Jeffrey K.'s Next Act

He was a production head at Paramount, then ran Disney's movie studio, and then co-founded and ran DreamWorks Animation for twenty years. And now? ...

Jeffrey Katzenberg has a billion to play with for his new short-form video platform.

His holding company, WndrCo, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion in its initial investment round, including funds from 10 American media companies and the Chinese technology giant Alibaba.

The money will go toward the executive’s dream of upending the entertainment industry with high-quality bite-size content intended for mobile devices. His company, NewTV — which is the working title — will try to set itself apart from the competition by making and distributing programs mere minutes in length. ...

Mr. Katzenberg was never the type of Hollywood exec to let the grass grow under his feet ... or to dog it.

At Disney he was always in early and gone late (and his staff had to keep up). When he didn't like the way a story was shaping up for this-or-that animated feature, he let the crew know where he stood. (Re Aladdin, he yelled "Eighty-six the Mom!" when he wanted Aladdin's mother eliminated from the plot-line.)

In 1994, Walt Disney Company President Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash and Jeffrey was passed over for the post, ultimately getting pushed of the House of Mouse by Michael Eisner. But he landed on his feet as a co-founder of DreamWorks, and headed up DW's feature animation division for two decades, ultimately selling the company to Comcast-NBC-Universal for billions.

And now he's onto his next venture, and has raised a billion dollars to launch brief bits of entertainment on mobile devices. Other moguls are skeptical. The competition is stiff, they say. The field is crowded, they maintain. But Jeffrey has come up smelling like an expensive floral bouquet before. Maybe it's all those late nights and early mornings. ...

Trio of Animated Features -- August 3-5

Over the weekend, there were three (count 'em) animated features in the Big Box Office Ten. (Also, too, a near-fourth in the #2 position):

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) M:I – Fallout -- 4,395 (+9) -- $35M (-43%) -- $124.4M

2) Christopher Robin -- 3,602 -- $25M -- $25M (1st weekend)

3) Spy Who Dumped Me -- 3,111 -- $12.3M -- $12.3M (1st weekend)

4) Mamma Mia 2 -- 3,359 (-155) -- $9M (-40%) -- $91.3M

5) Equalizer 2 -- 2,725 (-663) -- $8.8M (-37%) -- $79.9M

6) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 3,162 (-843) -- $8.2M (-33%) -- $136.4M

7) Ant-Man & The Wasp -- 2,233 (-780) -- $6.1M (-29%) -- $195.4M

8) The Darkest Minds -- 3,227 -- $5.8M -- $5.8M (1st weekend)

9) Incredibles 2 -- 1,802 (-814) -- $5M (-31%) -- $583.1M

10) Teen Titans Go! -- 3,188 -- $4.8M (-53%) -- $20.7M

Incredibles 2 has now gone well past the billion-dollar mark, with 1,048,347,092. Foreign box office makes up 44.4% of the gross.

Hotel Transylvania 3 has collected $338 million in worldwide grosses, 60% of the take coming from foreign lands.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies comes in at #10. To date its total gross is $23,101,332 (10% of that foreign).

The other flick of note is Christopher Robin, a live-action spinoff of the longtime Disney animation franchise. (Christopher Robin's stuffed-toy friends remain animated. Near the start of its theatrical run, CR has a total take of $29,717,275

The mice! The mice! Tales of Disney Animation in two exciting volumes ... Mouse in Transition and Mouse in Orbit. Available now! ... and into the future (we think)!

Animated Drama

AMC (the cable network that used to show wall-to-wall old movies in times long ago) is doing nighttime animation:

AMC is looking to break new ground with a primetime animated drama series, Pantheon. The basic cable network has open writers rooms for two series projects, Pantheon, from Turn creator/executive producer Craig Silverstein, and drama St. Luke’s, from The Walking Dead co-executive producer Seth Hoffman. Both hail from AMC Studios. St. Luke’s also is from Channing Tatum’s Free Association.

Pantheon is based on a series of short stories by Ken Liu about uploaded intelligence. Because of the project’s unique nature... in addition to a writers room, which will produce multiple scripts, AMC has commissioned a five-minute animated presentation. ...

Ken Liu is a Harvard-trained lawyer who also writes (and translates) science fiction stories and novels. This would be his first animated series. He's published science-fiction since 2002, and has over a 100 short stories published, on top of multiple sci fi novels.

No word on where the five minutes of animation might be produced. AMC, as do other producers, will wait to see what the scripts created in the writers' room looks like before deciding on whether or not to take Pantheon to full series.

Tucking Money Away

Animation artists are like a lot of other weekly employees in the United States. They live paycheck to paycheck. (Many can't even afford to fund a 401(k) because they need to pay rent and buy groceries.)

