what Smurfs: The Lost Village pulled in back in April, but it certainly was no Hotel Transylvania. No worldwide grosses are in just yet, but since the thing cost about $50 million, The Emoji Movie might make it through. That being said, Sony Animation's heads deemed the $195 million-grossing Lost Village to be a failure, despite the fact that it made triple its small budget.

Sony Animation's chief, Kristine Belson, made it clear a few weeks back at Annecy that the studio is searching for a smash hit. Something on the order of, say, Despicable Me. Sony Animation's highest grossing film is actually the first hybrid Smurfs movie, which took in around $563 million worldwide nearly 6 years ago. I think that says quite a bit, because the other studios have scored biggies that each grossed more than $750 million worldwide. Blue Sky has the Ice Age sequels, DreamWorks has had a couple franchise films that scored those kinds of numbers, Illumination racks up hits and makes it look easy. Disney and Pixar, no need to even say. Sony's behind in that race...

It looks like The Emoji Movie won't be that goal-meeting movie for Sony Animation. Maybe, just maybe, if they don't alienate their talented artists, they'll get a huge blockbuster-sized movie in the near-future that also collects very positive reviews. I know Sony Pictures Animation is capable of that, because this is the same studio that made Surf's Up and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Yes, yes I know, the same management did not make those movies, but still... There was a time when Walt Disney Feature Animation, operating under a long-gone management team, made films like Home on the Range and Chicken Little, now they're making movies like Zootopia and Moana. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, my friends...

Outside of the emojis, the Minions remain in the Top 10. Despicable Me 3 continues to ease, weekend-to-weekend. Falling 40% this weekend, it sits at $230 million here and $819 million everywhere. At this point in their runs, Despicable Me 2 and Minions were at $326 million and $302 million respectively. It looks like this installment will make somewhere around $260-270 million when all is said and done, tickets-wise that's going to be the lowest for the series. Unlike the two mainline Despicable Me films, this looks to score below the 4x multiplier as well. Shows how more front loaded the series is getting, and it also shows that Despicable Me isn't quite a long-lasting flavor. Again, it all makes me curious... How will Minions 2 perform in less than 3 years from now?

The trajectory is similar to that of Shrek's. See more on that, here.

Nevertheless, Illumination isn't fretting. $819 million against an $80 million budget is what you'd call a ridiculous success.

Beyond the Top 10, we have Pixar's Cars 3, which hasn't been experiencing intense drops since its first few weekends. Cars 3 looks to finish somewhere in the low-to-mid 150s at this point, which isn't horrible, but it is a (excepting the Disneytoon-made Planes movies) franchise low for sure, and a Pixar low as well.


Like Despicable Me 3, the opening weekend numbers seemed to indicate that this one was front loaded as well. Most sequels and franchise entries aren't doing boffo business this summer, even acclaimed ones like Spider-Man: Homecoming and War for the Planet of the Apes. I feel it's because of ticket prices and how things are going in general. Since I work at a movie theater, I tend to see it happening... Complaints about prices, families not settling for 3D showings of these things, and other issues. IMAX recently announced that regular IMAX screenings will ultimately supplant IMAX 3D screenings. In fact, when I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming, that's the first time my nearest IMAX Digital theater (aka Lie-MAX) showed a 3D movie in IMAX 2D. Up until that point, their IMAX screenings of movies that happened to have 3D versions were always shown in 3D. I never liked IMAX 3D glasses to begin with, so that news makes me happy.

The pundits and the press wonder why sequels are having trouble this summer. I feel it's a combination of things: Yes, some franchises - as 2016 proved - are rather one-and-done things. People flock to the first, but don't bother with the second one. We saw this with the sequels to Alice in Wonderland, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Now You See Me. Second, like I said, it's the ticket prices and how things are going. I hear the average American family only hits the flicks four times a year, so choices are narrowed, especially during summers loaded with many choices. Third, some particular franchises happened overstay their welcome.

I think it's more complicated than just "audiences all of a sudden got tired of sequels and franchise entries."Wonder Woman, coming off of three DC films that got mixed reception, is pulling a rare 3.9-4.0x multiplier for a live-action superhero blockbuster... And that's also extremely rare for a movie that opened with over $100 million! Transformers and Pirates came up short domestically for painfully obvious reasons, War for the Planet of Apes is simply staying flat, because the previous movie in the current trilogy had so-so legs. Spider-Man: Homecoming is simmering after a few big drops, because it was front loaded as well. Most audiences who aren't in on Marvel's MCU timeline saw it as just another Spider-Man movie and backed off. (I've had to explain to a lot of people why Spider-Man got rebooted for the second time, and so quickly.)

Anyways, Cars 3 still isn't out everywhere around the world, so it currently sits at $268 million worldwide. The film needs to make roughly $440 million worldwide to break even, but I'm sure The Walt Disney Company and Pixar aren't worrying. Toy sales will still be strong, as always, and they can just stop the mainline series and let other outlets continue it in some way or another so that Pixar doesn't have to. I mean, that's what we want, right? Maybe Disneytoon's spacecraft spin-off will be the series' future, who knows. I think that's the logical way to go, honestly. Pixar doesn't have to have the "responsibility" of making more Cars movies to satisfy Disney's bean counters.

Still lingering is DreamWorks' micro-budgeted Captain Underpants, which is up to $72 million here and $82 million everywhere. Like I've said before, once the picture opens in the last couple of territories in the late summer/early fall, it'll get up to $100 million worldwide. A little over 2 1/2x the $38 million budget. If not, crow's on the menu in late October. It'll be my Halloween dinner.

The next box office report will come when we get an idea of how The Emoji Movie will hold up on subsequent weekends. Animated films typically score strong "A" CinemaScore grades, this one pulled in a "B," indicating that legs won't be great for the new Sony Animation film. Analysts say this one may top out at $60-70 million domestically, worldwide may or may not come to the rescue...

One thing is for certain, animated movies aren't enjoying the usual 3.5x multipliers these days, many of them just miss it by a hair or fall even further. I still chalk that up to what I mentioned above.

What say you on the box office business, the Simpsons sequel, and the Brian Fee Pixar original?

Haunts, Lego bricks, and Vincent van Gogh...

So, the big news comes first... DreamWorks Animation will be collaborating with the horror movie hit-makers at Blumhouse Productions!


Of course, Jason Blum's production house needs little-to-no introduction, having scored profitable successes out of microbudget horror films like the Paranormal Activity films, the Purge series, Split, Get Out, and several others. The studio has also made plenty of non-horror films, too, such as the acclaimed Whiplash and the upcoming Birth of the Dragon.

They are set to go animated with DreamWorks, with a story that began life as a live-action project. Titled Spooky Jack, its an original idea by Night at the Museum screenwriter and Reno 911! co-creator Robert Ben Garant. The set-up? The monsters that kids are afraid of actually exist... Okay, we've heard that before many times. What's the spin? The monsters are afraid of humans as well...

Okay... Sounds pretty familiar.


Oh, and yes, I am aware of the properties that Monsters, Inc. was accused of "ripping off"...

All kidding aside, that's just the premise. Not that anyone owns it, others can experiment with it too and tell new stories with it... You know, how storytelling has worked since roughly the beginning of time? The story will center on three siblings who move into a new house and discover the monsters. DreamWorks chief Chris DeFaria says it'll be "touching" and "funny," a story that'll explore all kinds of spooky folklore from around the globe. That to me is pretty interesting, as it'll be neat to see a story like this tackle things that frighten other children around the globe.

Speaking of the Monsters, Inc. parallel, in an early early early version of that Pixar classic, an opening scene was set to show kids from around the world being scared by the various scarers who work at Monsters, Inc. These particular images always stuck out to me...


Anyways, I like that. I also wonder how DreamWorks and Blumhouse will go about all of this, what the monsters and ghouls and phantoms will look like, and all that good stuff. I'm particularly surprised to see DreamWorks not only team up with Blumhouse, but also invest in a family-friendly scary movie.

Spookier stories like these tend to be no-nos in this day and age. LAIKA specializes in that kind of film, their first two productions - Coraline and ParaNorman - fit the bill perfectly. Their Kubo and the Two Strings is, while not necessarily a horror film, loaded to the brim with intense and scary moments, making it a rare modern animated movie that actually deserves its PG rating. DreamWorks is no stranger to this, believe it or not. Look past the snarky talking babies, glittery trolls, and sarcastic ogres, you'll get things like Kung Fu Panda 2, both How To Train Your Dragon films, and the sadly unsuccessful Rise of the Guardians.

Kung Fu Panda 2 and Rise of the Guardians were in the works when a certain someone was part of the DreamWorks Animation team... Guillermo del Toro.

When he was on board, DreamWorks had plans to do all these big fantasy movies, and even intended to go for some pretty dark and maybe even adult-oriented source material. One of which was Rodrigo Blaas' creepy animated short film Alma, and the A. Lee Martinez book Gil's All Fright Diner. Similarly spooky things like Rumblewick and The Grimm Legacy were on the table... That was, until Rise of the Guardians went belly-up at the box office during the holiday season of 2012. For a little while, it seemed like the game plan was harmless comedy-adventures. Some of them have been rewarding at the box office, others? Not so much.

It only proves that a studio should not be so one-way. Rise of the Guardians failed because its marketing was terrible, a campaign that tried way too hard to attract preteens and teens. (Basically committing the same damn sin Titan A.E., Treasure Planet, and most of DreamWorks' 2D films made.) Then many months later, Turbo failed at the box office. Silly, fun comedy about a racing snail, made even less than Rise of the Guardians. So much for the "stick to family comedies" routine, eh?

I wasn't sure what direction Chris DeFaria was going to take DreamWorks in, given his past animation and VFX experience. Was he going to turn them into Illumination's identical twin sister? Was he going to strip them of all their creativity? After all, only two films were given concrete release dates under his watch: Trolls 2 and The Boss Baby 2. Under DeFaria, a wicked cool-sounding musical called Larrikins was killed (see some models from it and more on modeller Hyun Huh's vimeo channel), Shadows fell yet again into development hell, and several other projects withered as well. An adaptation of How To Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell's upcoming book series The Wizards of Once was announced as a future DreamWorks project, but anything can happen. Larrikins got cancelled at the very last minute, so I can't quite say something is happening unless they're halfway into animation production.

So Wizards of Once has been giving me a slight sliver of hope for DreamWorks' future, this new project gives me a little more hope. Reports say that DeFaria had been actively trying to jumpstart a family-friendly scary movie at DreamWorks for a while, because he worked on Tim Burton's Corpse Bride many years back. If both of these go through, we might be in for an interesting new era for the studio. I don't mind a few bland-as-vanilla-pudding comedies so long as we get plenty of striking, fresh films on the side... Let's just hope the ratio of fresh stuff to tired stuff is a big one. What I'm saying is, if stuff like Boss Baby funds these movies, I'm all in.

Given that Blumhouse makes tiny-budget movies, don't be surprised if this one gets outsourced. After Captain Underpants, I can see DreamWorks teaming up with Mikros again for future features. A sub-$40 million budget is perfect for a horror story anyways, it doesn't need to be some extravagant $125 million production. Like Captain Underpants, it should take full advantage of the low-budget and aim for a look that's unique and unlike most CG films in the big ol' American marketplace.

I like my DreamWorks peppered with variety. I think that's what makes them kind of unique, in that they don't have a recognizable house style, nor do they have a singular vision... Well, most of the time. They've gone through many phases where they've made certain kinds of movies, and it makes for quite a library. I mean, Shark Tale and something like Bee Movie share a body of work with the action-packed epic Kung Fu Panda 2, the big and serious The Prince of Egypt, the spooky fantasy of Rise of the Guardians, and something as batty-bonkers as Madagascar 3. Quite the line-up! A horror film is more than welcome.

Outside of DreamWorks, Warner Animation Group got itself a big gain as well...


Jorge Gutierrez, the director of The Book of Life, is now set to direct a picture for them. A Lego movie no less!

Which one? He's taking over The Billion Brick Race, which was being worked on by Iron Man Three writer Drew Pearce and Jason Segel. A sort of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World-type story, it appears that it'll be cooked into something different under Gutierrez's direction, if one report is to be believed. THR says it's going to be an all-new film, but Variety insists that Gutierrez is doing Billion Brick Race.

Announced back in 2015, we heard very little on The Billion Brick Race. I assumed it was one of the projects that might've been ready for WAG's newly-claimed 6/1/2018 slot, but the hush-hush on it meant something...

Whatever Gutierrez turns it into, I'm intrigued. I can imagine him making a Mexican-themed Lego film, not dissimilar to his The Book of Life and his upcoming original Reel FX film Kung Fu Space Punch. It's great that Gutierrez has made it up to these ranks, because animated stories from the perspective of other cultures are needed more than ever now.

One thing's for certain... His Lego movie will not be the 6/1/2018 film, because it's way too late in the game. Plus, Gutierrez is also hard at work on his original Reel FX film, Kung Fu Space Punch. Another wacky and very imaginative fantasy that doesn't seem dissimilar to the sheer creativity of The Lego Movie. Whenever that one gets a US distributor and a concrete release date, I don't know. I have a feeling it'll be ready, at least, by the end of next year. As for his Lego movie, I expect it to hit sometime in 2020 or afterward. It's possible that he'll do The Book of Life 2 first.

Anyways, the Lego movie series has been two-for-two. The Lego Movie is excellent, The Lego Batman Movie was surprisingly nearly as good. The Lego Ninjago Movie looks like a hilariously fun time at the theaters, its newest trailer caught me completely off guard. The Lego Movie Sequel sounds more and more awesome with each new announcement, so, yes... Keep 'em coming. They're low-budget, they're very creative, their success enables original stuff. Win-win situation.

Pretty soon, we'll have to find out what WAG is releasing next June, because Lego Ninjago is coming next month... WAG has a curious way of staying silent about original pictures, revealing that they're in development, then many moons later... They say it's actually a thing. This happened with both Storksand Smallfoot. (Opening 9/14/2018)

I keep thinking it's going to be the adaptation of Jeff Smith's Bone, which has a director and writing team.

Lastly... Proof that there is still innovation in animated features...

The world's first entirely oil-painted animated feature is seeing a limited release starting on September 22nd... Loving Vincent.


I was in awe throughout this trailer. Loving Vincent shows what you can do with such a limitless medium, and on top of being a technical breakthrough, it looks to be a sophisticated adult animated feature. I know, novel concept, right?


Just feast your eyes at those visuals... It manages to be so immersive and so eye-catching, yet so stylish and detailed. This is what needs to be done with both traditional animation and CGI in features. This is what adult animation needs to be, not just foul-mouthed, raunchy cartoon characters. This is everything we're not getting from the heavies: Truly adult stories, and styles we haven't seen in an animated feature before. Europe has us beat, and it continues to be frustrating that something like this won't be a wide theatrical release, while something that's clearly just a product-pusher that's barely memorable gets a 4,000-screen release but then heads straight to the $5 bin weeks after it hits disc.

In some sectors of the animation fandom, this kind of thing goes unnoticed. It shouldn't, for the umpteenth spiel about why the dreadfully mediocre The Emoji Movie is awful shouldn't be the conversation, it should be about how amazing this film looks. Even if it may not come to your area or mine, it's worth talking about. I can only hope it gets some kind of a release, not the typical 100 theaters-or-less routine.

The film's website states that September 22nd is the day it opens in New York, Los Angeles gets it the 29th. Afterwards, it'll open in "regional markets" in the states from October through November. Their newsletter will keep you posted...

This is animation that deserves to be projected on a big screen.

Two big studios and their big plans...

Paramount Animation is still slowly bubbling to the surface...

The mountain distributor had actually been kind of behind on the whole animation game, though for a long while they were distributing DreamWorks' films. The first of which in the line-up was the spring 2006 release, Over the Hedge. Though Paramount's logo and name were mostly downplayed in the marketing and not shown at the beginnings of those movies. 20th Century Fox? Different story, and I'm sure we'll see the Universal globe before How To Train Your Dragon 3 in March 2019.

Anyways, Paramount was under the radar for quite a while. At the start of animation's 2nd Golden Age in the late 80s/early 90s, the distributor tried on somewhat riskier fare like Hyperion's Bebe's Kids and Ralph Bakshi's Cool World, but both of them ended up being critical and commercial losses. They then mostly turned their attention to TV show-based movies, scoring successes with both kid-friendly and adult-oriented stuff. On the former side was a handful of Nickelodeon show-based movies (The Rugrats Movie was the first non-Disney/Pixar animated film to gross $100 million at the domestic box office), and movies that started shows. On the latter side was Beavis and Butt-head Do America and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

Before distributing DreamWorks films, Paramount had trouble with animated features that weren't Nick properties. They continued to stay quiet on the animation front after inking their deal with the moon boy studio in 2006. Outside of the mo-capped Beowulf and the Nick show launcher Barnyard, Paramount didn't widen their field. That was, until 2011, when they unleashed the eccentric Gore Verbinski-directed Rango and the Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation of The Adventures of Tintin. For a while, I was really digging Paramount because of that, and because of how strong some of their DreamWorks releases were.

Rango may not have been a box office smash, but Paramount was seemingly very proud of it no matter how much it ended up making. They gave Verbinski and the production companies a $100 million+ budget and let them make their offbeat, wild movie that was loaded with a lot of "kids movie" no-nos: Smoking, mild cussing, Wild West violence, innuendos, scary imagery, the whole nine yards. It was wonderful, it got them an Oscar, it got them critical raves, and apparently the film's performance gave them confidence in launching their own animation wing...

Except that didn't quite begin as well as one would've hoped. Right out of the gate were management changes, trouble from the parent company, a last-minute abandoning of an acclaimed European production, and some movie about monsters living in trucks that was meant to start a Hasbro-sized franchise. Right now, they seem very reliant on Nickelodeon-based properties and animated movies that seem like pilots for Nick shows. Like they were in the late 90/early aughts. One of them happens to be a romp called Amusement Park, which is about a kid and a bunch of animals discovering a lost talisman that will take them to the gods- I mean, a lost amusement park.


A co-production with the Spanish animation studio Ilion, it was originally projected for late 2016, then it was revealed that the film was Amusement Park and that it was going to open on March 22, 2019. Long afterwards, Paramount seemed to have some confidence, and moved the film up to July 13, 2018... Then pushed it back a bit to August 10, 2018. Now, the movie has gone back to where it came from... Sort of. The movie is now set for March 15, 2019. The untitled Paramount/Nick pic that was then in the 3/22/2019 slot is now off the schedule.

Now, they're beefing up.

Remember how Skydance announced that they too were going to partner with Ilion? Well, as I suspected all along, those co-productions will be Paramount releases. It should come as no surprise, because Paramount and Skydance have a history together, though anything was possible. Skydance did, after all, make a couple movies for other distributors: Sony's alien survival movie Life, and the upcoming (literal) disaster, Geostorm.


Anyways, Luck is one of them, a high concept picture that's being directed by Kung Fu Panda 3's co-director Alessandro Carloni. The other one is a fantasy picture about a teenage girl using her magical powers to stop an evil force from dividing her kingdom. That film is being directed animation veteran and Shrek co-director Vicki Jensen, and now has a baffling title... Split.

No, I'm not kidding. The movie is going to be called Split.

This isn't a Frozen situation. What do I mean by that? Well, Frozen was a 2010 horror movie about a ski lift. Three years later, Disney Animation unleashed their fairy tale musical Frozen. Does anyone remember the 2010 horror movie Frozen? Anyone?

