The Ten-Hour Day

Professor Tom Sito reminds us:

March 31, 1840 - Congress lowered the minimum workday for federal workers from 11.4 hours a day to 10 hours a day. At this time in mines and factories people worked an average 12-16 hour day. The 8 hour day wasn’t achieved until 1913, not until 1941 in Hollywood and it’s still a dream in most digital studios today.

It never ends. Movie editors work extra hours for free. Animation artists work extra hours without additional compensation, often a total of ten or twelve in a given day. Often there's a low-key, ever-present pressure to hit delivery dates and refrain from pestering the production manager about extra compensation for the extra hours. The song-and-dance is often: "We need the work by next Thursday and there's no money in the budget for overtime! Do what you need to do."

The no-money-in-the-budget threat is a non-sequitor, because the company, assuming it's under a collective bargaining agreement, has already promised to pay overtime whether they've allocated cash for it or not. Somebody should production send the memo.

Adult Swim Additions

So Adult Swim adds two new series, one Canadian and one from a Burbank facility that creates show without benefit of a union contract.

Apollo Gauntlet, set to debut in the summer, hails from Canadian animator Myles Langlois. The quarter-hour animated comedy series centers on Paul Cassidy, an ordinary cop who gets transported to a futuristic medieval society by the evil Dr. Benign. ...

Science fiction adventure series Hot Streets, from animation newcomer Brian Wysol, is set for premiere on Adult Swim this fall. The quarter-hour animated series revolves around FBI Agent Mark Branski, his partner, his niece, and her dog, who investigate supernatural phenomena. ... Hot Streets is produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

The market for talent is tight right now, as it has been for a while. It would be interesting and informative to know what kind of rates Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, not known for being generous in the weekly wage department, is paying for various positions.

Adult Swim, a subset of Cartoon Network, has a love for edgy, non-union shows that pay lower wages/lower benefits. Or pay no benefits at all.

The Animation Guild Meeting

... and the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan.

At last night's TAG General Membership Meeting, there was a brisk and businesslike presentation put on by MPIPPHP representatives. In a nutshell, it went like this:

1) When most participants retire: (age 65); how and when people can retire early: (from ages 55 to 64 if they have at least 20 Qualified Years and 20,000 hours).

2) There was a review of the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan: 48,000 active participants and their dependents qualified for health insurance. Participants paid monthly premiums of $0 (no dependents); $25 (1 dependent); $50 (2 or more dependents).

3) The Plan representatives supplied answers to a plethora of questions.

There was a record 94 million hours contributed to the plan last year, which translates to $856 million. Another $434 million came from residuals and secondary markets. (There was a 6% growth of assets from investment returns; there were 7,370,252 contribution hours from TAG members -- an 11.6% increase from 2015 to 2016).

MPIPHP FINANCES

MPI Pension Plan -- $3.3 billion

MPI Individual Account Plan -- $4 billion

MPI Active Health Plan -- $971 million

Retiree Health Plan -- $94 million

TOTAL -- $8.42 billion

Animated Box Office

The good times, they continue to roll ... for both the live-action/animated hybrid, and the new baby on the block:

... Disney’s Beauty And The Beast [led] with a $120.6M sophomore session – up $1.4M from Sunday’s estimate and down less than 35% from opening last weekend. The global cume is $693.5M through Sunday. ... Another film that saw increases from Sunday’s projection, and which took some by surprise, was DreamWorks Animation/Fox’s Boss Baby which adopted $17.6M in the actuals, versus $16.3M in Sunday’s estimate. That’s from only five markets which were led by Russia and a better-than-projected $11.2M. It looks well set up for the bigger rollout this week. ...

The Mouse's animated feature library continues to be a gold mine of gargantuan proportions. Sometimes the remakes are loose adaptations, and sometimes the remakes, like BATB are shot-for-shot recreations. They haven't remade Pinocchio yet ... or Sword in the Stone, Peter Pan, Aristocats, The Rescuers and Tarzan. But I'm sure they'll get around to it.

Just a matter of time.

Looming Job Action?

Deadline reported yesterday:

... The labor tension in Hollywood is at a 10-year high. As the scribes now confirm Deadline’s exclusive of earlier today that a strike-authorization vote has been called, the producers shot back this evening with claims of bad faith from the other side of the table. ...

However, Deadline has learned that the AMPTP believed earlier that week that further talks would not be productive. The producers’ reps did not respond to requests for comment on this matter.

Earlier tonight, the WGA’s negotiators sent a letter to membership calling for a strike-authorization vote. It would not be a vote to strike but to authorize the guild’s board of directors to call a strike if further talks fail to produce a deal.

A strike vote had been looking like a real possibility this afternoon, according to Deadline’s Dominic Patten and David Robb, with one source with intimate knowledge of the ongoing talks saying, “That’s the way the wind is blowing.” A strike-authorization vote among senior WGA officials takes the situation to a precipice Hollywood has not really been at since 2007. ...

The WGA has initiated multiple strikes, but they've all happened at oddly specific times:

There weren’t any WGA strikes during the presidencies of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson or John F. Kennedy. But there was one during the presidency of George W. Bush (the 100 day strike of 2007-08, pictured above); three during Ronald Reagan’s presidency (the 22-week strike of 1988, the two-week strike of 1985 and the 13-week strike of 1981); one during Richard Nixon’s (the 16-week strike of 1973); and one during Dwight Eisenhower’s (the 21-week strike of 1960).

Is there something in the air or water when Republican Presidents occupy the White House? Difficult to say, but the Guild has had lengthy work stoppages over the last fifty-eight years, and they all happened while Dwight, Dick, Ron or George were in office. If writers go out in the first six months of Donald Trump, the record will be intact.

Numbers

Deadline is adding up some totals on the recent Ron Clements-John Musker feature.

Moana... with the second-biggest five-day weekend performance after Frozen, at $82 million. The film grossed $247 million domestic, with $319 million foreign and $32 million in China for a $600 million total. After a total of $30 million in Participations and Off-the-Tops, Moana turned in a $121 million in net profit, and a Cash on Cash Return of 1.32. That’s a respectable score for a live-action or animated film for most studios, but it was only the eighth-best performer of the year for Disney.

The picture was a solid box-office performer. Maybe not in Finding Dory or Zootopia territory, but certainly within hailing distance of Tangled's numbers (in fact better, since the South Seas adventure had a higher gross ... and Tangled cost way more money).

The upshot? Moana did well by most any measure you care to use.

Anime!!

A century of Japanese animation, in one convenient place:

... Long before it became known as anime, early Japanese animators honed their craft, producing cartoons that were both fascinating and fun. And you can watch them for yourself, reports the BBC, thanks to a new website celebrating 100 years of Japanese animation.

The site is the brainchild of Japan’s National Film Center, which celebrates the country’s long and rich film history as part of Japan’s National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. And it contains plenty of eye candy, even for those who mistakenly believe that Japanese animation begins and ends with "Sailor Moon," Astro Boy or Spirited Away.

It's a good thing that there is now an accessible location to tiptoe through some of the history that goes back 100 years. The more cartoons people can watch, the better.