Why Netflix Cartoons Crush Everyone Else

Bloomberg ... and Cartoon Brew among others ... have caught on to the fact that Netflix is hammering other kid content providers:

Viewership of the three most-popular networks for the very young -- Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network -- is down more than 20 percent this season from year earlier. ...

Netflix, whose shares have climbed 58 percent this year, is ramping up the competition further by bringing more youth-oriented production in-house. Last year, it hired Melissa Cobb away from a DreamWorks joint venture to run a kids and family division. ...

The youngest entertainment-seekers are being raised on the internet, and cord-cutting will accelerate as new batches of babies joins them. The networks have to figure out how to make more money from the shows they produce, whether they’re streamed or broadcast. ...

Netflix figured out ... oh ... a half-dozen years ago, that its job was to capture eyeballs. And that if they could capture young eyeballs, they could probably get them to stick around to watch all the other offerings on their service.

So they went to Jeff Katzenberg and DreamWorks and threw money at him: "Jeffrey? You make us a whole lot of content, which you can own but we can show, we'll help you build a new division and help keep your company afloat."

Mr. Katzenberg knew a corporate lifeline when he saw one, and agreed to the deal in about three eye-blinks. And lo! DreamWorks Animation TV was born, and the division was soon staffed, top to bottom, with animation pros who knew how to put series together, lots of series.

Jeffrey is now long gone, and there have been some division hiccups along the way, but the basic mission has been fulfilled: DreamWorks got an infusion of cash, a lot of animation was produced in relatively short order, and Nick got its desired kid content to lure young eyeballs away from Nick, Cartoon Network, and the Disney Channel.

The plan worked like a charm.

So now here we are in the middle of 2018, and the other animation producers/distributors are running to catch up with Netflix. Disney will be streaming its animated product soon, and other producers will quickly follow. Netflix, of course, has a long head start. The service had years to figure out that consumers wanted to see the shows they wanted to see when they wanted to see them, and that they wanted to be their own programmers: How to Train Your Dragon at 3 on Monday and Kung Fu Panda at 5 on Tuesday. (None of this "wait for Power Puff Girls to come on"; just point, click, go.

Netflix has been adept at training hundreds of millions to come to them for content, and NF's menu is wide and deep. Good luck to everybody else who caught wise to what Netflix was doing four years in, and who climbed on board the next train out of the station*.

* There is, of course, a reason why this happened. Other providers had old distribution systems they owned and desired to protect, so they foot-dragged on newer distribution technologies. This happened in much the same way that big-established movie producers hung on to silent movies after the upstart Warner Brothers Studio had opened its own mint producing talkies in 1927-28. Then as now, other producers scrambled to catch up.

History doesn't repeat itself (maybe) but it certainly rhymes.

Weekend of Vengeance

Another super hero movie stuffed with animated effects (what's new?) tops the Big List:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) Avengers: Infinity War -- 4,475 -- $245.6M -- $245.6M (1st Weekend)

2) A Quiet Place -- 4,101 -- $10.6M (-49%) -- $148.1M

3) I Feel Pretty -- 3,440 -- $8.2M (-49%) -- $29.6M

4) Rampage -- 3,508 (-607) -- $7M (-65%) -- $77.8M

5) Black Panther -- 1,650 (-280) -- $4.4M (-11%) -- $688M

6) Super Troopers 2 -- 2,125 (+87) -- $3.4M (-77%) -- $21.9M

7) Truth Or Dare -- 2,420 (-648) -- $3M (-58%) -- $35.1M

8) Blockers -- 2,324 (-810) -- $2.9M (-57%) -- $53.1M

9) Ready Player One -- 2,365 (-843) -- $2.5M (-66%) -- $130.8M

10) Traffik -- 1,046 -- $1.5M (-61%) -- $6.7M

11) Isle Of Dogs -- 1,001 (-946) -- $1.4M (-60%) -- $27M

So let's tote up the score card: the one animated feature on the list, Isle of Dogs has fallen out of the Top Ten after six weeks and now sits at #11.

The partially animated Avengers rules at #1; A Quiet Place (#2) has CG space aliens; the hybrid animated feature Rampage comes in at #4; the super hero flick Black Panther, replete with visual effects, is right behind at #5, and Spielberg's partially-animated Ready Player One holds down the 9th position.

So animation figures in six of the top eleven movies America now watches. Impressive.

End of "Sabbatical"?

John Lasseter is coming to the end of his Mouse-compelled Time Out:

As the most powerful man in animation nears the end of a six-month "sabbatical" for personal "missteps," CEO Bob Iger must soon determine [Mr. Lasseter's] fate. ...

At this point, some insiders believe Iger is quietly preparing to name new heads of Pixar and Disney Animation — those floated include Docter for Pixar and Rich Moore and Jennifer Lee at Disney Animation. But some veterans are angry, saying that the company allowed Lasseter to dominate — and to take credit for the work of others — for too long, only acting in the wake of the #MeToo movement. ...