Whereas M. Night Shyamalan's Split, on top of being regarded by some as a comeback movie for the long-struggling director, was a box office hit. It's also getting a sequel, called Glass. I don't know if it's smart to call this one Split. Plus, I'm a little tired of these one-word, sometimes past-participle animated movie titles. Some are fine, Pixar's excelled at them. Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up are excellent movie titles. I don't mind one-word titles that use the protagonist names, like Bolt, Coraline,and Moana. Or ones that use a location, like Zootopia. A good title, no matter how many words is in it, describes something major about the movie in a catchy way.

I never liked titles like Tangled, Brave, Epic, Home, Leap! (Ballerina, I know), Underdogs (Foosball, I know), this, that. Split, I feel for the time being, is one of those titles.

I hope the movies themselves, even if they're family films like nearly everything else, are noteworthy. Carloni directing Luck makes me excited, and it's cool to see another female spearhead an animated feature. Show me what you got, Skydance.

Moving on...


Disney plans on removing all of its titles - possibly sans Marvel and Lucasfilm content - from Netflix and intends to compete with all the streaming services with their own.

Does this remind you of anything?


Disney Studios All Access is one of many failed Disney home media-related projects of this very decade, but unlike its brethren (such as Disney Second Screen, Disney BD-Live, and Virtual Vault) it was eventually saved... It became Disney Movies Anywhere, and I have it, it's quite useful if you're on a trip or if you need an in-flight movie. Bring your iPad, watch movies, maybe even special features while you're at it! So far, I actually quite like DMA despite some little setbacks here and there.

Disney Movies Anywhere isn't necessarily like a Netflix-type thing you subscribe to, though. It's free, but the movies cost. If your DVDs and Blu-rays contain digital copies of the movies, DMA will be your locker for them, not dissimilar to things like Ultraviolet. You can port them over to iTunes, Amazon Video, this, that. All Access was going to be that, and reportedly would have on-demand streaming.

I feel that in the recent years, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has kind of been at the crossroads. Blu-ray and DVD sales are okay at best these days, it's not like it used to be. The Lion King is a fine example, as that film is coming back to Blu-ray in a few weeks. The previous edition - the Diamond Edition from 2011 - went back in the vault in 2014, and sold roughly 6 million units, DVD and Blu-ray combined.


Now compare that to the original video release in 1995, which broke industry records that hadn't been broken since. 30 million units+, I don't even think the Titanic VHS release in 1998 beat that. The Lion King had also done incredibly well when the 2003 Platinum Edition DVD hit the racks, selling 2 million units in its first day alone. 6 million units overall isn't bad, but the Diamond Edition clearly didn't sell like hotcakes, and The Lion King is a beloved film. What went wrong?

Well, it's a combination of things... The outdated Vault strategy that only breeds scalpers, and the sort of "why buy it again?" mentality. The idea of something being locked away for so long is an annoyance for many, and some parents want their kids to see these classics at a young age, but are frustrated when they can't find a decent DVD or Blu-ray copy. If anything, they could settle for a VHS copy at their local yard sale or at Goodwill. That is, if they're aware that they can find them there for a buck instead of scouring eBay, where misinformed people sell the VHS releases for thousands and thousands of dollars because some 90s nostalgiaholic site like BuzzFeed said so. All for VHS releases of Disney films that may be collectible (ahem!), but are as common as NES cartridges of Super Mario Bros. or CD copies of Jagged Little Pill.

On the other side is folks who own the films in some way. Disney drilled it into your head, even as far as back the mid-1980s, that when they were gone, they were "gone." The tactic was used ever since Disney launched their first line for the animated classics on home video. The second video releases of these titles would be picked up by those who missed out the first time who weren't willing to pay scalpers $300+ for the previously-released, in-the-vault edition.


Yes, that actually was a problem back in the 90s as well. Other people would settle for taping a film off of The Disney Channel, and that wasn't a common occurrence. My mother, in the early 90s, went as far as having a co-worker of hers use a machine to copy the near-entirety of the 1990 VHS of The Little Mermaid to a blank recordable VHS tape. For years, that was our way of watching The Little Mermaid, and I still have it! After the movie's over, an airing - complete with commercials - of a David Letterman show takes over!

Anyhoo, I think it's Disney's loss. People sell Lion King DVDs and Blu-rays on Amazon and eBay inbetween releases, and they get big bucks off of them. Some people are willing to shell out that much to have the movie in good quality, because I suspect a lot of the population doesn't use VCRs anymore or do care about the quality of the presentation. That, or they worry the VHS copy will wear out after repeat viewings. If available all the time, Disney could perhaps get the sales they're not really getting anymore. Ironically, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner once said something along the lines of, "Pinocchio is making nothing sitting in the vault." That was in 1985. (My copy pictured below.)


Eisner was actually something of a huge proponent of the video releases of Disney animated films, but kept the Vault system alive in order to appeal to the side of the company that wasn't keen on giving those films any sort of home media release. The "What Would Walt Do?" people that assumed a man who was dead for nearly two decades would've objected to releasing his films on home video, all because of his refusal to show them (with some exceptions) on television. You see, the Vault system is a variation of something Walt Disney needed decades ago. Three of Walt Disney's first five animated features lost money at the box office, a lot of this was due to World War II cutting off the European market and audience disinterest for other titles. Snow White hit it big and was released internationally, a year before World War II broke out. Dumbo was a shoestring budget movie, so it was all set from the get-go. Pinocchio and Bambi's grosses failed to cover their massive costs, Fantasia was mishandled by distributor RKO and audiences were indifferent to Walt's concert feature. Theatrical re-releases over the decades made all of those films profitable, and they found new audiences over time.

At first, the strategy proved effective. Disney slowly ascended to the home video throne in the mid-to-late 1980s, and ultimately started holding all the records. Lady and the Tramp, Fantasia, 101 Dalmatians, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin were all at one point - individually - the highest-selling video releases of all-time, beating out popular contemporary blockbusters from Top Gun to Terminator 2. It seemed like the Vault would still work, for DVD releases of the classics performed very well. Pixar's films never really were part of the Vault system, and they sold millions upon millions of home video units. Some of Pixar's films just quietly vault, and then the new edition comes a year or two later. They seem to stay on the racks for a while, they don't do the limited time thing. Finding Nemo, for instance, sold well over 25 million units by the mid-2000s. The DVD was pulled in 2010, two years before the 3D re-release and subsequent Blu-ray edition came out. The 2012 release - DVD and Blu sales combined - sold around 5 million units. Night and day difference. Finding Dory moved about 6 million physical units.

So yes, the home media market isn't the same, and you can see why Disney has been disappointing with most of their Blu-ray releases. At the same time, they are seemingly skittish about digital... All of their popular non-vault movies are readily available on DMA and other platforms, but here's our beef...


Where are all of Disney's classic animated shorts? Where are all of the television programs and episodes of Walt Disney's anthology program? Where are all of the episodes of various Disney television shows? What about all the contents of those great Walt Disney Treasures sets? Some of them might be on YouTube. Sometimes on Netflix, seasons of a classic Disney show will pop up, but that's about it. What would get me to subscribe to a Disney streaming service is all of this aforementioned stuff... If they have all of that, I'd be in. $8-10 a month for all of this? Unlimited access? All in one place? Sweet! To me, it'd be pointless to launch a Netflix-esque service and only provide the common movies... Give us the real stuff!

About that... Recent reports now imply that Disney will leave the Marvel and Lucasfilm movies to Netflix, while bringing everything else (read: actual Disney stuff) to their little platform. I'm fine with that. Marvel and Lucasfilm may be owned by Disney, but Disney wisely treats them as arms. Star Wars movies don't open with the Walt Disney Pictures logo (though it'd be cool to see a Star Wars-ized Disney logo), Marvel movies as well. Disney treats them as standalone brands, the names can sell them, the Disney name does not. You'll see Disney's name on various Star Wars merchandise items, but that's about it.

Like I said, Disney has been kind of slagging in the home media world. With the Vault seemingly coming to an end, they're re-releasing the once-limited animated classics faster than ever before. This year, we have gotten three Signature Editions - Pinocchio, Bambi, and The Lion King - and it's not even September yet! All of those films were already given major Blu-ray releases not too long ago, yet we still haven't gotten anything for the package features, The Black Cauldron, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and multiple films that don't fall under the "bestsellers" category. Some films, such as The Sword in the Stone, were given awful video transfers. Other films' Blu-rays failed to port over scores of bonus features from earlier releases. Disney skimped on 3D for two big animation titles, and other countries get barebones releases, sometimes they don't get the films on Blu-ray at all!

Maybe a streaming service filled to the brim with everything could be the ticket. Perhaps it could end the diminishing sales of the classics, or if they just do away with the Vault altogether and offer all of the classics on all platforms, making them readily available.

Who knows, but I'll be keeping an eye on this...

Miyazaki returns, feathered pictures, and squirrel mishaps...

We animation fans can rejoice over this first bit of news...


Studio Ghibli is reopening to do Hayao Miyazaki's next feature film. Miyazaki makes it seem like he'll retire for good, but then out of nowhere... He shocks us all and says he has a new picture in the works. I have a feeling that this will be something of a pattern... I recall former Animation Guild representative and former Disney story man Steve Hulett saying something along the lines of... "In animation, people keep working till they kick the bucket."

Anyways, whatever is on the horizon from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, it's sure to be an event. Interestingly, The Walt Disney Company has pretty much given up on their US distribution rights of Ghibli's pictures. GKIDS now has them, and that's probably for the better, because Disney has been distancing itself from anything that isn't the size of Marvel/Star Wars/Frozen/[insert franchise here].

'Twas great while it lasted, and I'm sure it got Miyazaki and Ghibli some more prominence here in North America... Now we shall see what happens under GKIDS, especially now that the Academy has changed the game for the Best Animated Feature race. New rules that will most likely stomp anything that isn't a big American-commissioned CGI piece-o-product from getting a nomination.

Speaking of CGI...


A while back, it was reported that Chinese fx house Original Force was looking to get into feature animation. With a unit set up in Los Angeles, those plans have become a reality. Their first picture, Duck Duck Goose recently landed a release date (4/20/2018) and an American distributor. (Open Road Films, distributors of ToonBox's animated movies.) Now, the Christopher Jenkins-directed comedy romp has a teaser...


The film looks pretty nice for a debut picture, and presumably this thing is going to be pretty low-budget. That being said, I don't get much confidence when a trailer decides to make toilet humor front-and-center. That, and the umpteenth "from the so-and-so of Shrek" tag. I can probably make an arm's-long list of animated movies whose trailers touted a producer or writer that had something to do with DreamWorks' 2001 film. As for the choice of jokes to show? Like, there's a little snippet where they're in a cave full of fireflies. It's a very pretty-looking moment with neat colors, reminding me of similar scenes from movies like The Good Dinosaur. Then we cut to one of the ducklings farting a firefly... Like... Why? And then we climax the trailer with the goose protagonist getting his head slammed into a pig's bum.

(Okay, to be fair, Madagascar 3 did something similar that was actually kind of funny... But I don't really think it worked here.)

Trailers are trailers, though. Duck Duck Goose could turn out to be a surprisingly fun romp with just a few box-checking moments. Perhaps the trailer uses the film's most childish jokes to get audiences interested, because that sometimes works. Remember how everyone screamed and cried about the first teaser for Frozen that had Olaf and Sven performing wacky ice antics? One can only wonder how much of a role that had in the film's opening weekend gross. I remember my audience cracked up at it.

Anyways, I do like some of the shots in the trailer, some of the lighting's nice, again it looks very polished for a small up-and-coming animation studio. I just hope the writing and comedy is above some of the scenes presented here. Being a Chinese-American co-production, you can also see some Chinese elements in this, too. The character's names, for one, but also the setting. This could've been some regular talking bird story set in the American wilderness, but I think it's pretty unique that they're sticking to the Chinese setting. The poster for the movie also shows a Pallas cat, which are native to East Asia.

So a little too early to say, but visually it looks nice. Not groundbreaking or anything, but still nice to look at. I wonder what's going on with the other two animated movies Open Road picked up: The seemingly-in-limbo Blazing Samurai and Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad.

Also, speaking of small-scale animation made outside of the US that's distributed by Open Road...


The Nut Job 2 apparently didn't make much of a splash at the domestic box office.

ToonBox's third theatrical picture, the sequel to the profitable 2014 squirrel flick, collected an estimated $8 million for the three-day. That's way down from the $19 million opening weekend gross of the first Nut Job, and that was a January release... Just mere weeks after Frozen fever broke out.

Critically, it didn't fare any better than its maligned predecessor. Oddly enough, friends of mine and fellow writers are telling me that the film itself is actually not only a significant improvement over the first one, but that it's also a solid critter comedy romp on its own. Some of the crew behind it outright said that they had listened to the criticisms leveled at the first movie, and worked hard to make numero due a better picture. Who to believe? The parts of it I saw at work didn't seem half-bad, but perhaps critics - after suffering through The Emoji Movie - are breaking their mold and finally putting their foot down at ho-hum non-Pixar animated movies?

The average rating is much higher than that of Emoji's, but 3.5/10 is still very negative. With what I'm hearing from folks in my circles, I would've thought critics would've said "It's cute enough, pass." Like they do with middle-of-the-road Illumination movies, but no... A pile of squirrel crap it is.

Anyways, yes, $8 million. What happened? I just chalk it up to families narrowing their choices more so than ever before, and other audiences as well. Several blockbuster movies opened high this year, only to have so-so legs, even critically acclaimed films like War for the Planet of the Apes. That film's performance is like below last year's mid-July trilogy-closer release Star Trek Beyond, which also underperformed. That, too, was critically well-liked... Sadly, quality moviemaking isn't always the answer to box office woes. Wonder Woman held on like no other, but most movies - good or bad - just haven't been getting strong multipliers.

I expect The Nut Job 2, however, to leg it up a bit since August and early-to-mid September will be relatively dry. Leap! will probably perform like every other Weinsteinized animated film, and Animal Crackers is apparently no longer circling the Labor Day weekend. It makes me wonder if The Lego Ninjago Movie will perform more like Storks than, say, a film that tips $100 million domestically like The Angry Birds Movie.


Down 45% is The Emoji Movie. The film looks to finish up with around $75 million or less. If it hits $75 million, then it will have made roughly 3.1x its opening weekend gross. Just an alright multiplier for an animated family-friendly movie, nothing special. Worldwide, it sits at $97 million. Many good-sized markets, from Brazil to France, have yet to get the movie. A $125 million gross will make this thing profitable. While it may end up passing that, Sony Animation's chief recently deemed Smurfs: The Lost Village - which made over 3x its minuscule budget - a failure... So, who knows. If anything, it'll just get a direct-to-video sequel or two, and we can just call it day. I'm trying not to talk about it too much myself, because like all animated movie low-points, we just have to let it blow away. Like a fart in the wind. It's not making $100 million here, so no need to incessantly yell about how awful it is or how Sony Pictures Animation must be shut down (because putting hundred of hard-working artists out of a job will sure teach them, right?!) and blabberjabber like that. No need to keep making it into a conversation, let's just expect better of Sony with each new movie.

I will only provide box office updates and commentary on that movie.

Next up, Despicable Me 3 slipped 43% and currently sits at $247 million. It's coming up on the first Despicable Me film's domestic gross, but adjusted, it is significantly way below it. Like the Shrek series, Despicable Me's newest installments will sink and sink and sink. Nothing's touching Despicable Me 2's ticket sales, that's for darn sure. Not that anyone at Universal or Illumination is fretting, the movie has now collected $920 million worldwide. Our American box office barely matters when it comes these movies. I can imagine Minions 2 pulling a Puss in Boots at the domestic box office, but soaring worldwide.


Cars 3 had its softest drop yet, though it's only playing in 300+ theaters now. The film looks to finish up with $150 million stateside, and it'll have the worst multiplier for a Pixar film. Below that of Cars 2, even. Again, I chalk it up to the way box office has been this summer. If Pixar had readied this thing for last summer, or summer 2015, it would've fared better I think. I still do think that Cars 2 and Disney's decision to theatrically release the Disneytoon Planes spin-offs probably affected this one, regardless of the fact that this threequel went back to the series' roots and was pretty good. We still can't say on the worldwide gross, as it still has to open in a few more territories, but this flick will likely finish somewhere around $350 million.

That will make it the second-to-lowest grossing Pixar film, the lowest being The Good Dinosaur with $332 million. Toy sales will ultimately come to the rescue, but I think this is it for the mainline Cars series. The Disneytoon spin-offs will pick up the slack from there, till those start coming up short. Cars is also not a long-lasting flavor, but many franchises are not as well. It's hard to compare other Pixar franchises to this series, because Cars follow a rather weird sequel timeframe. Cars 2 opened five years after the first one, and Cars 3 opened six years later. Other studios usually belt 'em out 3-4 years after the original hits.

Compare that to something like Toy Story. Toy Story 2 followed Toy Story on time (4 years later) and was very big, but Toy Story 3 didn't debut until nearly 11 years after the second one. It was also very big, though one does wonder... If Toy Story 3 debuted in, say, 2005... Would it have made a little less than the first two? The long gap and (as hard as it is for me to admit it) nostalgia certainly helped the third one sell the most tickets, along with Pixar's then-continuing goodwill. Finding Dory and Monsters University arrived looooong after their predecessors came out.

DreamWorks didn't update us on Captain Underpants yet, the best-reviewed animated movie of the summer. (Who would've thought?!) $73 million so far, $94 million around the globe, still not out in a few key markets. Fox botched this one, but it didn't cost much to make, so I'm sure DreamWorks is fine. Comcast/Universal has them, so I'm sure no one's ringing the death bell anymore. It's just a little weird having to wait for a new DreamWorks feature, since we've been so used to them releasing 2 films every year. Their next, How To Train Your Dragon 3, is not out till 3/1/2019.

Updates will come when the actual numbers are posted tomorrow afternoon...

Bunnies, dogs, and pigs... It's an animal recap! And each news story's subject begins with a "P"... Letter of the day, perhaps.

First up... A trailer for Sony's Peter Rabbit has surfaced from the soil...


Peter Rabbit is basically the next Goosebumps for Sony Pictures Animation. Goosebumps was of course a live-action film with lots of CGI and VFX stuff, and for a long while, it wasn't billed as a Sony Pictures Animation production. Given that Sony Animation sat 2014 out and only had one release in 2015 (Hotel Transylvania 2), it somewhat made sense. Peter Rabbit falls more in line with their current work, anyways. It has a cute CG animal star, whereas Goosebumps had CG monsters and stuff.

Anyways, the Olive Bridge/Animal Logic production is going to be branded as a Sony Animation production. Releasing February 9th in the states, the first teaser is here...


Not much to say. It's Peter Rabbit trying to get his jacket on, making a crack about not needing trousers, and a reminder that James Corden is voicing him. As I've said before, I really don't care for live-action hybrids like this. The kind where everything is live-action except some cartoony CG animals. And I liked movies like Paddington, but to me, you either go all in or don't go at all. The film does have a strong cast and might be fine in the end, but on the whole, this one still doesn't quite interest me. I see it as a film Sony Animation's taking some credit for, not a full-on Sony Animation film. For me, their next film is Hotel Transylvania 3. July 2018.

Speaking of July releases...


