Attending the Animation Guild Holiday Party last night, it's clear that the cartoon boom continues, as the Autry Museum was packedo with happy revelers.
... inside Cartoonland
Animation continues its high-stepping gallop in the marketplace (mostly). There's a lots of projects and lots of people working. Like for instance this:
Animated series The Cops (working title), starring and co-created by Louis C.K. and Albert Brooks, has moved to TBS where it has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order for a 2018 premiere. The Office creator and King of the Hill co-creator Greg Daniels has come on board as an executive producer for the series from FX Productions, Louis C.K.’s Pig Newton and Turner’s Studio T. ...
TBS has a growing animation pipeline. The Cops joins flagship American Dad!, which has thrived since moving from Fox, and upcoming series Tarantula, a dark comedy from Carson Mell about the residents of a seedy hotel, and Final Space, an interstellar comedy created by Olan Rogers. ...
From appearances, The Cops pre-production (boards, scripts, design, etc.) is being done in Burbank at Starburns Industries, so it will provide employment for Guild artists.
Will the show pay Guild benefits? If the crew wants it.
And on the theatrical end of the spectrum, the two features out there continue to do well.
Disney's Moana, now fallen from the Top Ten, has racked up more than $230 million in domestic box office, while Sing will have earned north of earned $237 million by early next week ... with only half as much time in release.
But in the interest of full disclosure, please note that not everything is sunshine and lollipops:
Paramount Pictures originally conceived its new movie “Monster Trucks” as fuel for its upstart animation business. But instead, the long-delayed big-budget picture is poised to become the first major box-office wreck of 2017.
The live action-computer animation hybrid, about a teenage boy who befriends a tentacled, gas-guzzling monster in his truck, is on track to gross $8 million to $10 million during its first four days in theaters this weekend — an abysmal result for a movie that cost $125 million to make. ...
So director Chris Wedge has come up with an under-performer, not good for struggling Paramount-Viacom. Paramount Animation has had a tough time of late. The battle royal between factions in the higher reaches of the conglomerate resulted in delays to the latest Sponge Bob feature; story personnel were laid off for months, with the head of SB's development team ultimately moving on.
Hopefully things will be better for Paramount's fully-animated slate, coming in 2018. But it's always good to have decisive creative control at the top, a la Pixar, Disney Illumination Entertainment, etc. Otherwise, meager box office returns may materialize.
h/t for this last to Tom Sito.
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