I was in the camp of classical cynics who said: "Lasseter will come back; the Disney Company spent a lot of money to acquire Pixar and he's just too valuable for the conglomerate to toss him overboard."

Now I wonder.

John Lasseter is and was a talent. He's got a long track record of hit animated features that proves he knows how to put popular movie franchises together. But he's also a man with demonstrated appetites for wine, women and good times, and that now is a problem for the corporation that made him rich.

In the post Harvey Weinstein era, the post Bill O'Reilly and Bill Cosby eras, can Disney afford to bring John back? Even if he's wearing an ankle bracelet?

Maybe Disney has already determined a Plan B. They will let John go, then quietly engage him (from time to time?) as a consultant. Or maybe they will simply thank him for his service, hand him an engraved Mickey Mouse statuette along with a retiree's silver pass for Disneyland, and let him slip away into the sunset.

Whatever the outcome, we will discover what it is soon after the six-month time-clock runs out.

Sequelitis

When your first hybrid animated movie -- a reboot of a Robin Williams hit hybrid animated movie -- collects $957 billion at the global box office, you kind of know there will be another serving in the near future:

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle surpassed the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man’s $403.7M to become Sony’s highest ever domestic grossing hit. The final domestic tally was $404.1M ... [Sony] chairman Tom Rothman revealed that the next Jumanji will arrive December 2019. ..

As inevitable as night following day.

Weekend B.O.

The most popular hybrid feature on the Big List.

The Top Ten list of Box Office winners:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) A Quiet Place -- 3,808 theaters (+219) / 3-day: $21.1M (-36%) / Total: $131.4M/ Wk 3

2) I Feel Pretty -- 3,440 theaters / 3-day: $18M / Wk 1

3) Rampage -- 4,115 theaters (+14) / 3-day: $17.6M (-51%) / Total: $63.2M / Wk 2

4) Super Troopers 2 -- 2,038 theaters /3-day: $16M / Wk 1

5) Truth or Dare -- 3,068 theaters (+39) / 3-day: $7.7M (-59%) /Total: $30.1M/ Wk 2

6) Ready Player One -- 3,208 theaters (-453) / 3-day: $7.5M (-35%)/ Total: $126.1M/ Wk 4

7) Blockers -- 3,134 theaters (-284) /3-day: $7M (-35%)/ Total: $48.2M/ Wk 3

8) Black Panther -- 1,930 theaters (-250) / 3-day: $4.6M (-20%)/Total: $681M/ Wk 10

9) Traffik (LG), 1,046 theaters / 3-day: $3.8M / Wk 1

10) Isle of Dogs -- 1,947 theaters (+8) /3-day: $3.3M (-40%) / Total: $24.2M / Wk 5

If you count Rampage, Ready Player One, and Black Panther as hybrid animated features (and I don't see how you couldn't, since there's a LOT of animation in each), then there are four animated features in the Big List.

And as I write here, none of the hybrids, though they might be counted as "live-action" flicks, could exist without the large dollops of animation that decorate each one.)

Inside a Hybrid Production

The Gray Lady details here how one of Rampage's action scenes was put together.

"The action with Dwayne and Naomi was real... The angles with George [the giant ape] were were a plate. ... And we did face capture with Dwayne on the skydiver because we weren't going to have Dwayne and Naomi sky-diving. ..."

It's been true for a couple of decades now: any blockbuster worth its salt has massive amounts of animation in it. You can call any super-hero feature a hybrid animated movie because without animators and compositors sitting at their computers working long hours, the motion picture won't exist. You'll just have actors in funny costumes emoting in front of green screens.

So the trick for our fine, entertainment conglomerates? Find the effects house with the lowest bid for the work that you can, and the country that gives you the biggest dollop of free money.

Working With China

... also known as "riding the big Chinese dragon".

China seems to be one of Washington D.C.'s bete noirs of the moment ("They're robbing us blind!"), but Hollywood is well aware that the Middle Kingdom is now the second largest movie market and will likely soon be #1. Therefore this makes sense:

Jackie Chan and Constance Wu will voice-star in Sony Pictures Animation's Wish Dragon, a contemporary retelling of the classic genie-in-a-bottle tale from One Thousand and One Nights. ...

The feature, which is aiming for a 2019 theatrical release in China, is a Chinese co-production with Chan's Beijing-based Sparkle Roll Media Corporation and Base Animation. A U.S. and international release are also planned. ...

You will note that Sony is going the co-production route, and it isn't with Aardman, but a studio in mainland China. This is a savvy move, and it can't escaped Sony's notice that a hybrid animated epic (Rampage just opened over there, and pulled in $55 million for its opening stanza, about $20 million more than it earned stateside.

American entertainment conglomerates are well aware that they need a reliable pathway into one of the most lucrative movie markets on the planet. They can either do it with a movie star popular in China (Dwayne Johnson) or they can do a Chinese co-production that assures them of a big distribution footprint when the feature is ready to roll out.

The co-production strategy is a viable choice. Sony ain't stupid.