Illumination, for some reason, is bowing out of the 4th of July week with their next sequel. The Secret Life of Pets 2, which was previously set for 7/3/2019, is now opening on June 7, 2019. Two weeks before Pixar will unleash Toy Story 4, which will surely be ginormous. The Secret Life of Pets, like the first Despicable Me, was a big hit that was almost something of a sleeper. The question is... Will the sequel repeat that success? Go even higher? Or go a little lower?


Most animated movie sequels, in terms of ticket sales, don't outsell their predecessors. A rare case of an animated movie sequel outdoing its predecessor by a wide margin was Despicable Me 2, and the first animated sequel to do that since Shrek 2 in 2004. Despicable Me 2 was a huge smash, collecting $368 million domestically. The Secret Life of Pets made around the same amount, and that wasn't even a sequel or established IP. I have a feeling Secret Life of Pets 2 will still be big, but it won't touch the gargantuan gross of the first film. It'll see the normal sequel decline...

Either way, they're heading for the summer, which is no shock. Illumination only has one movie set for next year (The Grinch in fall 2018), and Pets 2 is their only 2019 release. Sequels Minions 2 and Sing 2 sit in 2020, and untitled pictures have been set from 2021 to 2023. I bet a good chunk of those are going to be sequels and Dr. Seuss adaptations.

In the end, they'll make some serious coin on it...


For a little while, it seemed like Warner Home Video was going to be pulling out of the cartoon collection market. Given the state of physical media and studios' concerns, it seemed like Warner was going to move on. Prior to that, Warner Home Video has mostly been unbeatable in this field... The three Looney Tunes Platinum collections were comprehensive and jam-packed, while the first - and sadly, only - volume of the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection was pretty tip-top. Aside from a few sizable hiccups, they've been great with this sort of thing. A few non-Blu collections also surfaced over the years, ones definitely worth picking up.

A few years back, Warner Home Video began offering some titles online. They've been using a strategy known as "MOD," short for "Manufacture On-Demand." Basically, this means that WHV won't produce mass amounts of copies of a particular release, rather, they'll list the release on their site, you order it, they make it. Manufacture On-Demand. It's quite an idea, and I'd like to see more studios get behind this if they're hesitant to release certain things on disc. (Disney, I'm looking at you.)

So far, the MOD plan has given us DVD releases of obscurities like Twice Upon a Time, Cats Don't Dance, and most recently, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on Blu-ray. Now, they'll be offering a 5-disc... I repeat... A 5-disc DVD set centered around the first Warner Bros. breakout cartoon character, none other than Looney Tune Porky Pig!


101 Porky Pig shorts... Commentaries by renowned cartoon historians... All of it in chronological order, and the majority of the cartoons are in black-and-white. Many of the included shorts were previously unavailable on home media, and some of them haven't been shown on TV in a while. Historian Jerry Beck notes on his Animation Scoop website that the sales could convince Warner Home Video to not only keep up the cartoon collections, but also convince them to pursue more "ambitious" projects. The first number of DVDs will also be pressed traditionally, so be sure to scoop them up on the Warner Bros. Archive and let your collector voice be heard.

Anyways, it's good to see WHV continuing making good, collector-oriented cartoon sets in this day and age. Since they have a vast library, they might as well. Disney for some odd reason is holding out on Silly Symphonies sets, Mickey Mouse and friends cartoons, various TV programs, etc. Even on streaming and such. Universal? What have they done for Walter Lantz's cartoons recently? List goes on, but Warner Bros. is consistently and surprisingly good at this kind of thing. That is, when they're working around their legal department, which is roughly 85% of the time.

Th-th-th-th-th-that's all folks!

Weinstein and the weekend... Those are today's topics!

So... Mizchief.

What in the world is Mizchief?

It's not the title of an upcoming animated release, it's the title of a new animation "label" that our good friends at The Weinstein Company intend to launch in a week. Let that one sink in...


Next weekend's release Leap! will be the first movie to bear that logo. As you may know, Leap! is a "localized" version of a French animated film called Ballerina, which debuted last year in Europe. The company announced that other animated features are going to be under this label, one of which is an acquired Chinese animated feature from Light Chaser Animation Studios. Titled The Guardian Brothers, it's a localization of their 2016 feature Little Door Gods, and the studio's only feature-length production so far.


Now that trailer makes it look like something emotional and rather serious, so it's a bit weird to see Weinstein lock into this one - as it doesn't seem ready-made for a kids' matinee movie. If the original film wasn't conceived as a kiddie movie (and judging by what I'm seeing, it doesn't look it), then that spells trouble. The new all-star cast includes Meryl Streep, Mel Brooks (who was added to Leap!), Nicole Kidman, Edward Norton, Dan Fogler and Bella Thorne. No English-speaking Chinese actors in sight...

Deadline also mentions two more pictures are in the Weinstein/Mizchief pipeline: The Firework-Maker's Daughter, and The Cricket in Times Square.

Why has this animation label been given a weird misspell of the word "mischief"? Co-founder Harvey Weinstein says it's because his son pronounces "mischief" that way. Yeah, mischief... That's an oddly fitting term to describe what Mr. Weinstein has done to animation (and most movies in general) over time. We all know that The Weinstein Company and animation go together perfectly, right? Right?

A little history lesson for the uninitiated, which you can very well skip if you know the horror stories...

Mr. Harvey Weinstein, nicknamed Harvey Scissorhands, certainly has quite a legacy. He seems to be very cynical towards the moviegoing audience, as he insists on butchering filmmakers' visions so that audiences will dig the end results. As if he knows what the audience wants, like he knows the collective pulse of them or something. Sometimes, a good unscathed picture will come out under his watch, sometimes not. Weinstein has always been this way towards animation.

One of the earliest examples of his "magic" was his edits to Gandahar, a 1988 film from the Fantastic Planet director Rene Laloux, showing that he's been at this sort of thing for nearly thirty years. Under Weinstein, the film lost its soundtrack and some not-so-PG moments, and was renamed Light Years. It came and went, like many animated features did back then. Into the early 90s, when the Second Golden Age of Animation was barreling ahead, he tried again with come-and-go fare like Freddie as F.R.0.7. and Tom and Jerry: The Movie.

Then came 1995's Arabian Knight, which was the big one... A butchering of a butchering. We animation fans all know the tragic story of The Thief and the Cobbler, Richard Williams' groundbreaking masterpiece-in-the-making that was taken away from him and was turned into something it was never intended to be. What's often glossed over outside of animation circles is that a cut of the movie already existed before Miramax (then owned by Disney) acquired it. Williams' film was nearly complete when Warner Bros. got cold feet over the project in spring 1992, and the distributor ended up giving that movie to the lowest bidder after firing Williams and his crew.


The man who took over, animation veteran Fred Calvert, was tasked to turn Williams' mostly silent and unconventional adventure film into a wannabe Disney-style musical, with outsourced and obviously inferior-quality animation filling in the gaps. Calvert's cut was only released - rather unnoticed - in South Africa and Australia as The Princess and the Cobbler in 1993, and that version of the film - outside of TheThiefArchive's postings over time - is actually arguably harder to find than Williams' original or the Miramax edit. Anyways, after months of distributors avoiding this thing like the plague (by this point, it would come off as an Aladdin knock-off to the public), Miramax finally picked it up in late 1994.

Harvey and co. turned the Disney wannabe, which was already painful to witness, into something really, really dunderheaded. I've seen mere minutes of Arabian Knight (the title itself is a like an eff-you to Williams and everybody else) and it was painful. Painful to watch. While the Calvert version had the out-of-place Disney-lite songs and had the cobbler Tack changed from a mute to a speaking character, this version of the movie gave the Thief constant inner-monologues, changed a lot of the cast, and basically... Well... To be eloquent. They shit on a pile of vomit. To add insult to injury, Miramax released this version on video, in pan-and-scan (!!!), under the original Thief and the Cobbler title.

The Thief and the Cobbler remains one of the biggest cautionary tales in animation history. A very terrible case of something so grand, something that was trying - for over 25 years no less! - to buck feature animation conventions... being destroyed beyond belief, and its originators getting nothing in return. Thankfully, a certain individual named Garrett Gilchrist made his fan-edit "The Recobbled Cut" in 2006 and uploaded all the different versions of the film ages ago under the ThiefArchive YouTube channel, educating many a fan and everyone else on this film's awful history. Later on, it would catch the attention of numerous reviewers and personalities, Doug Walker's Nostalgia Critic being one of the most notable. Later on, animator Kevin Schreck did an acclaimed documentary on the making of the film - Persistence of Vision. Do you have it on DVD? I certainly do!

So that right there was a real low blow, brought to you by... Mr. Weinstein. He didn't stop there, even though Arabian Knight flopped hard at the box office and disappeared swiftly.

He said he was going to cut Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke for its American release in 1999, a Studio Ghibli cohort sent him a katana with an attached note: "No cuts." Miyazaki fought him, and won. When you anger Miyazaki, you know you've done something wrong. Miyazaki had already dealt with this kind of thing in the 80s when New World Pictures ruined his Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Spirited Away and future endeavors would be handled by Disney instead, and thankfully also not butchered. Now, his work and Ghibli's productions are in GKIDS' safe hands.

After American executives killed traditional animation in the early-to-mid aughts, Miramax shifted from releasing dubbed Pokemon movies to releasing various CG flicks. Oddly enough, they even specialized in some direct-to-video animated titles, one of which was a favorite of mine when I was 11... The first Bionicle movie! So there's that, though I'm pretty sure that thing doesn't really hold up today, I haven't watched it in years.

Harvey set out to build a slate of CG pictures to compete with the heavies. He took the scissors to The Magic Roundabout, a computer-animated adaptation of the 1960s stop-motion show that wasn't really much of a thing here. He turned it into mush, had the whole thing recast and re-written, and released it here as Doogal. (The dog's name in the original is "Dougal.") It tanked hard, once again. I don't even know if you can buy it on DVD or watch it on TV or on a streaming service even! Like Arabian Knight, Freddie as F.R.0.7., and Light Years, Doogal is pretty obscure despite being a little more than a decade old. Only us fanatics really remember these mishaps.


Weinstein also handled the release of the independent CG feature Hoodwinked!, and recast that one from top to bottom. Unlike Doogal, it was a good-sized success, grossing over $100 million worldwide off of an $8 million budget. No doubt piggybacking off of Shrek mania for sure, being a fractured fairy tale much like DreamWorks' then-massive franchise. Critical reception, however, was mixed. A belated sequel not only missed its release date at the very last minute (so soon that Burger King couldn't undo their planned kids' meal promotion of the movie), but was even worse than its predecessor and flopped hard at the box office.

Hoodwinked! was picked up around the time Harvey and his brother formed The Weinstein Company, after breaking off from Disney and leaving Miramax behind. So, did they find any animation success afterwards? Not really... Arthur and the Invisibles and TMNT came and went in 2007, and they seemed to move on from animation for a little while. Hoodwinked Too! was their only animated film release from 2008 to 2013. In 2012, they picked up Escape from Planet Earth and announced a slew of pictures that would follow its spring 2013 release... All of them had release dates, too!

You know that horrendous-looking Italian Leo the Lion feature that's been making the rounds in the bad-movie circuit? They were going to release that thing, in theaters, in fall 2013... Alongside two other titles, The Trick or Treaters and Santapprentice. Apparently both of those quietly went direct-to-video under different titles? Who knows, but Leo the Lion is a sight to be seen. To think that he was planning to have Americans suffer seeing that thing on the big screen... Even he had it in him to pull out... Or did he pull out because of another reason unrelated to the film's terrifyingly bad animation and writing? I'd really like to know such useless information!

Peak animation right here.

Escape from Planet Earth just did okay in the end. Didn't spawn any sequels or franchises, had no lasting appeal. It was another Weinstein animated turkey. Every other planned 2013 release disappeared. Then they locked their talons into the Argentinian animated film Metegol, a.k.a. Foosball. They did their usual. They recast the whole thing, they had the script rewritten and re-imagined, and had the thing re-titled to Underdogs. Initially set for a US release in summer 2014, it was delayed... And delayed... And delayed... Even with a trailer rolling in theaters. Right before a planned August 2015 release, it was pulled and didn't appear again until a quiet direct-to-video release in mid-2016. Day-amn!

The worst part is, Metegol already had an English-language dub. That was released in the UK as The Unbeatables and it got decent reception. Why couldn't we have gotten that instead?

Now we have... Leap!

This new movie has the same history as Metegol. It's a picture that was made outside of the US, a French film to be exact. It's a re-titled film, the real name of this movie is Ballerina. It also already has an English dub, which was already released in the UK... Back in December! Under the movie's original title! Weinstein and co, no shock, recast some of the movie and had the script rewritten. You know, for us dumb Americans and all those dumb kiddies out there. It was supposed to come out, unaltered, back in March. Then it was altered, pushed back to April, then to September, then bumped up to this coming Friday...

I wouldn't be surprised if Leap! takes a big fall, and gets pulled at the very last minute.

See the pattern here? Weinstein always has to alter something, even something that has already been altered. He thinks he's doing it for audiences, yet all of these animated movies that have his stamps on them are either universally despised or widely forgotten. Does anyone outside of animation fans even remember all of those aforementioned movies?

Weinstein spouts his usual buzzwords, his usual spiel about something being a hit at test screenings, that the thing in question will be "for audiences," it'll be great for kids and adults alike! That seems to be the case with his new animation label, Mizchief. He went on to say...

“Animation is a playful new direction for us and I’m thrilled to expand the TWC repertoire into a whole new category of films for our kids to enjoy and for us to enjoy with them. All of these films will share incredible stories that most importantly both inspire and entertain our kids.”

New direction? Harvey, man, you've been doing this since 1988. Nearly thirty years! Same buzzwords. Kids and adults will enjoy it! Heavy emphasis on the kids! Because you know, animation is a children's medium! I mean, genre, sorry!

Hey look, I'm sure Weinstein has his good sides. But I'll be very clear, I don't think he's fit to oversee animated features. His only really successful family movie, which has a CGI star, was Paddington. You know why? His company released that movie here unaltered, it was a leggy little sleeper, and it got outstanding critical reception. It's getting a sequel, which the company is releasing here this coming January. Why couldn't he learn from that?

Maybe I'll have a serious helping of crow in five days, depending on what reviews of Leap! say. If his Americanized Leap! is on par with the original French film or better, crow will be on the menu! I'm open to being wrong on this one! I sincerely hope they don't butcher Little Door Gods, either.

Next up... The box office!


We're currently enduring the August blues, as few movies are going to open with significant amounts of money. I recently saw Steven Soderbergh's new film Logan Lucky, a self-marketed redneck Ocean's 11 that was quite good (and I recommend that you go and see it), but sadly it hasn't opened too well at the box office. It's just that time of year, and quality/original does not always sell, but we need it to.


Anyways, animation is in dry mode right now. Nut Job 2 is the highest animated entry on the chart, at #5, dropping a good 38% from last weekend. The first Nut Job, which opened much higher with $19 million, dipped 37% on its second weekend. If the film plays out like the original, it'll make at least $25 million domestically, which isn't really good for this $40 million-costing picture. While the filmmakers did what they could to make this sequel better than the lambasted first film, it wasn't enough. Audiences are still selective, even if they often go and see harmless lite animated movies like Despicable Me 3 and The Boss Baby.

In sixth place is The Emoji Movie, which has been steadying. Reaching $71 million this weekend, it'll most likely land somewhere below $80 million when all is said and done, putting it on the low end of domestic Sony Animation grosses. Worldwide, it has cracked $125 million, making 2 1/2x its $50 million budget... So it did meet the minimum requirements. Various European territories get it throughout September and October, so I'm guessing $150-170 million will be the ceiling. Anything above that is 3x the budget, but it all depends. I still think, if it ever does get a sequel, it'll go straight-to-video... Much like Sony's own Open Season series.

Despicable Me 3 shows late legs, lightly tumbling 34% and collecting $251 million today, just inching past the gross of the first movie in the series... Though like I've said before, tickets-wise it's significantly behind and it's the lowest-selling entry in the series. Doesn't matter for them, $948 million worldwide does the talking. While the decline will continue, it won't be as quick as I suspected... Though Minions 2 could see a heavy dip in summer 2020, and I'm also sure that Despicable Me quattro is going to be a thing in 2022.

Down 19% is Cars 3. I wonder if it'll get a Labor Day weekend boost like Pixar's other summer releases. Slowly inching towards one-five-oh here, it's at $308 million worldwide. In five days, it apparently opens in China, and it could literally go either way there. Maybe they'll give it a boost, maybe not, I'm not holding my breathe... This is Pixar's most American movie yet. Italy and Germany get it next month, but I see this missing $400 million worldwide.

We shall see...

Two Disney Animation bits, and something concerning Sony Animation...

Rumblings out there imply that Walt Disney Animation Studios is going to make a sequel to a recent smash...


That's right... Zootopia 2... Might've been confirmed. Might've...


In speaking with the UK gossip chain The Sun, a certain minor character's voice actor said a little something. The man in question is Mark Smith, who voiced the rhino Officer McHorn. According to the reporter, "[Smith] confirmed he will reprise his role of Officer McHorn in the upcoming Zootopia sequel."

Now, this could mean anything. It's more of a case of they said, rather than he said. They could've misheard him, he could've been talking about an upcoming short, special/featurette, or some kind of project. That being said, we can't be too naive either... Zootopia grossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office, being one of the rare films not based on a pre-existing IP to achieve that goal. $340 million+ of that gross of that total came from the domestic box office. On top of that, it was a deserved critical darling and winner of this past year's animated Oscar. (I'm the radical who thinks it should've been up for Best Picture.)

I know it's a little strange for some folks out there. Walt Disney Animation Studios is unique amongst other big American animation powerhouses, in that they don't have too many sequels. They're the oldest one running, coming up on 95 years in 2018, yet they have few sequels and films that are debatable. It's argued that The Three Caballeros is a sequel to Saludos Amigos, and it can indeed be considered one. Not a direct sequel per se, but I just see two goodwill films exploring the same ideas and sharing some characters. Disney usually billed 1990's The Rescuers Down Under as their first-ever sequel, some argue that Melody Time is a sequel to Make Mine Music. Me? I just think they're two films using a similar concept, and you can even argue they're continuations of Fantasia in some way, but with actual songs as opposed to classical compositions.

Walt Disney mostly swore off sequels, mostly because of how the follow-up cartoons to 1933's The Three Little Pigs performed: "You can't top pigs with pigs." Snow White and Bambi sequels were proposed, Walt wisely dumped them. Walt instead adapted two other fairy tales - Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty - that were similar to Snow White, and revisited talking animals dramas with Lady and the Tramp. He oversaw a few sequels for his live-action division. The post-Walt studio toyed around with a Fantasia follow-up called Musicana at one point, one iteration of The Rescuers had Cruella de Vil as its antagonist. (Note the similarities between Medusa and her, especially her car.) That wasn't dissimilar to one of Walt's original plans for Bongo, which would inhabit the same timeline as Dumbo and even feature some of its characters - that was until it was turned into a segment for the package feature Fun & Fancy Free, which Jiminy Cricket and Cleo appear in.


We all know the story. The Rescuers Down Under underperformed at the box office, Disney executives put the kibosh on theatrical sequels and then realized that they could make huge grosses (and bigger profits) off of cheaper direct-to-video sequels instead. Didn't Lion King II make somewhere around $185 million in video sales back in 1998? That was significantly more than a lot of the features being made at the time, if true! Of course, the direct-to-video sequel strategy - which started out with the harmless Aladdin TV show pilot/first-5-episodes-mashed-together film The Return of Jafar - went overboard and hurt the mainline animation in many ways. It even got to a point where some of them were even theatrically released!

