Cartoon Dominance

There's a good sampling of features of the animated persuasion in the box office list these days:

Total Domestic Box Office Grosses

1) How To Train Your Dragon 3 -- 4,286 theaters -- $102,103,860 (12 days of release)

8) The Lego Movie 2 -- 3,458 theaters -- $92,634,619 -- (26 days of release)

-) Spider-Man ... Spider-Verse -- 2,404 theaters -- $187,848,484 -- (82 days of release)

-) Ralph Breaks Internet -- 204 theaters -- $200,221,956 -- (105 days of release)

-) Mary Poppins Returns -- 245 theaters -- $171,265,234 -- (77 days of release)

There's a reason entertainment conglomerates and streaming services that produce movies are heavy into short and long-form animation: large numbers of people watch it. This wasn't always true. A generation-and-a-half ago, such was not the case. Animation was a small, sleepy side-show to live-action. Not a lot of money in it, not a lot of people working in it.

Cartoons were for kids. And their younger brothers and sisters.

Today, of course, reality is way different. Theatrical animation makes big money. (Those titles above? Dragon has already earned $383,003,860 globally. The Lego Movie has taken in $154,334,619; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is up to $363,812,385. Disney offering Ralph Breaks the Internet has made $520,348,903, while Mary Poppins Returns (with a sprinkling of hand-drawn animation) weighs in with $346,783,932.

Despite the tidal waves of cash and the higher esteem that animation now enjoys, cartoons will never garner full respect or the top industry awards. Best Picture Oscar? Not until pigs fly and Walter Elias Disney returns from the dead. Actors comprise the largest voting bloc of the Motion Picture Academy, and they aren't inclined to vote for movies where actors don't appear on screen.

If Silence of the Lambs can beat out Beauty and the Beast for the "Best Picture" Oscar, I don't think any long-form cartoon can be awarded the little gold man for Best Picture. It's a shame, but it's the reality. So I'm happy that the "Best Animated Feature" category was created as a consolation prize.

Add On: Feature director Mike Disa raises the issue: "What about residuals for people working on animated shows?" And a fine issue it is. The reason that animation workers don't get a piece of the action as some of their live-action counterparts do is, unions such as The Writers Guild, Directors Guild, and Screen Actors Guild successfully negotiated for re-use residuals sixty years ago, while other entertainment unions did not. (Both the Animation Guild and its predecessor the Screen Cartoonists Guild proposed re-use residuals during contract negotiations, but were unsuccessful in achieving them.)

And there is a larger point: while animation writers and directors receive "copyright royalties" from most European countries, Australia and New Zealand, places where authors have what's called "moral rights", U.S. law, practice and the Supreme Court have surgically removed the concept of authors' moral rights when the creator of the work is the employee of a corporation ("work for hire"), or has sold her (his) copyright on a book, screenplay or somesuch to a third party (which would usually be a company).

Royalties and re-use residuals are emotional, complicated issues that will likely be fought over as long as there are authors creating original works. (Case in point: the Writers Guild of America was sued by members and foreign writers over its handling and distribution of foreign copyright royalties. As a result of the lawsuit, the WGA changed the way it administered copyright royalties from overseas.)