The only upside to the direct-to-video sequels is that Walt Disney Feature Animation wasn't obliged to crank out a theatrical Lion King 2 or a theatrical Aladdin 2, and continued to focus on new projects, whether they ended up being compromised films or not. No animated movie sequel performed spectacularly in theaters until Pixar's Toy Story 2, which ironically began life as a DTV sequel. Pixar wanted a theatrical A-grade project, they fought to make it a great movie, they won, but inadvertently started a sequel-heavy age for theatrical feature animation. DreamWorks opened the gap even wider with the monolithic success of Shrek 2, and Shrek the Third's massive gross.

Pixar - after finishing Toy Story 2 in 1999 - held off on sequels for a long while for similar reasons, in that big Disney was going to give them contractual agita if they were to start production on a third Toy Story in say, 2003. That got ugly (Circle 7, anyone?), but the feathers were smoothed after Michael Eisner stepped down as Disney's CEO. Now, Pixar makes more sequels to ever before (and legally had to make three of the current ones, anyways), which caught many off-guard and lead folk to believe that they've "sold out" or whatever. Other animation studios from DreamWorks to Sony to Blue Sky to Illumination... They never had these kind of hang-ups! Throughout the last decade, you saw Shrek sequels, Ice Age sequels, Madagascar sequels, and so on.

It's ironic that Disney of all studios is the one catching up to this. 2011's Winnie the Pooh could be seen as a sequel to the package feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Disney continues to claim that Walt's plan was to release 3 featurettes first, then cobble them into a feature - that wasn't his plan at all), Fantasia 2000 was an attempt to do what Walt really wanted to do with Fantasia, before executives had their way. Only one segment from the original is in F2K, 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice.'


So now there's two official sequels on the studio's docket... Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2, and the tentatively-titled Frozen 2. I guess Disney doesn't care for straight up "2" titles, which is nice I think, even if I may not entirely dig Ralph 2's title. No official word on whether Big Hero 6 will get a sequel or not, but a follow-up does seem inevitable. No executive walks away from a film that grosses over $500 million at the worldwide box office, the only blockbuster titan that you don't make a sequel to is something like Titanic. Almost everything else? Fair game! That's just the way it is these days.

Zootopia Deux is probably a matter of when, than if, as much as some of us don't want to admit it. If one wasn't coming at all, I wouldn't mind too much, for I think it should - being an artist myself - ultimately be the filmmakers' decision. That being said, Zootopia was made for and released by a major entertainment conglomerate, not a scrappy little studio run by a man with a vision. I'm sure Disney's executives are going to demand a sequel at some point in time, but Disney - unlike some companies out there - doesn't fret over wait times. Pixar does their sequels when they're ready (for the most part, re: Cars 2), Walt Disney Animation Studios hasn't rushed Frozen 2 out. If they were like everyone else, Frozen 2 would be on Blu-ray right now. Frozen itself turned six when the sequel hits. Wreck-It Ralph will also be a six-year-old movie when its sequel debuts.

Anyways, it wouldn't be for a long while. Director and conceiver of the project Byron Howard is developing a new movie with Lin-Manuel Miranda, while director Rich Moore is hard at work on Ralph Breaks the Internet, which he put aside because of Zootopia. Other directors have their own projects in the works, and many of those are likely to debut before a theoretical Zootopia sequel. Things like Gigantic, Stephen Anderson's film, and whatever Dean Wellins is working on.


Would I want one? Only if the creators themselves wanted it... Though I do want to see more of the city itself, for Disney Animation's team really created a compelling world of animals that I'd love to explore in a future installment, be it a sequel or a short or a spin-off.


Are you still sick and tired Frozen mania? Do you want to see Pixar's newest original while dreading the new 22-minute Frozen featurette? Fear not... You can skip the Olaf mini-movie without having to leave the theater...

You'll just have to wait a few weeks...


The new poster for Olaf's Frozen Adventure confirms that the featurette will be attached to Coco in theaters for a limited time. In fine print.

Then, it'll be pulled and shown on ABC sometime in the winter... Which to me says "somewhere between December 21st-25th." Then you can go and see Coco without this thing attached. As a lot of you may know, this thing was originally intended to be shown on television, hence the 22-minute running time. The typical running time for a half-hour program, making room for 8 minutes of commercials.

Certainly an interesting move, because the last time Disney attached a 20-minute+ featurette to a main attraction (which was in 1990), they didn't offer this option. When Disney attached featurettes to movies, that was also the event, not just the movie in question. I suspect the inclusion of the Frozen special is just their way of trying to help Coco, in case that movie has trouble on its own. I'm hearing some rumblings that imply that big ol' Disney isn't confident in Pixar's upcoming original picture. The marketing on that one started well, but I feel it's kind of dry now... There's less than three months to go, so they better get the ball rolling. We don't want another Good Dinosaur situation.

Are you going to stick it out? Or are you going to wait till Disney pulls the featurette? I'm there opening day, I don't mind having to sit through 22 minutes of Frozen stuff... Heck, it might be very good for all I care!

Speaking of Coco, Sony Animation now intends to go... Well... Head-to-head with them.

Sony Pictures Animation's next film, the outsourced Nativity story retelling The Star, is now set to open on November 17, 2017...



The previous date - Nov. 10th - gave it some breathing room, for Pixar's Coco will open on the 22nd, and is likely to be the more successful film. Why is Sony doing this? I have no idea, though The Star did end up costing $19 million to make, so I doubt it'll have much trouble at the box office. I'm also sure that Sony wasn't expecting a blockbuster out of this, but rather a niche Christian film... And we've seen how those have done. They're leggy little things. Add in the Christmas angle, yeah... I can see this thing making 4-5x its opening weekend gross.

This year, we've seen a few animated family movies open very, very close to each other.

Usually, animated family films are spaced out from each other, so that they get the best performance possible. Analysts and pundits tend to natter about things like "cannibalization," asking if there's "too many animated movies" being made, or some such nonsense... But I do believe that these films, since they are all family-friendly films, should be given enough breathing room. Legs tend to get cut off a bit, for the currently-playing film does lose some screens to the new flick on the block.

This year, we saw DreamWorks' The Boss Baby open a week before Sony Animation's Smurfs: The Lost Village. Who would've known that The Boss Baby would've made as much as it did? Smurfs could've gone either way, the new direction could've attracted audiences, or audiences would've said "skip" because of the last two movies. Boss Baby made bank, Smurfs just came and went. No cannibalization there, audiences chose what they wanted to see. If Smurfs was a must-see to many Americans, it would've performed well against Boss Baby. If Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3 came out in 2011, they wouldn't have affected each other much. Thing is, these days in particular, average moviegoers are getting choosier and choosier.

We're hearing of record box office lows right now, we're having the worst summer since the early 90s! But let's put that aside for a second and look into this whole "cannibalization" thing...

Next year, Warner Animation Group intends to release Smallfoot the week before Goosebumps 2, a live-action family film wearing the Sony Animation badge. Release date chess has been played frequently these days. At one point, Hotel Transylvania 3 and Warner's Scooby-Doo movie shared the same spot. Paramount/Nickelodeon's Loud House movie is set to open the week before Fox/Blue Sky's Nimona, and plenty of other clusters are on the schedule.

Now this wasn't much of a concern nearly 30 years ago, when there were fewer movies and certainly less forms of visual entertainment competing aggressively for your attention: Netflix, Hulu, streaming services, everything. In 1987, you had what? Some TV channels, maybe an 8-bit gaming system, radio, books?

In them olden dayes, animated competition was seemingly going to be continue being a thing as the animation industry was in the early stages of a 2nd Golden Age...

After a lull 1987, two major studios went head to head during the holiday season of 1988, and both came out as winners... Disney and Universal/Don Bluth.

It's a strange scenario nowadays, but in 1988, it just happened. It's even weirder when you consider that Disney's feature animation was just barely breaking out of a box office lull at the time. The Black Cauldron failed to recoup its costs in 1985, The Great Mouse Detective made around the same amount but wasn't a failure because it cost less than half of Black Cauldron's budget. Don Bluth and Universal proved to the industry that animation could still make big money, for their An American Tail broke records and did quite well in late 1986. So well that it made Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg re-think getting rid of feature animation at Disney altogether.

Disney didn't fire back with a picture in 1987, while Bluth and Steven Spielberg were already hard at work on their next big animated feature for Universal: The Land Before Time. Disney spent 1987 developing what would become Oliver & Company, and they slated it for a Thanksgiving 1988 release. The same date The Land Before Time was occupying. Consider... That was a huge risk. Disney was coming off of a flop and a rather come-and-go feature, and the hybrid movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was distributed under the Touchstone banner and was - at the time - far removed from what was going on in feature animation. (Roger Rabbit appears to have finally been moved under the mainline Disney label, like The Nightmare Before Christmas a decade ago.)



Oliver & Company was hardly the work of the mouse on its game, as it was a gimmicky, hip film that would just be another generic 80s cartoon when you strip away all the pop star cast and attitude. Katzenberg was essentially overseeing a mid-aughts DreamWorks movie with this film, but its box office prospects were promising because of the more commercial elements. Here was a Disney animated film that touted contemporary 80s pop stars like Billy Joel, Bette Midler, and Ruth Pointer (of The Pointer Sisters, for any young'uns reading this), among others. It was modern, it was full of attitude, it was "with it." Nowadays, it's more of a kids' movie than a family movie, one that attempted to keep adults interested with elements that are now dated. You can say that applies to a lot of animated films being made today.

Bluth's film had An American Tail behind it, plus Spielberg was back to produce alongside George Lucas. Universal mounted a big campaign, and the movie boasted technical wizardry, dinosaurs, and Bluth's signature darkness. (Even if a lot of what he wanted in the film was killed at the hands of Universal executives.) So in short, the animation industry saw its first major head-to-head feature film competition nearly thirty years ago. Now I do know that back in 1982, Hanna-Barbera's Heidi's Song opened the same day as Looney Tunes clip-show movie Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales, but neither of those made a mark, so it's not really worth looking into in this context.

Domestically, despite slacking in the first couple of weeks, Oliver & Company narrowly beat Bluth and reclaimed the "highest grossing animated film on initial release" crown. This was, after all, back in the day when major theatrical re-releases of animated movies were much more common. In 1988, Snow White was still top of the box office mountain when you added all of its re-release totals: Around $150 million or so. The Land Before Time didn't walk away empty-handed, for it settled for being the second highest-grossing animated film (on initial release) ever. Worldwide is a mystery, Land Before Time scored $84 million everywhere, there are no records of Oliver's worldwide grosses, so no clear winner there.

In the end, the risks all paid off. Disney Feature Animation had a recent hit under their belt, their first since 1981's The Fox and the Hound. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a lovely bonus, and it more than helped re-ignite the public's interest in animation.

So that all worked out... Disney and Bluth would go head-to-head yet again. However, after The Land Before Time was completed, Bluth parted ways with Mr. Spielberg due to creative differences. Bluth would do his next film, All Dogs Go to Heaven, for the company that distributed his first film: MGM/United Artists. Disney was readying The Little Mermaid, their first fairy tale love story in 30 years. Was Oliver & Company a fluke, and that good ol' Don would get the upper hand next time? Katzenberg warned the studio that The Little Mermaid could've underperformed and made less than Oliver (!) because... The film was about a female. (!!!) Does THAT sound familiar to you?


Rest is history... The Little Mermaid not only steamrolled the Bluth film, it also broke the record and grossed over $84 million stateside. Was it cannibalization, though? Would All Dogs Go to Heaven have fared better if it was released in, say, spring 1990? I know All Dogs has its fans, but it seems that audiences and critics just didn't dig it back then. Bluth's previous two films hit it big, All Dogs could've despite opening against the mammoth-by-comparison Little Mermaid... It didn't. It failed to make American Tail and Land Before Time numbers, which it could've.

Thanksgiving 1990 saw a minor competition. Disney's The Rescuers Down Under opened the same day as Warner Bros.' first feature-length animated release (that didn't happen to be a Looney Tunes clip-show) in years, The Nutcracker Prince. The former had its legs cut off before it could even run (thanks, Katzenberg!), the latter... You could say that it was barely even in the horse race to begin with. Don Bluth's Rock-a-Doodle, completed earlier in the year, almost got released around this time, but various distribution complications held up its release.


1991 saw a truly major head-to-head battle... Disney's Beauty and the Beast vs. Universal's An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Spielberg and a newly-formed studio called Amblimation pushed forward with the sequel to Bluth's smash hit without Bluth. They had serious guts scheduling it for Thanksgiving 1991, because American Tail II just seemed to be another upscaled cartoon and an inferior sequel to boot, and it looked like a barely-lit match next to the forest fire that was Beauty and the Beast.

Before that all went down, Amblimation actually had plans to go head-to-head with Disney every calendar year. At one point, their We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story was aiming to occupy the same date as Disney's Aladdin in 1992. (You guessed it, Thanksgiving week!) After Beauty and the Beast went on to become a barreling blockbuster smash, Amblimation's heads decided to not go up against the titan. If Bluth could lose, what made them think they could do it with a film that wasn't a sequel? We're Back! opened in Thanksgiving 1993, which Disney miraculously left open because of production difficulties with The Lion King. The film bombed. Balto tried to avoid Toy Story in late 1995, it still came up short. Amblimation closed, a chunk of its crew migrating to a newly-formed DreamWorks.

Sometimes, Disney barged in on others: The Lion King saw a little surprise re-release the same weekend as Nest's The Swan Princess, completely pummeling former Disney director Richard Rich's new feature. Don Bluth's Anastasia faced the re-release of The Little Mermaid, Bluth won, but his movie was no smash. Hemdale tried to get a word in before Disney, with the summer 1994 release of The Princess and the Goblin... But Lion King or no Lion King, it just didn't work out.

The ones behind competed with each other. Fox/Kroyer's Ferngully: The Last Rainforest - after evacuating Thanksgiving 1991 - opened a week before Don Bluth's Rock-a-Doodle, the former did okay, the latter flopped. Filmation's Happily Ever After released the same day as Miramax/Film Roman's Tom and Jerry: The Movie, both of them flopped. Disney got the MovieToons' picture A Goofy Movie out about a week before MGM released Bluth's Alan Smithee'd The Pebble and the Penguin, the penguins sunk while Goofy Movie did okay business. By around 1995, it was clear that most of the non-Disneys were being overseen by executives that just wanted that Disney money, cranking out malt-o-meal films that didn't have much in them for the adult audiences that flocked to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.

I'd say the last big battle of the 90s was A Bug's Life and The Rugrats Movie opening so close. Pixar's second-ever movie vs. the movie based on the smash hit Nickelodeon show. While the bugs won, the babies did quite fine - The Rugrats Movie was the first non-Disney/Pixar film to cross $100 million at the domestic box office. No cannibalization there, the two movies were bound to do well. Antz could count, but that opened nearly two months before A Bug's Life. That was different battle right there.

After that, most things were reasonably spaced out. Two weeks apart is pretty desirable. Flash-forward to now...

Boss Baby may've outgrossed Smurfs by a country mile, but the latter still tripled its budget... Sony views it as a failure, probably because it didn't make as much money as the last two films - $563m and $347m did.


Their expectations for The Star must be tempered, because moving it to the week before Coco could be seen as a risky move... Though it could attract certain audiences that don't have skeleton movies in their planners. Even if Disney themselves may not have much faith in Pixar's latest original movie, it seems certain that it'll easily beat The Star. In a way, Sony Animation is kind of doing something new here. They've made a family film with The Star, but a very niche one. Think of it as, say, the Miracles from Heaven/War Room of current animated movies. A movie meant for a small faction, it's not doing the 4-quadrant thing most other animated films vie for.

Add to that, their willingness to put it so close to the animated movie that's likely to get everyone in (that is, if it even does, or if Olaf has to come to the rescue), yeah... I think this is kind of new in a way. Now, remember last year? In August, Kubo and the Two Strings and Sausage Party opened a week apart. One was a family adventure story with bite, the other was a raunchy adults-only comedy. If Kubo had a marketing campaign that got more folks interested in seeing it, it wouldn't have had trouble at all, and it would've gone neck-and-neck with Sausage Party... Because both were different movies. Animation is not a genre.

So this November, a Christian film will open close to a family adventure. Now how long till an animated feature for a PG-13 crowd or a crowd that prefers a certain kind of movie opens next to a four-quadrant film? Instead of throwing kiddie-only movies in front of family features, why not... Counteract with an adults-only picture? Or something for a crowd not looking for an adventure-comedy?

Maybe we aren't so close to this scenario, but something in this release date change is making me think...

I'm a week late, due to the relative lack of feature news here and there, but...

Last weekend's box office...


Well, to the shock of no one, The Weinstein Company's belated release of the Americanized French movie Leap!... Didn't quite leap last weekend. It barely raised its heels. Debuting with a very soft $4.7 million, the attendance is much lower than that of Doogal's opening weekend results. Mr. Weinstein's "re-imagining" of the pretty okay-received Ballerina also scored mostly negative reviews. Look closer, though... Forget Rotten Tomatoes' almighty percentage number and look at the tiny-print average rating.


You'll see that the original Ballerina - which has around a 73% on the site - has a 5.7 average rating based on the 20 or so European reviews of the picture. The American score rounds out to 4.9, so that's not really much of a night-and-day difference. Either way, it seems like Weinstein didn't enhance nor completely destroy the film... Proving that he should've just, once again, left it alone.

Releasing it at the end of August also made no difference whatsoever. The film probably would've performed similarly if released in March or April. From everything I'm hearing, it's really just a movie for the younger set and not a full-blown faaaaamily picktcha.

Behind Leap! is The Emoji Movie, still legging it up, looking to perform similarly to Sony Pictures Animation's first film, Open Season. Down 43%, it's likely to top $80 million here, and it has collected $145 million worldwide. Not amazing, not terrible. It's coming close to tripling its $50 million budget. I still don't think that Sony will really view it as a big success or anything, because they didn't say that about Smurfs: The Lost Village, which also had - and tripled - a small budget. If Sony Animation wants that proverbial big-time blockbuster that'll put their highest-grossing film to shame (The Smurfs, $563 million), they may get the picture: Something like The Emoji Movie is not the answer.

Though it opened after Sony's film, The Nut Job 2 is in the next position, as it slips further and further. It fell a pretty rough 54%, currently stalling at $22 million here - just a tad bit above the first film's opening weekend. 3 1/2 years ago. It's only out in a few territories right now, bigger markets like Brazil and France don't get it until mid-September and October respectively. According to IMDb, this movie will open in Australia in August of 2018... Damn! Apparently financed by some Chinese companies, the movie doesn't appear to be set for a Chinese release. I wonder where ToonBox's future lies...

Despicable Me 3 saw a little re-expansion, alongside some other hit films this year. Baby Driver's back in theaters as well, if you haven't seen that one yet, see it before it goes! Despite the expansion, Despicable Me 3 didn't rise, it dropped about 15%. Not terrible, but not great. $254 million here, $975 million worldwide. It's probably going to hit the big billion, though it is out everywhere now, so how much further will this behemoth go?

Far behind is Cars 3, dropping 32%. It is crawling its way to $150 million. It'll expand this Labor Day weekend and get there, as it's getting the usual Labor Day Pixar boost. Up to $325 million worldwide, it is millions away from topping the worldwide gross of The Good Dinosaur and not being Pixar's lowest-earning film. Interestingly enough, the picture opened in China with an okay-ish $10 million. Legs can go either way for the Chinese release, but I doubt this will be some breakout over there... But stranger things tend to happen in movieland, especially animationland. Who knows, Cars 3 and its unabashed American-ness could somehow resonate with Chinese audiences and gross $300 million over there, saving the film from being a box office loss... But I'm pretty sure it'll just come and go over there, and that the film overall will miss $400 million worldwide.

Anyways, all is quiet in the water until The Lego Ninjago Movie comes out. At this point, I'm seeing a Storks-esque performance, for a think the marketing for this one has been ho-hum overall. The trailer was really cool, but it doesn't have that presence, as far as I can see. I expect somewhere in the low-to-mid 20s, down from my original mid-30s prediction I made back in December. Either way, it's going to do fine.

In other animation news, the up-and-coming feature animation side of long-running VFX house Original Force saw a good-sized rumble...


Though their debut feature-length animated movie isn't out till next spring, the co-presidents of Original Force Animation are out: Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins.

Two veteran animation producers with a background in DreamWorks and Sony Pictures Animation, they apparently want to return to movie producing after spending so much time building another studio. In a statement, the two indicated that Original Force was up and running with a "strong team" in place, the very team that made their Duck Duck Goose happen. Of course, as we all know, that's being released by Open Road in April and a trailer has been out for some time.


Cox and Rabins will, however, continue working with Original Force Animation. The two are attached to the studio's next film, which got a rather low-key unveiling, Ten Lives. I can only guess that it's about a cat who somehow gets one extra life. Duck Duck Goose, Ten Lives, seems like the studio will be making movies with titles based off of animal-based sayings and puns. What's next? Baa Baa Black Sheep? Holy Cow?

Anyways, I still wish the best for Original Force. While I have mixed thoughts on the Duck Duck Goose trailer, I am willing to be surprised. Will they make a real splash (like the poster for the above film says)? Or will they be another animation studio making stale kidvid-style pics? Who knows. Apparently a lot of projects they had in development, such as QQ Speed and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, were shuttered. Some of those, I think, sounded pretty cool.


Sometimes, big bits of news will slip right by my radar...

One of them happens to be from the enigmatic Paramount Animation slate, a line-up of animated features that got off to a rocky start.

Anyways, this bit of news is OLD. Back in June 2016... Yes, this is very embarrassing... Den of Geek announced that J. J. Abram is directing a new film for them, and no, it won't be that previously-announced Beastlies film...

Instead, it's called The Flamingo Affair...


So far, all we know is this: It's a Las Vegas heist movie starring pink, long-necked birds. Pamela Pettler, who wrote three spookier animated features including the PG-13 adaptation of the short film 9, will pen the script. The other two animated films she worked on were Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and the mo-capped Monster House. Pretty knockout combo, there.

Reported by The Tracking Board back then, it's very possible that this is all a hoax, because TB has been rather hit-or-miss. Some scoops are right, others turned out to be fake... But I think it's a fun premise that, if done right, could be a really good comedy. You know, a comedy that's not a matinee for 8-year-olds. The Vegas setting, flamingos, it being a heist film... What could go wrong? While Paramount's new animation initiative hasn't yet scored a home run that isn't a Nick-based property, it does sound like it has a lot of potential.

Paramount Animation has announced several projects, a lot of which haven't gotten off the ground and are presumably dead: Lino di Salvo's project, John Kahrs' Shedd, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Giant Monsters Attack Japan, an untitled sci-fi story, and the webcomic adaptation The New Kid. Slated films include the Nickelodeon show-based The Loud House Movie, the belated sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet, a third SpongeBob feature, and Ilion's Amusement Park... Which is supposed to start a Nick show. So mostly Nick stuff and Nick show pilots. A live-action/animation "Nicktoons" project is also on the slate.

Perhaps the safe stuff is just back-up, and that they'll eventually spread their wings. I don't know, they're still being very secretive. I was just hoping they'd be firing on all cylinders by now, considering that the new plan was put into action for two big reasons... One of those reasons being Gore Verbinski's quirky, game changing Rango. I was hoping to see more Rango-type films... Instead, after SpongeBob deux, we got Monster Trucks and were denied a wide theatrical release of The Little Prince. The rest of the films on the slate don't quite rivet me right now.

Anyways, The Flamingo Affair sounds like a lot of fun... And again, I know, I should've reported on this a year ago, but here we are. If I recall correctly, I completely missed the first-ever announcement of the 2018 picture Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad. So yeah, sometimes I make the occasional slip-up. Carry on.

The slowest weekend has hit us, and a four-day no less... The results are a bit interesting.

Few of the movies dropped hard, like, at all... Some movies... Rose.

In fourth place is Leap!, which went up 2%. Labor Day was kind, giving it a 32% jump. Now up to $15 million domestically (combining the earlier Canadian gross of Ballerina), this one might leg it up till The Lego Ninjago Movie hits. Funny side story... I went into work on Sunday and was a cleaner that day... Among the crowd that came out of a morning screening of Leap!, one person was talking about how the audio was "off," how the dialogue didn't match the mouth movements... See, even the audience knows your tricks, Weinstein!

Anyways, the film has collected $95 million worldwide overall. Over three times the $30 million budget... Ballerina, Leap!, whatever it may be, it's a success. I still reckon it would've performed fine here without all the little alterations.

The Emoji Movie fell 1.7%, Labor Day came to the rescue, it jumped 30% with the Monday gross added. $81 million here, $160 million worldwide. 3.2x the budget. It's undeniably making its money back, for sure. I suspect, at this rate, that it'll end up in the high-80s domestically and maybe somewhere around $175 million worldwide.

Despicable Me 3, thanks to the re-expansion, jumped back into the Top 10. Rising 42% for the three-day, 85% for the 4-day, the movie is up to $258 million here and $997 million worldwide. Expect Despicable Me four, five, six, seven, infinity. In terms of domestic attendance, it's around four million tickets behind Despicable Me uno's take. Still, when all is said and done, this will have scored the weakest multiplier for a Despicable Me movie. 3.5x, however, is still not too shabby and better than most animated movie multipliers this year. I don't get it... What does the general public see in this malt-o-meal animation?

The Nut Job 2 saw the biggest fall: 8%, but up 20% for the 4-day. $26 million here, $29 million elsewhere. Should've went straight to video, honestly.

Racing back to the Top 15 was Cars 3, which saw the typical Labor Day weekend re-expansion. This happens with most summer Pixar releases, and the surge finally got it past $150 million here. Worldwide, it's up to $344 million. It is now the second-to-least grossing Pixar film. Should settle for less than $155 million now, which makes it - domestically - the fourth highest-grossing animated movie of the year, behind Despicable 3, Lego Batman, and The Boss Baby. On a pleasant sidenote, Cars 3 will be the first Pixar film to be released on 4K Blu-ray! Now, we wait for a Disney animated classic - and not a new release! - to hit 4K...

Captain Underpants is currently at $103 million worldwide, over 2.7x the budget. Not too bad.



Remember how we were told that The Weinstein Company was gung-ho about their all-new animated movie label?

Turns out... The next film in their pipeline, The Guardian Brothers, isn't getting a theatrical release. In fact, you can watch it right now... It's on Netflix.


Who knew about this? Instead of trying to get it into theaters, the good folks at TWC decided to just dump it. No fanfare whatsoever. After how Leap! did on its opening weekend, it should come as no surprise. Few Weinstein animated pictures made substantial amounts of money (Hoodwinked!, TMNT), so what made them think a redubbed, Americanized Chinese movie would make bank? Instead, they just let it slip and onto Netflix it went. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the print of Leo the Lion use the Weinstein logo at the start of the... Er... Film? Weinstein, if anyone remembers, was originally going to theatrically release that flaming crap-bag.

Anyways, so much for the brand spankin' new Mizchief label, that label for movies that will enchant and entertain kids and their parents in theaters everywhere... Makes me wonder if those other announced projects will just go straight to Netflix. I also hear that this is not only dubbed (shocker!), but also heavily cut. It kind of sucks, but I'm used to foreign animated pictures getting this kind of shaft, especially from Harvey Weinstein. The original runs about 105 minutes, this version runs about 86 minutes. Nothing new here, one of these days, someone is bound to get it right. (Yeah right!)

Speaking of animation and China...


It looks like Oriental DreamWorks is just about cut off from the moon boy studio.


The inappropriately-named, Shanghai-based animation and movie house has been on the chopping block ever since Comcast's acquisition of DreamWorks Animation. After layoffs and project cancellations, it has now come to this... Universal looks to sell its stake in the unit. They currently own 45% of it, while Chinese companies hold the rest. Li Riugang of China Media Capital says it also boiled down to a difference in vision.

The writing was on the wall back in mid-2016. Oriental DreamWorks was Jeffrey Katzenberg's ambitious plan, back in the day when DreamWorks looked to make 3-4 $150 million-costing movies every calendar year. Of course that all bit them in their collective rears, lots of scaling down occurred. Oriental DreamWorks would co-produce films made in Glendale, but also make their own movies. Some live-action franchise-like movies were on the docket, and animated originals too. They co-produced Kung Fu Panda 3, and a version of that movie was made special for Chinese audiences.

Now, the thing is... Kung Fu Panda 3 wasn't an all-American-made movie like its two predecessors. One would assume that if it - already a movie set in ancient China that's all about martial arts - were a little more China-centric, it'd do boffo business, right? After all, other studios have done "pandering" of sorts. Marvel Studios - for example - added six minutes of footage in the Chinese version of Iron Man Three, and most Chinese film reviewers said the extra six minutes were insubstantial, just forced product placement. Kung Fu Panda 3 was completely squashed by the American-made Zootopia... A film that wasn't overtly anything, be it American or Chinese or whatnot. That was a very universal, very international-friendly movie... That audiences around the world happened to love. Thus, it collected $1 billion worldwide. Kung Fu Panda 3 still did very good, but was easily beaten by a relatively out-of-nowhere monster.

Once Comcast got into the picture, everything changed. Mainline movies were being axed, so ODW wasn't safe, and anything DreamWorks was doing in India got the shaft. Now the trades are saying that the 2019 picture Everest is still going to be a DreamWorks-ODW co-production, but a DreamWorks staffer told me on Twitter that it's all being made in Glendale... But that person deleted their tweet... So, who to believe?

Now what's even weirder is that Oriental DreamWorks is looking for new buyers, Warner Bros. could *possibly* be the one. I can only imagine where the unit goes from here on out, but one thing is for certain... Oriental DreamWorks is not part of DreamWorks anymore.

Cavemen, cold settings, and the coin...


At long last... A full trailer for Aardman's upcoming plasticine-mation film is here!


It looks a lot different from what I initially expected. It's truly a cavemen-meets-modern-world kind of story, and a much more modern world than I thought. The trailer, editing-wise, is actually pretty messy and all over the place, but the visuals are gorgeous and the scale looks massive. Bigger than previous Aardman pictures, I'd argue. All the details, the designs, it's all very, very pretty to look at. Despite the trailer's presentation, there are plenty of good laughs in here. Particularly the "kill him slowly" and stadium stumble bits...

Anyways, it's Aardman. That's all I need to know in order to get onboard. The UK gets the film on January 26th, we get it the same weekend as Marvel Studios'Black Panther, February 16th. That's also the weekend after Sony Animation/Animal Logic's Peter Rabbit, and the release is being handled by Lionsgate, so I don't really think that it's going to make much of a mark here in the states. It's sure to make some good bank throughout Europe, though. I guess we should just be grateful that it's getting a wide American release to begin with...

Now I wonder when Lionsgate will release a trailer here. Will they just re-use this one? Or cut up a completely different one? Because we didn't even get the teaser here, they're - expectedly - slacking. Lionsgate's next family release - My Little Pony: The Movie - is next month, so I expect it turn up then. Part of me hopes we actually get it in time for the release of Lego Ninjago at the end of the month...


You think you've heard enough of the Frozen featurette that's being attached to Pixar's next original? Well, new, tiny samples of the songs are out...


Well, they certainly sound very... Erm... Frozen. They're just small little bits, so I don't have any firm opinions. I'm numb to Frozen, so nothing really stuck out to me in these snippets. What's more interesting to me is that a bit of news confirms that the featurette will play a big part in setting up the sequel, which will not be titled Frozen 2.

On the Coco end of things, we're finally getting a legitimate, full, 2 1/2-minute trailer sometime soon. The Alberta Film Ratings trailer page, always reliable it is, confirms this. It's not surprising that a trailer for Pixar's next is around the corner, being a fall animated release from one of the Walt Disney Company's animation houses, and usually the full trailers for those debut around September. Usually in time for the family movie that opens every late September. This year, that very family film is Warner Animation Group's The Lego Ninjago Movie. Similar fare like My Little Pony will follow next month.

Many have noted that Coco has been (in terms of the marketing) playing second-fiddle to Olaf's Frozen Adventure. The campaign for Pixar's Day of the Dead tale started with a great teaser, but eventually it quieted down throughout the summer, as the first trailer (really, more of a second teaser) didn't create much of a stir. At least with the general public, on the Internet the movie unfortunately has created one pool-pah after the other. Various little bits and pieces of the picture came about throughout the summer, but I feel most of the promotion came from director Lee Unkrich himself.


I have... A lot of thoughts on Coco and its box office prospects, let's just put it that way for now. Initially I was confident that the picture was going to do fine, but now? Not so much. Will I detail my skepticism on here later? Maybe, but I'll give you the skinny... I'm concerned. Very concerned. This picture needs to be a hit, and as the days go by, I'm really beginning to think that Disney's marketing department has little confidence in it and are positioning the Frozen short as its booster. Not a horrible thing to do, I mean, other floppy Disney releases could've benefited from this kind of luxury... But yeah, it all implies that The Walt Disney Company is a bit worried about Pixar's latest original movie.

That isn't good, fellas. A Pixar film shouldn't ever really be in trouble, though box office worry-warting about this studio's output has been a thing since, say, the release of Monsters, Inc. Hit after hit, it seemed impossible... Pixar simply couldn't have a box office loss, till The Good Dinosaur showed that even they weren't invincible. Coco, I thought, had "hit" written all over it because it's the usually different and fresh sort of story you come to expect from Pixar, while Good Dinosaur was a strange and divisive anomaly whose performance could be chalked up to certain things outside of the movie itself. (i.e. lazy marketing, Star Wars.)

Anyways, I wonder if Coco's new trailer will start a last-minute aggressive marketing campaign that will tout the movie as an event. Either that, or it'll just be another trailer and the film will have to rely on Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Sven, and company to get a desirable opening week gross.


Most of the animation packed up and went home.

An animated movie also no longer holds a certain record: The biggest opening for a September release. Sony Animation's Hotel Transylvania 2 handed the crown to the gargantuan It, which scored $123 million on its opening weekend, proving once again that R-rated films, the horror genre, and non-summer/holiday season releases can be heavies. I have yet to see the film, but I am looking forward to it, and I can totally see why it exploded. Hey, here's a radical idea... Can we some day get an animated adaptation of a Stephen King novel?

As my writing buddy Mister Coat joking told me, "You know what to do, Genndy. Send in the clowns!"

Anyways...

Leap! fell 49%, it's up to $15 million in the US, $98.9 million everywhere. Close to the one-oh-oh. In a way, the Weinstein Company did do something right - they helped get this small French-Canadian production past one-oh-oh at the worldwide box office.

The Emoji Movie tumbled 53%, $82 million here, $170 million everywhere.


While Despicable Me 3 still rolls in over 1,000 theaters, it fell 62%. Ticket-sales wise, it's still the least-attended film in the series, domestically. Matter, that does not... The film grossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming the 6th animated film ever to hit the mark. It now shares the ranks with Toy Story 3, Frozen, Minions, Zootopia, and Finding Dory. What gets there next? I'm thinking The Incredibles 2, if not that, then... Secret Life of Pets 2? Toy Story 4? That untitled LAIKA film? Will some pretty successful animated film from the past 7 or so years get a sequel that unexpectedly spikes like Despicable Me 2 did? Maybe one of a wrecking variety? I don't know!

The Nut Job 2 got it rough once again, falling 72%. $27 million here, $36 million everywhere. It had some domestic legs, but it's not enough. The $40 million picture, perhaps, should've been a direct-to-video cheapquel. With all due respect to the filmmakers who actually tried to make this sequel better than the maligned first movie, it perhaps was not meant for theaters: A sequel few folk asked for, and quite frankly, from what I saw of the film (and I saw big chunks of it at work), it seemed like one of those harmless CG kids' movies you'd see on an early noon weekday on Cartoon Network.

Cars 3, after a turbocharged surge over Labor Day weekend, lost nearly 2,000 of those screens and popped all four of its tires as a result. Down 83%, it's pretty harsh for a post-Labor Day Pixar drop. It's at $350 million worldwide, nothing special.

Captain Underpants still unravels somewhere in America, but the domestic gross is the same. $73 million here, $104 million everywhere, still not out everywhere else. Should comfortably land somewhere above $110 million when all is said and done.

The next round of marketing for Pixar's newest original film Coco has begun!

The poster... I love it...


Except for Miguel's pose. Ya know, just to remind the audiences that this kiddie flick is gonna have... Attitude!

Instead of focusing solely on some characters or little gags, this poster has it all... Tons of characters, both our world and the Land of the Dead, lots of color and details, and the petal bridge/guitar joining it all. It's a very, very appealing poster and the perspective is wonderful. Colorful, too! One of the best for an animated film in the past couple of years, and a film in general, too! Most live-action movie posters nowadays are just photoshopped mush. (Spider-Man: Homecoming is a recent example of a major offender.) Few live-action movies these days get great posters, The Last Jedi being one of them.

I wish I could say the same about the trailer...


Now, if you are new here... When I criticize trailers, I criticize the construction and presentation of trailers. The editing, the pacing, the rhythm, and whatnot. American animated movie trailers have been committing this sin since roughly the early aughts: They are so hyper and all over the place. Establishing the narrative and characters, among the eye-catching things (gags, money shots, et al.), in 2 1/2 minutes is an art in itself... Often times, the people who make these trailers usually do their job right. Several animated movies with awful trailers have done well, including a lot of Pixar's.

For me, an editor and someone who loves watching trailers old and new, they can be a chore to watch. I'm just not a fan of the loud, aggressive ping-ponging between information on the story and the jokes. Like the 2 1/2-minute is on crack or something!

The premise is set up nicely in the first 40 seconds or so, then it goes a bit haywire. This is par for the course... It's nowhere near as offensive as some other trailers, but I think it could've some better structuring. They establish so much here: Living people aren't allowed to wander the Land of the Dead, Miguel teams up with Hector to find Ernesto de la Cruz, Miguel has to race against time, there's some rule that if people don't remember you you disappear, somehow Miguel can change that- it's all so fast! Probably for the better, but still.

Also, why 'Bittersweet Symphony'? Coco may not be a musical, but it's a picture rooted heavily in music... Why couldn't the trailer use one of the film's songs? Does Disney marketing still assume that people won't go and see song-based films or full-on musicals? It also brings up an interesting, if not ages-old question... Does using popular or pre-existing songs in trailers really make an impact? Brief answer, yes, in special cases. Very few animated film trailers, however, have done this properly in my opinion.

So... What did I like? Just about everything else! The movie's gorgeous-looking, and I'm happy to say that Pixar's Land of the Dead really stands on its own and felt really immersive. It and The Book of Life's version compliment each other, both have their merits. While Pixar is more Rembrandt than Picasso, their portrayal of this world looks delightfully weird and intricate. I may be tired of photorealism in CGI, but I still love Pixar's sense of art direction and character design. I've gotten used to their skeletons now, I think it all works.

Will it work on audiences? That's the big question... I'll wait it out, to see what the tides are like. Will it generate good buzz? Bad buzz? Or will nothing change?

Aside from all the Day of the Dead-related stuff, here's a big Mouse slate update...

It may all be live-action news, but I think there's some twinkle of animation news in there somewheres...


Star Wars: Episode IX, in addition to finding its new director (returning face J. J. Abrams, so much for his rumored animated Las Vegas flamingo heist movie happening anytime soon), has gotten itself a new release date: Disney has moved the picture from May 24, 2019 to December 20th of that year. It's not shocking, considering how The Last Jedi went from a Memorial Day release to a Christmas season release, and it's also not shocking because of the big director change and recurring script issues. The only new wave Star Wars movie that looks to break that new tradition is the still-untitled Han Solo movie, which is still on track for a Memorial Day 2018 release...

Of course, some are asking... Will it affect Frozen 2? Episode IX probably won't pose any problem to the Walt Disney Animation Studios sequel. Guaranteed smash right there, even if Frozen Fever might've worn off in some areas. Still, I think it's a lock for a huge gross internationally, should it do so-so business here. For me... All that matters is whether the audience is interested or not. If they're interested, it opens well, so it won't have to deal with strong competition later on that may obscure it. We know Good Dinosaur opened with so-so numbers and then got engulfed in The Force Awakens' flood, while Moana held up just fine despite Rogue One opening soon afterwards. Illumination's Sing legged it up something fierce throughout this past holiday season, despite Rogue One playing next door.

If the audience wants to see a film from the get-go, it's all set. Let's dispel this idea that quality always determines box office. It does not... If it did, Logan Lucky would've made it past $50 million by now. (Go see it if it's still playing near you, it comes recommended. Have you even heard of it?) If quality drove box office, all the previous Transformers sequels wouldn't have soared as high as they did. It's all about what the audience wants to see, and sometimes they don't agree with me, you, or critics. How Coco fares on opening week - with an Olaf trinket in its arsenal - and how it'll hold up against The Last Jedi remains to be seen, but it's gotta lock a strong opening gross in order to be all set and ready to go. Another discussion for another day.

Other live-action news, for the heck of it... The long-gestating adaptation of Artemis Fowl has a firm concrete release date - August 9, 2019 - but no one is attached as of now. I don't see Kenneth Branagh's name anywhere. The live-action Aladdin has taken Episode IX's original Memorial Day 2019 slot (that reminds me of how Disney released Prince of Persia Memorial Day weekend in 2010), the previously undetermined 11/8/2019 live-action "fairy tale" turns out to be Nicole. Nicole is a Santa Claus story where Santa is a woman, and she's played by Anna Kendrick. The live-action take on Winnie the Pooh is slated for August 3, 2018 - there is no title, but the working "untitled" stamp implies that Christopher Robin will be part of the name. They must be careful, for A. A. Milne biopic Goodbye Christoper Robin is coming.

Curiously, Magic Camp - from Freaky Friday director Mark Waters - was completely removed from the schedule. Initially pegged for April 6, 2018, it's TBD... The black hole, per se. Either Disney revives Touchstone and quietly releases the picture under that label, or they dump it to video... Perhaps their upcoming streaming service. It began filming back in December, and didn't have any kind of release date for a long, long while. Reports said it was a microbudget film, but I was told it was beefed up to big budget status. Troubled production? Or something Disney's just not interested in? From the sound of it, it appears to be a small Odd Life of Timothy Green-like film. A pal of mine says it was test screened recently, and things might be... Erm... Not so good for the picture. We shall see.

Whatever happens, there is some good news here... Despite some remakes/retreads, there's hints at more live-action pictures that are things Disney hasn't really done before. I think Artemis Fowl has been a no-brainer for them for a long while, and I'm glad that Lucasfilm/Abrams will be able to take its time on Episode IX. The Christopher Robin film at least is a new take on Winnie the Pooh, though admittedly... It's going to suck to see that thing outgross the 2011 Winnie the Pooh, which Disney left for dead. The female Santa movie could go either way, and Magic Camp is a curious production. I have no interested in Aladdin 2019.

Big doins' at the house of mouse...

Coco, Lego, Croods... CLC kinda day...


Completely absent from the newest trailer, the songs from Pixar's newest original Coco have been revealed through small samples...





The first of the trio is the Robert and Kristen-Anderson Lopez contribution to the film, and it's catchy as all get out. Very late 50s/early 60s-sounding, I think they got it just right. This would've been perfect in the trailer if you ask me.

The second song, according to Entertainment Weekly, is sung by Miguel and Hector at a talent show in the Land of the Dead, probably a big rousing mid-movie moment that leads up to a setpiece... From the sounds of it, and from a few moments I singled out from the trailer. Unlike the Ernesto de la Cruz song, this one goes for a different genre: Jarocho. Germaine Franco, who did the music for Dope, wrote this song with co-director/writer Adrian Molina.

The third is a Huapango-type song, a more traditional and folksy-sounding number. Perhaps a climactic song? Or one that occurs close to the finish? That's what I kind of get out of it.

Either way, they all sound pretty good - the Ernesto one being the best - and I kind of wish that they were more part of the marketing. More than just these 40-second samples. I get it, Coco is not a musical. It's not a movie where people break out into song for the sole purpose of progressing the story or emphasizing their emotions/personalities... It's not in the vein of a Broadway play or a Disney Renaissance film or a Sounds of Music-type film, I understand that. I'm glad it's its own thing... But still, music is integral to the film, I think the marketing should be showing that. In a way that doesn't confuse people or make them think "It's going to be a musical???" Heaven forbid people sing in a movie.


It seems like The Lego Movie Sequel, currently pegged for a February 2019 release, has gone through a lot. Originally the film was set to be written by the writer-director team who did the first movie, the never-do-wrong dynamic duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Their treatment ultimately got chucked after they moved on to the direct the Han Solo movie, under Monster House co-writer Rob Schrab's direction the movie was going to be re-written by BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. A "space action musical," with - reportedly - a dystopian version of the Bricksburg setting. Wasn't Bricksburg already kinda dystopian, though?


Then earlier this year, Schrab left the production over... Wait for it... Creative differences. Trolls and Sky High director Mike Mitchell took his place, hot off the heels of the success of the former. With production in full swing in Canada, yet another change has occurred...

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will write The Lego Movie Sequel after all. While I was sure that the film under Waksberg's pen would be just fine, I'm happy to hear that these guys are back. We have no reason to worry about this sequel anymore, methinks. It all falls back into place: Lord and Miller were fired from the galaxy far far away, now they're here to make sure that the follow-up to one of the best animated movies of the decade - scratch that, century - will not disappoint.

Collider interviewed producer Dan Lin and animation director Chris McKay, the latter of the two directed The Lego Batman Movie. Lin says...

We are going to The LEGO Movie 2. The team is all back together, so it’s [Phil] Lord and [Chris] Miller, myself and Chris McKay. Mike Mitchell is the new voice who’s coming in to direct the movie. Chris and Phil are rewriting the script right now, but we’re in production. We’re picking up where the first movie left us, where the Duplo have now come and they’re attacking Bricksburg. It’s several years later, and you’re going to see the result of that.

I wonder if a lot of ideas have been chucked because of this change in direction. Anyways, this brings up something interesting... The Lego Movie ends where Finn's little sister is allowed to join in on the playtime, and she brings her set of Duplo blocks. The toddlers' version of Lego. It's a cute little ending, but that will be a big part of the sequel... With that, it'll explore how boys and girls play with toys, and - as the clickbait titles are howling - gender differences. McKay elaborates...

The Duplo represents Finn’s sister, Finn being the little boy from the live-action. The Duplo is her. The man upstairs said, “You’ve gotta play with your sister. That’s the thing you’ve gotta promise me. I’ll let you play with my world, but now you’ve gotta let your sister come in and play with your world.” Now, she’s coming in, and that’s the major thing that the movie is about. What’s different and similar about gender, when a boy plays vs. how a girl plays? What kinds of stories are there?

He continues...

Chris and Phil are super fucking smart and really thoughtful and sensitive writers. The kinds of questions and the interesting ideas that they’re getting into with this movie, it’s going to be like the first LEGO Movie was, where it’s about something else that’s really profound. I’m really excited about where the movie is gonna go because it’s about these things that are actual notions that people have that might even be unconscious biases, where people don’t even realize that that’s the way they’re looking at the world. You can do that in a movie like this, and still have it be a great musical with fun songs, and have action and all of the other crazy things we’re gonna get into with that movie. It’s gonna be a really special movie.

Like the first Lego Movie, it sounds very ambitious. A combination of all different kinds of things, but with the right connective tissue that holds it all together. I see that the overall idea has gotten some controversy and backlash (again, not helped by clickbait), but what I'm seeing is something that has potential.


I like the idea of the story looking at two perspectives: The older brother and the younger sister. Since it'll be jumping ahead to the present day (The Lego Movie will be *5* years old when this comes out!), I expect Finn's side of the story to feel a lot different.

At the same time, it could possibly explore how boys are assigned certain toys, and how girls are assigned certain toys. We all know how that goes, boys' toys are like Hot Wheels and Transformers and He-Man, girls' toys are Barbie and Littlest Pet Shop and Easy Bake Oven. McDonalds' Happy Meals often did boys-and-girls toy specials, though I don't know if they still do this. Anyways, it'd be like this: Boys get a Hot Wheels car in their Happy Meal, and girls get something Barbie-related. I remember the person at the drive-thru menu would ask "Boy or girl?"

I actually grew up in a household that didn't do this kind of thing. I played with my older sisters' Barbies and such, and she played with my Hot Wheels and action figures. No big deal, but this is an issue today. Heck, we see it with Disney merchandise. Marvel play sets and toys squashed out Black Widow, even a toy based on one of her action scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron! There were multiple Star Wars toy controversies over the past two years, the lack of Rey action figures, this, that. Ya know, because "what boy wants to have a girl toy?"

It actually reminds me of that line in Toy Story 3. "Whaddaya expect from a girls' toy?""I'm not a girls' toy! I'm not!"

So yeah, I think The Lego Movie Sequel can play with that idea and poke at it... I mean, that's what these movies have been about. Poking at things! Lego Movie sends up modern Hollywood conventions and even current animated movies to some extent. Lego Batman Movie is a 100-minute riffing on the Batman mythos, while Lego Ninjago Movie looks to have fun with kaiju films, kung fu movies, and maybe something else. So in short, I don't see how this is all political or whatever. I think it's something the script can riff on and have fun with it, because kids should be able to play with what they want, no?

The Lego Movie Sequel is over a year away, but it's good to know that Lord and Miller will be guiding it to the finish line.



The Croods 2, you say?

But didn't DreamWorks cancel that sequel to their 2013 box office smash?

They did. There's really no news on it, for it's not coming back, buuuuut...

A piece of test animation... 2D test animation... for the ill-fated sequel has surfaced recently. It was done by none other than James Baxter!


Yes... A little taste of what could've been. Perhaps this clip hints at a more modern society that the Crood family was set to come across in the sequel, or it's just a mere test that just happens to combine cavemen aesthetics with something pretty 50s-looking. I had seen a CG test for the film some time after the cancellation, though that was of the main characters and it wasn't much to write home about. This, on the other hand... It makes me, honestly, wish this sequel was never cancelled.

If you've been here for a while, you'll know that I was pretty critical of the first Croods. While it had very neat art direction and some really inspired moments, the whole of it was mostly just noise and hyperactive kid sugar-bowl fluff. Felt like a movie for 8-year-olds, not a family film. Since DreamWorks oddly makes sequels that improve upon their predecessors (How To Train Your Dragon 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Madagascar 3), I figured I'd give The Croods 2 a chance... That being said, I heard that the folk DreamWorks didn't really want to make this picture, and that Comcast unusually gave them the okay to torpedo it. I mean, if they didn't think it was working, maybe it's a good thing they stopped it.

A shame, though. Looks more interesting than Trolls 2 and Boss Baby 2 anyways.

Whatever happens with this series in the future, I don't know. The TV show is still a thing, and some reports implied that DreamWorks/Universal could revisit it somewhere down the road. Perhaps the ideas here can make their way into something else.

Box office, and big updates for feature animation. Ho boy!

The weekend box office was the usual humdrum.

Leap! continues to leg it up, falling 11% stateside and collecting $18 million to date, just about making 4x its opening weekend gross. Surreal to think, but yes... Leap! has had the best animated movie multiplier of the year. Behind it is... Despicable Me 3 with 3.6x so far.

The Emoji Movie hangs on. Down only 12%, up to $83 million here and $178 million everywhere. I think my hopes of the sequel going straight-to-video might've been squashed. I don't know.

Despicable Me 3 fell 8%, $261 million here and $1,015 million around the world. Mere millions away from outgrossing Zootopia and Finding Dory, to become the fourth biggest animated film of all time. I wonder why Finding Dory didn't cause a tidal wave worldwide, I expected that to easily destroy the record-holder: Frozen. Of course, it begs the question... What animated movie gets there next? I'd say The Incredibles 2 is potentially the next candidate for the billion dollar club... But don't rule out Sherlock Gnomes!

Nut Job 2 slowly fades away, dropping 19% and reaching $28 million stateside. What's worth noting is that The Nut Job was released on Martin Luther King weekend in 2014... So not only did it collect $19 million in three days, it made $25 million in four days. Nut Job 2 - six weeks into its release - has failed to match where Nut Job numero uno was by its second weekend.

Cars 3 fades as well, for the Blu-ray and 4K release are coming soon. 44% drop, in the 'k's now, up to $152 million domestically and $357 million worldwide. Barely doubling the budget so far. Italy just got the movie, Germany is the last market to get it - 10 days from now. Does it see one last worldwide surge? Or not? How big is auto-racing in Germany? One made $14 million over there, two made $18 million. Add another $15 million and the thing will be at around $370 million. Not awful, all things considered... If it happens. Coco better be a grand slam, and the marketing department better play their cards right.

Captain Underpants is still flying somewhere, as it's up to $73 million here and $104 million everywhere. The movie is on Blu-ray, so I reckon they'll pull it soon, though Boss Baby is still playing. Squeezing every last penny till they get to $175 million.


Speaking of DreamWorks, a major slate update has been announced... And a certain project has unexpectedly returned...

Months after Comcast acquired DreamWorks for nearly $4 billion, one of the projects put on the chopping block was an unusual one... The sequel to the studio's 2013 smash hit The Croods.

The spring-release caveman comedy, a box office rebound from a rough fall/winter for the studio, boosted confidence... A sequel was set for a fall 2017 release, then pushed back to Christmas, then pushed into the black hole that is the "TBD" slot... But for 2018. Not just TBD TBD, but TBD 2018.


Last autumn, it was announced that the film was going to be cancelled. Hearsay from the trenches indicated that DreamWorks themselves actually wanted to torpedo it, not Comcast. Comcast, it turned out, simply gave them the go-head to put the picture on ice. The Croods 2, interestingly enough, was one of a few projects from the 20th Century Fox-DreamWorks deal to get ported over to Universal. Their distribution deal with Fox - which began in 2013 with the first Croods, oddly enough - was supposed to end in the summer of 2018, but after the acquisition, a handful of Fox titles were moved. Some are still happening, some were ultimately cancelled by DreamWorks' new heads. The last Fox-DreamWorks movie turned out to be Captain Underpants.

I found it highly unusual that they'd be allowed to cancel a sequel to what was one of their biggest non-sequel releases of the last 5 or so years, especially since there's a Netflix spin-off series that's still going as of now. Then about a week ago, a piece of 2D test animation for the film done by James Baxter showed up online, showing what the sequel could've been like... Coincidence? Do these studios let these things slip out just so they can get some kind of reaction?

Anyways... The new report says the film is set for a September 18, 2020 release. Early reports said that Leslie Mann and Kat Dennings would be joining the cast, but it appears that only Mann will be in the sequel. Was Dennings' character the one in the 2D test animation by James Baxter? Are Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco still set to do this project? It's still just about three years away, so the lack of information makes sense...

Something tells me that they have restarted the film from scratch, and are perhaps going forward under a different director. The usual in animationland... Chris Sanders isn't exactly a rule-player, as evidenced by his still-unconventional Lilo & Stitch, and the fact that he was one of the first to leave Walt Disney Animation Studios after John Lasseter took over. (And honestly, I've heard the stories about American Dog. It was not the insanely awesome masterpiece-in-the-making you might imagine it would've been.)

Now, remember that collaboration with Blumhouse that was announced not too long ago? That picture, Spooky Jack, has a release date as well: September 17, 2021.

Universal might just position DreamWorks as their spring/autumn animation house, while Illumination will be the summer/holiday season house. Maybe, but it kinda lines up. 2019 has two DreamWorks releases, one in March (How To Train Your Dragon 3) and one in September (Everest), 2020 has Trolls 2 in April and now Croods 2 for September. 2021 kicks off with The Boss Baby 2 in late March.


What's also interesting about these dates is that they aren't the typical late September dates that Sony Animation and Warner Animation Group usually stake out. These fall below the 20th, and usually mid-September isn't a prime time for big-scale animation, but Universal's a marketing monster... They're sure to change that. If they can put 1/2 of the oomph they put into Illumination's movies, then the next wave of DreamWorks pictures will be blockbusters.

New plot details on Spooky Jack are here, per Variety...

"The story follows three siblings who move into an eerie new home and discover that all the creatures we’ve been told don’t exist actually do. They must handle some unusual squatters from mischievous leprechauns and the elusive Big Foot to a shy Boogeyman that won’t stop going bump in the night."
The earlier synopsis hinted at the kids going into the world of spooky monsters to fight a bigger evil, so that might explain the likes of the bogeyman and bigfoot (so many satsquatch/yeti animated movies lately, this, Everest, Smallfoot, etc.) staying in the house... Perhaps they're hiding in our world because their world is ruled by an evil overlord? Who knows, but it sounds intriguing either way. More spooky, horror-tinged animated features is totally fine by me.

So, DreamWorks' slate now... In relation to Illumination's...

03/01/2019 - How To Train Your Dragon 3
06/07/2019 - The Secret Life of Pets 2
09/27/2019 - Everest
04/10/2020 - Trolls 2
07/03/2020 - Minions 2
09/18/2020 - The Croods 2
12/25/2020 - Sing 2
03/26/2021 - The Boss Baby 2
07/02/2021 - Untitled Illumination
09/17/2021 - Spooky Jack

That's a lot of sequels from 2020 to early 2021... Also, so much for those "scaling back/doing one movie every year" rumors...

Now, Fox may have lost DreamWorks this year, but perhaps they got a new gain in return...


In the recent years, we've been seeing 20th Century Fox steadily build a big line-up of animated features, all of which are family-friendly films, some of them happen to be live-action/animation hybrids. (Boring!) Some projects are de facto Blue Sky productions, such as the upcoming adaptations of Nimona and Escape from Hat. Some, unusually, are not... Making one wonder what studios will be making them.

There are some exceptions. The studio that made the short film The Dam Keeper will be doing the feature adaptation, and the studio behind the short A Tale of Momentum & Inertia will also be tackling the feature version. So far, 12 non-Blue Sky projects are on their ever-growing line-up of animated family features.


Now, Fox is going big... Like old times, they'll have two studios now. Blue Sky in one hand, Locksmith in the other.

What's Locksmith? A British animation studio founded by Sarah Smith (director of Aardman's Arthur Christmas) and Aardman producer Julie Lockhart. Three projects are already deep in development, the first of which is aiming for an autumn 2020 bow. Their goal is to have a feature ready every 18 months, for Fox's CEO and Chairman Stacey Snider wants more animation and family fare to be made. Enough so that Fox can release one every calendar year, because Blue Sky doesn't do the one-a-year thing all the time. They sat out 2007, 2010, and they'll be sitting out next year as well. Fox has signed a long-term deal with the studio, which appears to be their answer to Pixar. Why's that?

Smith stated that all the pictures coming from this studio will be original, not based on any pre-existing IPs. No adaptations. That said, they will also be... Family comedy-adventures. Ones that, in Smith's words, will have "contemporary kids" in mind.

I don't quite like the sound of that. Sounds a little focus groupy for my taste, "Hmmm, what do the kids like right now?" It's this kind of thinking that leads to dated and gimmicky animated features, not works that'll hold up well 10-20 years later. But PR words are attractive, maybe Locksmith's upcoming work will be impressive. Smith, after all, helped direct one of the best Christmas films ever made. (Though ugly rumors insist that she was absolute hell to work with.) It's just cool to see a new animation studio founded by two women thrive.

Originally, Variety reveals, they were going to join forces with Paramount some time ago. That was when Brad Grey was the CEO, who was replaced for obvious reasons. The current CEO rejected Locksmith, so onto Fox they went... Now, they are locked into place. I wouldn't be surprised if we get the release on their first feature in the next couple of months. We are going to learn jack for the time being, they will be taking a pretty secretive route.

More animation is fine by me, but let's hope it's all good!

Three animated/family movie trailers... All in time for the release of The Lego Ninjago Movie! Though one of them isn't meant to be played before Lego Ninjago...

First off, a trailer for Wes Anderson's new stop-motion animated event is finally here... Isle of Dogs!


This is what happens when you approach animation with vision, not with focus group planning and a limited scope. It's an out-there, sci-fi tinged premise about a futuristic Japan that bans all dogs because of an epidemic! I mean, what a premise! This is not The Secret Life of Pets.

The animation and look of the whole thing is beautiful, Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox on enhancers. Lovely sets, Anderson's style is all over the trailer, the writing seems pretty tight! It also looks to be a film, not something concerned with keeping 5-year-olds entertained. I wonder if it'll be like Fantastic Mr. Fox where it is rated PG but really isn't meant to be a typical family film. An adult film that happens to be suitable for most young'uns to watch, but isn't really meant for them.

Either way, it looks amazing... I hope it gets a sizeable-enough release, being a Fox Searchlight title. It certainly looks and sounds far more exciting than most stuff coming out later this year and next year.

Yesterday, a trailer for Blue Sky's Ferdinand dropped. The second full trailer...

Fox marketing is doing a great job at making me not want to see this film. I liked that first teaser, wasn't big on the full trailer, this one... This trailer is a major load of what-the-hell?


Talk about a whiplash! We go from what animation can be to what animation shouldn't be, this Ferdinand trailer is almost desperate. The titular bull dancing to a pop song, the forced "we have celebrity voices!" bullcrap (ha ha I made a punny), the fart sounds which sound like stock fart sounds that have been dubbed over the scene in question, it's painful...

The movie itself doesn't look horrible. The teaser did a good job making it look like something I'd want to see, the first full trailer was the usual American animated movie trailer so I didn't mind too much. This trailer doesn't quite change my mind, because marketing has a way of making actually-decent things look awful. This trailer indeed takes the cake in that field, and more than anything, I hope Fox knows what they're doing... Releasing this thing against The Last Jedi and backing it with trailers like this, I'll be surprised if this thing does not lose money.

In a way, it reminded me of the final trailer Fox put together for DreamWorks'Trolls. The one with Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake talking about the film with various clips scattered throughout... Hey, that ensured a $44 million opening at the domestic box office, so maybe this kind of thing gets people interested? I don't even know, the audience is unpredictable.

Anyways... I still have hopes that Ferdinand will be a decent film, and that the trailers are just that. Trailers.

Lastly, the Animal Logic/Olive Bridge-produced movie that's wearing a Sony Pictures Animation badge... Peter Rabbit.

A little after that quietly-unveiled teaser debuted comes this...


I have little-to-no feelings on this film whatsoever. It looks like your typical goofy live-action/CG animals hybrid movie... The kind we've been seeing since Dr. Dolittle or so. The CG is undoubtedly nice-looking, but damn would this have looked lovely as an all-animated film with a style not dissimilar to the original illustrations.

Now, a similar kind of film, Paddington, had a bad trailer... The scene in that bad trailer was even in the movie, and the movie turned out to be pretty darn good. Speaking of which... Where is the next trailer for Paddington 2 anyways? It's out in Britian in two months! Anyways, maybe Peter Rabbit could surprise us, maybe not. Like I said earlier, I just really don't have any feelings on this one. These kinds of hybrid films just personally bore me these days.

So... Three trailers. One's amazing, one's terrible, one is so-so... Let's see how all three films turn out!

Starters... Here's a complete list of mainstream animated movies (including hybrids and Sony Animation's live-action/CG titles) that are currently set to open very close to each other...

10/06/2017 - My Little Pony: The Movie
10/13/2017 - Gnome Alone

11/17/2017 - The Star
11/22/2017 - Coco

02/09/2018 - Peter Rabbit
02/16/2018 - Early Man

04/13/2018 - Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
04/20/2018 - Duck Duck Goose

09/14/2018 - Smallfoot
09/21/2018 - Goosebumps 2

01/18/2019 - Playmobil: Robbers, Thieves, and Rebels
01/18/2019 - Pigeon Impossible

09/20/2017 - The Angry Birds Movie 2
09/27/2017 - Everest

02/07/2020 - The Loud House Movie
02/14/2020 - Nimona

04/03/2020 - Untitled Sony Animation Film
04/10/2020 - Trolls 2

07/24/2020 - Untitled Shannon Tindle Film (Sony Animation)
07/31/2020 - Untitled Paramount/Nickelodeon Hybrid

09/18/2020 - The Croods 2
09/25/2020 - Untitled Sony Animation Film

12/18/2020 - Vivo
12/25/2020 - Sing 2

Number one, for any newbies here... I don't believe in "animation cannibalization." Animation is obviously not a genre, but 95% of the theatrical animation market in North America is family-friendly fare.

That all being said, I still believe that these films - because a lot of money goes into animation, even smaller productions - need some breathing room. Up until this past spring, we've been used to animated movies opening no less than 2 weeks apart. This year, we're also seeing major drops in theater attendance and average families crunching their options... Supposedly the average American family goes to the movies four times every calendar year, so they narrow it down to events like Star Wars and whatever else is high on their lists. Chances are, it's not the types of films we champion.

So this past spring, The Boss Baby opened on March 31st, followed by Smurfs: The Lost Village on April 7th. Just a week apart...

Boss Baby was a $125 million-costing behemoth for DreamWorks, so they had the advantage of opening it first. Originally, they had planned on releasing that movie a week before the live-action Beauty and the Beast, they made the wise decision to push it back a bit. Sony, for some reason, felt that releasing Smurfs - a much lower-budget film - a week later was smart. Lost Village was a hasty reboot of the Smurfs franchise, coming off of two hybrid movies made by the same studio. The second of those two films happened to underperform... Makes one wonder how the cancelled Smurfs 3 would've done, because Lost Village made a measly amount here. While it tripled its budget worldwide, Sony Animation deemed the film a failure.

But was it the release date that affected it? Or was it the fact that audiences "moved on" from the little blue creatures? The Smurfs opened with a good amount back in the late summer of 2011, and legged it past $140 million domestically. August-September 2011 was a rather dry time for family entertainment anyways, and audiences seemed to actually like the critically-derided film. Smurfs 2 didn't open well, but the legs were just as great. $17 million opening, $71 million finish. Not bad! Smurfs: The Lost Village made around 3.4x its opening weekend gross... Most animated movies nowadays aren't enjoying the spectacular legs they once enjoyed, so I chalk it up to that as well. Again, families narrowing their choices... Probably scoped out Despicable Me 3 as one of their four moviegoing dates, along with... I dunno? The Last Jedi, Wonder Woman, and probably a Marvel movie.

Perhaps by next summer, theater business will be different... Who knows what will happen with attendance. The chains have to compete with other distractions, like Netflix and TV and other things. Every day I'm working at my local Cinemark, business has been rather dead - even on the weekends. So that begs the question...


If Boss Baby and Smurfs: Lost Village opened next to each other in, say, 2014... What would've went down? Would both movies do especially well? Maybe... But audiences can be choosy, and with a lot of kid-friendly animated options, parents do take note of what they're seeing in the trailers. If it looks like torture, they may just tell their kids "We'll wait for it to come out on DVD/Netflix/Redbox/what-have-you." It isn't "kids dragging the parents to the theater," like some analysts - who don't see animation as anything more than a babysitter - will lead you to believe.

It certainly isn't 2014 anymore, and it's certainly not 1988! Random year you may say, but if you know your animation history, it's when the first legitimate head-to-head battle between two major animated features took place: Disney's Oliver & Company vs. Don Bluth's The Land Before Time. Audiences dug both movies, and both of them were box office smashes, the latter of which breaking a new record at the time of its release. This combined success lead to more head-to-head battles, but Disney destroyed each feature: The Little Mermaid left All Dogs Go to Heaven in the dust in late 1989, The Rescuers Down Under - an underperformer itself - laid waste to The Nutcracker Prince, Beauty and the Beast absorbed An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.

Of course, in those instances, it was disinterest. Only a handful of audiences had the desire to pay to see things like Fievel Goes West and All Dogs Go to Heaven, some films - like The Nutcracker Prince - didn't even get the backing they needed. Two films - Rock-a-Doodle and FernGully: The Last Rainforest - fled the fall 1991 slot because of Beauty and the Beast, that didn't save them anyhow. Both of them didn't make blockbuster numbers in the quiet spring of 1992, the former outright losing money. If someone else had a feature as strong as Beauty and the Beast ready for a fall 1991 release, perhaps the head-to-head battle would've been more interesting.

So it was clear... Audiences chose the baby CEO over the third (technically fourth, maybe fifth) movie about the blue people.

But what about February 2018... Will audiences want to see both Peter Rabbit and Early Man? The latter's being distributed by Lionsgate, animation isn't one of their strong suits. I can imagine a decent-sized turnout for Peter Rabbit, but Early Man might have to rely on its overseas grosses, the usual with Aardman post-Chicken Run.

April 2018... Self-distributed Sgt. Stubby opens a week before a somewhat bigger production, Duck Duck Goose. One appears to be a straight and not-so-mainstream war story about a dog, the other has farting ducks and a goose getting a pig's arse slammed into his face. The former is being animated by Mikros, so I suspect the budget will be... Micro. Mikro. Anyways, that'll be a tiny picture, Duck Duck Goose surely isn't going to cost much as well, as it's being animated in China. The distributors of The Nut Job - Open Road Films - are handling it, so it should have decent-sized promotion and backing. I say it opens with around $5-15 million.

September 2018... Warner Animation's Smallfoot, which is being done up at Sony ImageWorks and will likely come back with a Storks-sized budget ($70m), opens a week before the Sony Animation-branded Goosebumps sequel. The first film made a good 3.4x its opening weekend, made $80 million stateside in the end, so I suspect the sequel will perform just as well. Smallfoot could leg it up like Storks did, or it could just come and go. Depends on how Warner Bros. markets it.

Obviously, someone is going to have to leave 1/18/2019, and I reckon it's going to be Playmobil, which is being distributed by Open Road. Fox has Blue Sky's Pigeon Impossible, obviously. They'll likely give that one a good-sized push. No Star Wars movie to dump it next to, like they're seemingly doing with Ferdinand.

September 2019... The Angry Birds Movie 2 is coming off a film that made a little over $100 million domestically, Everest is an original concept and I have no idea what the budget will be on the film because it's actually unclear whether it's still an Oriental DreamWorks production or a mainline Glendale DreamWorks production. Trades say it's the former, someone from DreamWorks told me it's the opposite. If it is the former, it doesn't have much to worry about, but still... Wouldn't Universal want a smash out of their second-ever DreamWorks Animation release?

February 2020... The Loud House Movie is probably going to be upscaled 2D, given that the show itself is a 2D animated show. So I reckon that'll be low-budget, plus animated films based on kid-friendly TV shows have a spotty track record. Rugrats and SpongeBob aside, most of them haven't made big numbers, some of them outright bombed. Fox/Blue Sky's Nimona is probably going to be a good-sized picture, given that Blue Sky - based in my home state, Connecticut - spends about $90 million on their individual movies.


Now we get to early spring of 2020... It's an untitled Sony Pictures Animation original vs. DreamWorks'Trolls 2 vs. an untitled live-action film from Disney. Three family releases, and a DC tentpole... All opening from April 3rd to April 10th... The Disney film will obviously be a PG picture, because their non-Pirates of the Caribbean PG-13 pictures (Prince of Persia, John Carter of Mars, The Lone Ranger) all went belly up. It's likely to be a remake, too... I'm sure it's going to be Niki Caro's live-action take on Mulan, and if so, everybody else ought to buckle right up.

Sony Animation spends little on their pictures. $50-70 million nowadays. I have no idea where DreamWorks' budgets will be post-buyout. Boss Baby cost $125 million+ just like Trolls 1, Kung Fu Panda 3, Home, and everything else they've released in the past few years. They're still based in Glendale, so I'm sure their features will continue to be quite costly... That being said, we can't underestimate Universal's marketing arm. If they put half of the effort they put into Illumination's films, into DreamWorks' films... They'll be blockbusters. Trolls opened fine enough this past fall, made a little under 3.4x its opening weekend. Will Universal make the sequel a smash? I don't think so... Trolls didn't have that simple pull that Illumination's films have, the pull that keeps them running.

If anything, I can see Trolls 2 opening significantly higher than the first film, but ultimately grossing around the same amount in the end. Sony Pictures Animation's chief, Kristine Belson, wants big hits from their upcoming crop of movies... Emoji Movie may have made a nice profit, but it was no smash hit on the order of a Pixar film or an Illumination film. Is this untitled April picture one of those very hits-in-the-making? Whose project is it? John Saunders' film? Michael Rianda's film? The Gorgon movie?

I think this set of weeks is going to prove something big. If all of these movies - keeping their release dates - do very well at the box office in the end... Very well as in, Sony's movie being a sizable success ($80 million+ domestic), Trolls cracking at least $120 million here, the DC film succeeding, and the Disney film making big bucks... If they all do well, that'll put a rest to the whole "animated movies cannibalize each other"/"there's too much animation" gabbing. Maybe it'll relieve the studios of the burden of release date picking, and by extension relieve me of having issue with these dates!

I mean obviously, don't open a $140 million-costing movie against Star Wars. That's a given... But a $60 million-something against a $120 million-something? Maybe. Even family features do fine in blockbuster shadows. Trolls wasn't crushed by Doctor Strange, Chipmunks 4 - costing around $100 million - opened miserably against The Force Awakens but still had excellent holiday legs. If you're opening against a blockbuster, have some caution. If your picture is lower budget, fear not! Something like Star Wars, for the time being, needs to be avoided by all good-sized movies. DreamWorks/Fox were smart to move Kung Fu Panda 3 away from The Force Awakens. I'm not sure how Blue Sky's Ferdinand will play out, but that doesn't have the budget of a DreamWorks film so it could be fine.

How will it all play out? Will we see that animated movies should be spaced out? Will we see these films all co-existing? Or will something unexpected happen?

We're back to the bricks with The Lego Ninjago Movie. How does it stack up?

Spoilers Ahead...

Going in, I knew next to absolutely nothing about Lego's toyline of the same name. Just a few details: It's ninjas (obviously), monsters, robots, action, this, that. Not that I cared, because above all I'm expecting a fun movie that doesn't require you to be a Ninjago scholar beforehand. You're mostly going for the action and father-son story, and I got just that.

I can see why there's a divide. The Lego Ninjago Movie is certainly not heady and textured like The Lego Movie, its messages and ideas are pretty standard and are things you've seen before in family-friendly movies. The Lego Ninjago Movie is certainly not a thoughtful deconstruction like The Lego Batman Movie was. It's not a commentary on martial arts films or action flicks, it just is one. A straightforward martial arts-tinged action movie with a 6-12 year old boy audience in mind. At times, the film may seem a little juvenile with its humor and its energetic "dude! awesome!" attitude that's been around since the 90s.

Unabashedly so, too.

But I'm not going to lie... I had a lot of fun.

Whoever the hell this movie may be for, I dug it. That said, it isn't a great film by any stretch, it is clunky in areas, chiefly in the first third. Directed by three and written by six (!), sometimes the film's dialogue and humor misses the hole, sometimes the script brings some real laughs and delights. The cleverness of the previous Lego films is indeed on display, and honestly... When your whole movie revolves around Lego minifigures trying to save their city from a live-action cat that's essentially a kaiju, how can one not get a kick out of this? It's silly, it's giddy, it doesn't take itself seriously at all. Yet there's a surprising amount of heart in the main storyline.


The film finds its footing once Lloyd Garmadon and his ninja force friends embark on a journey into a forbidden jungle to find the "ultimate ultimate weapon" that will save Ninjago City from Meowthra. The relationship between him and his evil, troubled father is pretty well-done for the most part, perhaps more than it - as they often say - needed to be.

The middle portion is where the film is at its most sincere, not trying to please a particular target audience - whether it's the young boy set that Ninjago was geared towards or adults who absolutely need "adult" jokes in order to enjoy a candy-coated animated romp. Its attempts to emulating Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's inimitable Lego Movie script often fell flat, the better jokes and bits of writing just come naturally. When it's being that straightforward, fun, irreverent adventure, it succeeds with flying colors. I found myself chuckling a lot throughout this stretch of the movie. I have to give them props for such effort, this could've been just a run-of-the-mill Ninjago adaptation that belonged on the DVD rack, but no... It does try to be a little something more, and actually does quite a fine job at it.

The final act, which is enjoyable and has the feely stuffs, is only undone by a super-quick resolution of the other ninjas' dilemmas. The live-action framing story of a boy in a relic shop is amusing, but adds little to the story. You could probably snip it all out and it won't affect the movie, but at least it doesn't intrude on things. Ever. It's only the beginning, and the end of the picture. Not like The Lone Ranger (an example off the top of my head), where it's often ramming its way into the room. Plus, the master himself is the extension of the store owner, who of course is played by Jackie Chan. (Chan and animation is seemingly one long-lasting combo: This, Kung Fu Panda, Jackie Chan... Adventures?)

Again, not everyone's going to like it, and I can see why. Not heavy on substance, not a laugh-o-minute crowd pleaser, The Lego Ninjago Movie is fine the way it is. A little sharpening on the first act's pace and writing, it's a near-solid film. This film could've come out in 2002 and it wouldn't have felt out-of-place. Likely not to have the shelf life of its two wonderful predecessors, Lego Ninjago Movie is like a candy bar. A nice little treat in between the more, erm, gourmet dishes? What's wrong with some sweets every once in a blue moon? Well-made sweets, that is.

In all, a blast, full of pretty visuals and colors, entertaining. I had a good time, and I can't say that about too many animated comedy movies that have come about in the past few years.

Box office, big trouble, big red dogs...

To the shock of some, The Lego Ninjago Movie didn't open so hot at the box office...


But really... Was it ever destined to be a big brickbuster on the order of the previous Lego films? The most optimistic prediction I ever made - back in December, no less - stated the final total would be around $115 million domestically. As time went on, I felt a more Storks-esque run (as that was another Warner Animation Group film that opened in the late September frame) was in store for this film... Turns out, that might be the case! A $20 million opening isn't horrible, as the film cost $70 million to make, the same amount that was poured into Storks.

The diagnosis has already been made. Apparently the trailer focusing on Lloyd Garmadon and his evil father was the problem. Apparently the idea of them having a bad relationship made all of the kids in the country collectively say "no!" to the movie. Gee, most of the kids that crowded my theater on Sunday were more than ready for the new Lego movie. If anything, they just saw "More Lego!" Also, with that in mind... I guess kids would hate the original Star Wars trilogy!


No... The problem was obvious. It was based on Lego Ninjago. If you're not in the know about these things, you're probably wondering "What the hell is a Ninjago?" It's a Lego line about ninjas and dragons and fantastical things and such, it was introduced in 2011 alongside a show that was aired - and continues to air - on Cartoon Network. Lego has had these sorts of toy lines and things for a long while, sets that cover many different themes and genres, some of them even came with well thought-out stories! If it isn't a movie-based series of sets (Star Wars, Harry Potter, et al.), then it's something like Lego City or Lego Space. I'd argue the early 2000s equivalent of Ninjago was Bionicle. Right down the sole female hero being the one with the water element.

Lasting a decade and getting a revival of sorts not too long ago, the Bionicle line was big business. I was 10-12 when it was hot on the block, and I actually really liked the designs of the various robotic characters and its sci-fi/fantasy mish-mash worldbuilding. I had a blast building those things, mutating them into different sorts of aberrations, and following the storyline. (It lost me in roughly early 2005, by that time my interests shifted to other things.) A couple of movies were even made, but they all went straight-to-video. For good reason... They probably would've never been major box office smashes, even in a time when computer animation was still this big novelty that the general public just couldn't get enough of.

(Though I guarantee you, if Bionicle: Mask of Light was some bigger-budget theatrical CG film back in the day, I would've begged my family to take me to see that a ton of times in theaters.)

Was Ninjago even ever the size of Bionicle? Well, I can't answer that, I'm not 10 years old! From my view, it seems like it's successful, but not the big deal that Bionicle was. Bionicle really was more than just a Lego toyline. Ninjago, despite being a multimedia series, just doesn't seem as vast, plus Bionicle spawned a lot of different things: Video games, the movies, comics, novels even! There were web animations, web-based games, events, this, that... It was a big deal. I'd argue it was, what, 2003's hottest toy?


If anything, Lego Ninjago did pretty well. I mean, just think about it... The Lego Movie was the first legitimate Lego film, lots of people went. Lego Batman was based on a beloved superhero IP and looked great, lots of people went. Lego Ninjago was based on something not-so-familiar, though its trailers - which I really enjoyed - still promised an irreverent adventure in the vein of its predecessors. It wasn't enough, nor was the presence of Lego bricks and minifigures. Lego Movie and Lego Batman Movie were "events,"Lego Ninjago Movie obviously wasn't of event-status. Just another family flick, Lego or no Lego.

The Lego Movie Sequel is sure to outperform this film by a country mile. If anything, Warner Bros. should be wondering about the future of the Lego standalone films and their release strategy. I think releasing Ninjago so soon after Lego Batman could've been a problem, some audiences could've seen that as overkill. Of course, we know that wasn't always the plan. Lego Batman once occupied the 5/26/2017 slot and got the hell out of dodge once The Last Jedi came crashing in, Ninjago was aiming for 9/23/2016 before Storks ended up taking that space. Happens.

In a way, I think the wait for The Lego Movie Sequel will be a breather. The film isn't out until February 2019, and who knows when Warner will unleash the next spin-off. If they're smart, they'll hold it off and build it up gradually. The Lego Movie series is not the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios and Disney can get away with opening movies like Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 mere months apart from each other. The same isn't applying to the Lego movies, so I'd say space them out for now and make more room for other projects, and try to get everyone interested. Ninjago, again, is a series for 6-12 year old boys. Limited demographic, there.

It also happens to be yet another animated film based on an animated TV series that didn't perform like gangbusters. Still, it's going to do a lot better than most films of its ilk.

What will future Lego spin-offs focus on? What is Jorge Gutierrez's Lego movie about? Is The Billion Brick Race ever going to be re-evaluated one day? Will more original standalone Lego movies not based on toylines like Ninjago fare better? Or not? Who knows... But I think Lego Ninjago Movie's opening weekend gross ultimately proved that the iconic bricks aren't enough... I'm curious to see how Warner Bros. goes about this series from here on out.

In other box office news, Leap! fell 55%, it's up to $23 million overall domestically ($20 million here, meaning the film pulled the 4x multiplier, the first wide animated release of the year to do so.) and $104 million worldwide. Despicable Me 3 slowly inches it way towards topping the tickets sales of the first movie starring Gru, the girls, and the gibbering yellow tictacs. It is also inching its way towards outgrossing Finding Dory and Zootopia. The Emoji Movie continues to leg it up, making $84 million here and $185 million worldwide, the film may ultimately fall short of quadrupling its budget. Sony's happy with that, as apparently stated in press materials for something. The Nut Job 2 finally crossed $40 million worldwide, big whoop. Cars 3 slowly deflates, topping $362 million worldwide. Germany gets it in three days. Captain Underpants is closing in on $110 million worldwide.

Summer's been over for a few days now, the movie season itself wrapped a little while back... Let's see where things go from here: Ninjago's possible staying power, My Little Pony, Gnome Alone...

Speaking of Warner Animation Group... We no longer are in the dark.


The untitled June 1, 2018 WAG project is in fact a July 27, 2018 release.

It's Teen Titans Go!: The Movie.

Pause for effect.

...

I really don't know.


I've seen maybe... Three episodes of Teen Titans Go!? I'm probably being generous with that number. It was years ago, too, right around the time it launched. It was inoffensive, certainly forgettable... I see that Cartoon Network has had an unhealthy obsession with the show for about a year now, having it air NONSTOP. That's obnoxious, especially when they have quality shows on hand like Steven Universe and We Bare Bears. I totally get the anger towards that, not so much the show itself. Every day I see the knives sharpened, every day I see someone losing their mind over Teen Titans Go! There are a gazillion YouTube videos on why it's worse than cancer, AIDS, getting eaten alive by a shark, Hostel-style torture, etc. The Cartoon Network equivalent of the Cars series, or the Star Wars prequels.

Yes, I don't think the show warrants a theatrical feature-length film.

Yes, I'd rather see Warner Animation Group focus on cool, new things. What's going on with the Bone movie? Oh well, at least Smallfoot arrives next year.

Would I be excited if the movie was instead a continuation of the original 2003 Teen Titans TV series? Hell yes!

It's so out of nowhere, too. How long has it even been in the works? What the heck do they expect out of the picture? Very rarely does an animated movie based on an animated TV show make serious amounts of money. At best, they make a little profit and that's it. The Rugrats Movie, the SpongeBob sequel, and The Simpsons Movie are exceptions, both were smash hits. The former was released at the right time (by 1998, Rugratsmania was in full swing) and the latter is based on one of the longest-running shows ever. The Smurfs I guess could count, though the movie was live-action with animated characters in it, and it's not necessarily a straight adaptation of the 80s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, which itself is an adaptation of the original comics from the 1950s.

What makes this announcement odd is that Cartoon Network supposedly was so scarred by how The Powerpuff Girls Movie performed 15 years ago that they insisted on never doing this kind of thing - unless you count Ninjago - again... Well, here we are.

I also assume that the Adventure Time movie is on ice, plus the show is ending soon.

Maybe it's one big act of trolling, maybe they - like DC's greatest villain - just want to watch the world burn... or maybe they really do think it's a good investment. I can't honestly see it making more than, say, $50 million at the domestic box office. Even if it was a CG film. That would still be, what? 5x the budget?

I don't know, I really don't know. I don't care that much about the show, I find CN's constant airing of it to be a nuisance, I just don't know about a movie. Executives refuse to greenlight a straight-up 2D or hand-drawn film, but will green light a 2D something that's not meant to make more than $50 million domestic... For what? They'd get the same damn success and profit out of a little $30 million 2D film that ISN'T based on a TV show, should they put in any damn effort to market it. Walt Disney Animation Studios had one six years ago, a film starring an iconic character that's been part of the Disney legacy for five decades... The Disney higher-ups intentionally left it for dead. (Don't tell me otherwise, I know this for a fact.)

I'm not mad about Teen Titans Go! existing, I'm more... amused that it's a thing, and also a little bemused. Plus, this will be - believe it or not - the second ever animated movie - that isn't a Lego film - based on a DC property to get a wide theatrical release, not an exclusive Fathom Events run (i.e. The Killing Joke). The first was 1993's Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which was going to be a straight-to-video release before WB sent it to the big screen with very little fanfare. No, I continue to be angry about how the American feature animation industry continues to treat hand-drawn and 2D animation. Imagine if all the people who make those YouTube rants on Teen Titans Go! channeled all that energy into the 2D problem, among other things that are wrong with the animation industry today.

Moving on...


In development for quite some time, the Clifford the Big Red Dog movie is still a thing...


Up until now, it was going to be a Universal release. Back in roughly 2012, it was actually going to be an Illumination production. Illumination dropped it and other projects such as a Woody Woodpecker movie in favor of new-IP movies - in case the word "original" being in the same sentence as Illumination gives you the heebie-jeebies - like The Secret Life of Pets and Sing. So then it was going to be a live-action/CG hybrid, but it was unknown who would take up the project. It even carried a release date at one point... April 8, 2016, I want to say?

Universal let the dog out, and now Paramount has put the leash on it. Makes me wonder if it'll be housed under their Paramount Animation banner.

I'd say it's a no-brainer for a family film, live-action or all-animated. The treatment is being spearheaded by the writer of Office Christmas Party and the upcoming Father Figures (originally titled Bastards), Justin Malen. Clifford could probably work as a hybrid if they just CG'ed a big red Labrador or hound or whatever. I really can't see them making a hyper-hyperrealistic version of the design we see in the books, the cartoon series, and whatnot. Also... What direction will it even go? Will he not speak? Or will he speak and have other pet friends like in the show and the 2004 animated movie?

Yeah, in case anyone didn't know, there was a 2D animated Clifford movie - which followed the show more so than the books - that was written by one of the writers of Deadpool! It was given a rather small release, though. Who would've thought that one Rhett Reese would later help bring Marvel's merc with the mouth to the big screen?

Anyways... I'd say follow the books, make it feel more like other great kid-and-their-big-companion stories like How To Train Your Dragon, The Iron Giant, and The Rescuers Down Under. Given how long it's taken Hollywood to crack this one, it's certainly not a definite thing, but we shall see...

Given a general release two years ago, Kingsman: The Secret Service - a wild adaptation of a rather out-of-the-way Mark Millar comic - wasn't everyone's pint of Guinness. Some folks were turned off by its more parodic nature and its sheer violence, including a climactic massacre that occurs in a hate church run and supported by people who would make the Westboro Baptist Church blush. For some, its script wrung a right-wing bell, for others it was just vulgar.

Just the moon, the Middle Kingdom, and the box office...

The China-based arm of DreamWorks Animation may not be cut off after all...


Launched with big Chinese partners five years ago, it was part of founder/former CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg's ambitious plans to expand DreamWorks beyond a single animation studio that was getting by on making $140 million-costing animated behemoths. One of the plans was to have this very studio produce a big slate of animated features and live-action films.

Of course, we all know that DreamWorks faced a lot of roadblocks over the past five years. Within months of this studio's launch, DreamWorks saw their first box office flop in years (Rise of the Guardians), which was followed by three more money-losing pictures: Turbo, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and Penguins of Madagascar. How To Train Your Dragon 2 was not the domestic tentpole smash that it should've been, despite scoring over $600 million worldwide. Oriental DreamWorks eventually handled a 1/3 of Kung Fu Panda 3, which did great worldwide but it wasn't as big as its predecessors.

Upon Comcast's acquisition of the moon boy animation studio, the Chinese arm's fate was seemingly sealed. NBCUniversal was set to sell their 45% stake in the Shanghai house, Chinese companies have a stake in the rest of the unit. This was on the grounds of Universal already having similar operations in China, though there is no China-based animation studio that happens to be owned by Comcast. This was weeks ago, and supposedly Warner Bros. was looking to invest in Oriental DreamWorks...

I guess NBCUniversal has other plans now, because the studio has seen some restructuring... They have a new CCO in former head of "creative for feature animation" Peilin Chou. A female CCO! How about that?

A new slate of family-friendly pictures has been determined, out of twelve in-development projects, the studio has chosen to reveal five of them. Five!


The first of which is a retelling of a Chinese myth, Over the Moon. Focusing on the Chinese moon goddess Chang'e (well, presumably, the reports didn't say much beyond that), this modern reinvention of the classic story will be written by Audrey Wells, the writer/director of Under the Tuscan Sun and also the writer of A Dog's Purpose, Disney's The Kid, and George of the Jungle.

An untitled "action comedy" with some supernatural elements is also in the works, though it doesn't have a title. This "untitled Chinatown project" comes from the co-creator of the acclaimed Netflix series Master of None, Alan Yang. An action comedy, you say?

It also seems like the industry can't get enough of Journey to the West, because one of the projects on ODW's slate is about... The Monkey King! And is titled The Monkey King! The writers of Disney Feature Animation's late Eisner-era films Brother Bear and Chicken Little - Ron Friedman and Steve Bencich - will pen this one.

Next up is a rather interesting one... Illumikitty. Described as an "irreverent comedy," it's about a cat who plans to take over the world. The title itself is perhaps a poke at conspiracy theories, or it suggests that the cat has the power to light up. Jenny Bicks, who penned Rio 2 and wrote several episodes of Sex in the City, is the scribe for this one.

Last on the list is Lucky, a story that sounds a little similar to Skydance/Paramount Animation's Luck. A look at good luck, bad luck, superstition... It's a buddy comedy, too. It'll be written by Mulan, Toy Story 2, and My Little Pony: The Movie writer Rita Hsiao.

Apparently Everest is still actually a DreamWorks-Glendale/ODW co-production. Little by little, I think that DreamWorks staffer who told me otherwise might've made a mistake. He did delete his tweet...

Well, so much for the stake selling... Now that we're nearing the end of this year, the beginnings of the "new DreamWorks" have gone from upsetting to just flat-out unpredictable. We started with Larrikins, The Croods 2, and other projects being cancelled while sequels to recent hits were immediately greenlit. Oriental DreamWorks possibly going bye-bye was another disappointing story. Now we're hearing of collaborations with Blumhouse, The Croods 2 being back on the reels, and Oriental DreamWorks now having something of a future. Who knows if this studio will become Illumination's twin or not, but things are sorta-kinda looking up in some ways... and I say that with caveats.

I mean, why would DreamWorks cancel a movie like The Croods 2 only to bring it back? Why cancel the sequel to a $587 million-grossing worldwide box office smash hit in the first place? Makes one wonder what will happen next...

On the whole, some of the pictures sound intriguing, and I'm curious as to how ODW will go about all of this. Their goal is plain and simple, if expected: Make family films for a worldwide audience, but aim mostly at China... Doesn't sound dissimilar to what some Chinese executives have been doing lately... Ya know... Taking trips to Walt Disney Animation Studios to get some... Advice...

Didn't hear about it? That's okay, Cartoon Brew is perhaps the only American outlet actually reporting this. I have... Thoughts on that, but that's another story.


The live-action/CG hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog film is still a thing, but it will no longer be a Sony release...


Sony had simply lost the rights, time was up apparently. Jeff Fowler is still set to direct the picture, with Tim Miller executive producing. The film will now be distributed by Paramount, which makes me wonder if they'll put it under their Paramount Animation banner.

Then again, Paramount's heads have implied that they don't want to go the Monster Trucks route again, and that they just want to focus on pure animated films. But what kind of hybrid is Sonic The Hedgehog going to be? Monster Trucks is a live-action film with hyperreal VFX creechers, but that approach obviously can't work for the speedy blue hedgehog. Something tells me the characters will appear like they do in the games, though I am not keen on them mixing that with live-action. Just do it as an all-animated movie, damn it.

That being said, Miller and Fowler's involvement have me somewhat interested, plus I like Sonic and have always wondered what a theatrical movie would look like. Will they adapt one of the better games in the series? Or go with their own story? If they go with the latter, will the story be canon?

Either way, the Sonic The Hedgehog movie has been on the docket since roughly... I want to say mid-2013? Back when its first screenwriter was attempting to make a PG-13 film adaptation of a normally E/E10+ rated series. (To my understanding, in Japan, the games and spin-offs skew a more teen-centric audience.) In my humble opinion, most video game movies should be all-animated, especially ones based on characters like Sonic. Ratchet & Clank could've opened the door to a string of those, but was compromised behind the scenes and limped to the big screen.

Since nothing seems to be set in stone, I can imagine this project changing direction over the coming months... We shall see.


The Lego Ninjago Movie fell 43%, collecting $35 million so far and $58 million worldwide. The best comparison is of course Warner Animation Group's previous late September release, Storks. On weekend two, that was at $38 million, dropping 36%. This suggests that Ninjago's legs might be weaker in the long run. Its drop is nowhere as strong as The Lego Movie's 2nd weekend drop, a little below Lego Batman's. At this point, I see Lego Ninjago landing somewhere around $60-65 million, which is hardly great, but if it can pull good numbers worldwide and make Storks numbers, it should be fine.


I still think its performance will lead to some rethinking on the standalone end of the Lego film franchise, though. I think making a film based on a line and TV series geared mostly towards 6-12 year old boys wasn't a wise decision, financially. Limit the audience, limit the box office. It ain't just kids making these things big. The Lego Movie clearly did better because it had so much more appeal, ditto The Lego Batman Movie. Not rocket science, and I think Lego Ninjago yet again proves what I and others have been screaming for ages.

No major changes with Leap!, as it nears the end of its run: $23 million domestic, $104 million worldwide.

Despicable Me 3, a titan it may be, is puttering now. $1,023 million worldwide, $262 million here. It'll end up being the least-attended film in the franchise, not that that really matters right now, but I'm curious to see how Minions 2 performs domestically in summer 2020.

Cars 3 still rides. $152 million here, $368 million worldwide. Germany just got the movie, so we'll see how much higher it goes.

Loving Vincent is something I didn't cover on the last post... Last week, it opened in a single theater, making a seemingly-good $23k. Now in 4 theaters total, it rose 139% and has now grossed $92k to date. Little by little, it'll expand, but how big can this thing get? I certainly hope it comes to my area! Perhaps it's a miracle that the film was even made and released at all.

Captain Underpants, after much crawling, finally topped $110 million worldwide. 2.8x the budget! Let's hear it for the hypnotized principal hero!

20th Century Fox continues to fatten up its animation slate...

We’re thrilled to be invited to bring Bob’s Burgers to the big screen. We know the movie has to scratch every itch the fans of the show have ever had, but it also has to work for all the good people who’ve never seen the show. We also know it has to fill every inch of the screen with the colors and the sounds and the ever so slightly greasy texture of the world of Bob’s – but most of all it has to take our characters on an epic adventure. In other words, it has to be the best movie ever made. But no pressure, right?!