But maybe a number could kick in a tiny sliver of their net pay if they only had the right incentives, foregoing the Starbucks iced coffee or buyin a sit-down meal at lunchtime. So here's an incentive:

Fidelity, one of the largest index mutual fund providers, announced on Wednesday that it will introduce two no-fee funds, giving more investors access to both domestic and global markets.

The funds are called the Fidelity Zero Total Market Index Fund (FZROX) and the Fidelity Zero International Index Fund (FZILX). They are the industry’s “first self-indexed mutual funds with a zero expense ratio” and will be directly available to individual investors.

Investors will pay a zero percent fee regardless of how much they invest in the funds, while gaining exposure to nearly the entire global stock market, the Boston-based mutual fund said. There is no investment minimum, and no domestic money movement fees for investors.

The funds will launch the end of this week. Fidelity isn't paying a license fee to an established index (S & P, CRSP, etc.) so no cash outflows there. Also, too, there will be no minimum investments ... which will come in handy if you don't have a lot to invest. The Fidelity website proclaims:

2 Fidelity index mutual funds FZROX and FZILX with a zero expense ratio.

No minimums to invest in Fidelity mutual funds.

$0 for Fidelity funds and hundreds of other funds with no transaction fees.

If this deal holds up -- Fidelity is only just launching it, after all -- there are minimal reasons not to put $20 ... or $30 ... or $51.72 away every week or three and begin building a nest egg. Even if you feel you can't afford it, because, honest to God, everybody can trim something and start an investment account that requires next to nothing.

Cruising For Big Grosses -- July 27-29

Three animated features decorate the Top Ten list; Mr. Cruise holds court at #1:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) M:I – Fallout -- 4,386 -- $61.5M -- $61.5M (1st week)

2) Mamma Mia 2 -- 3,514 (+197) -- $15M (-57%) -- $70.4M

3) Equalizer 2 -- 3,388 -- $14M (-61%) -- $64.2M

4) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 4,005 (-262) -- $12.3M (-48%) -- $119.2M

5) Teen Titans Go! -- 3,188 -- $10.5M -- $10.5M 1st weekend)

6) Ant-Man & The Wasp -- 3,013 (-765) -- $8.4M (-49%) -- $183.1M

7) Incredibles 2 -- 2,616 (-548) -- $7.1M (-40%) -- $572.7M

8) Jurassic World 2 -- 2,685(-696) -- $6.7M (-40%) -- $397.6M

9) Skyscraper -- 2,773 (-1,049) -- $5.4M (-52%) -- $59.1M

10) The First Purge Uni/Blumhouse --1,400 (-931) -- $2.2M (-56%) -- $65.4M

Incredibles 2, now at $996.5 million globally, breaks into the billion dollar club next week.

Hotel Transylvania 3 has earned $284.2 million worldwide.

Teen Titans Go! has made a million dollars in foreign markets and 10.5 million here. It won't be a major money-maker, but the WB should be in the black with this TV spinoff. (And the secondary and ancillary markets -- toys, TOYS, TOYS! should do quite well.

Mega Merger COMPLETE

Now part of the Disney entertainment empire...

So after a government review and a challenge from Comcast, Disney and Fox are now one:

Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders on Friday voted in favor of a $71.3 billion deal, in which Disney will acquire large parts of Fox, including the 20th Century Fox film and TV studios, Fox's entertainment cable networks and its international assets. ...

Disney expects to pay about $35.7 billion in cash and issue about 343 million New Disney shares to Fox stockholders so that when the transaction closes after final regulatory approval Fox stockholders will own about 17-20 percent of New Disney. ...

Robert Iger has generously agreed to put off his retirement and remain as Top Dog at the House of Mouse to oversea the merger of Fox assets with the Walt Disney Company. (There will likely be additional compensation.)

Walt's old studio now owns multiple animation assets

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Walt Disney Television Animation

Pixar

Marvel Animation

Fox Animation

Blue Sky Studios

DisneyToon Studios, launched during the heyday of VHS tapes, has recently gone the way of the Tasmanian Tiger and is no more. How long Blue Sky Studios sticks around* is known but to Bob Iger and his working group of Merger Specialists.

* Disney-owned studios have come and gone over the years. Disney had two studios in Canada, both specializing in home entertainment product, that were launched and then closed within three years. There was a thriving studio in Sydney, Australia -- purchased from Hanna-Barbera -- that specialized in the production of direct-to-video features. Then there was Walt Disney Animation, Florida, that grew from an amusement park walk-through in the 1980s to a full-blown theatrical animation studio in the '90s with one of the prettiest facilities in the history of Disney animation. Walt Disney Animation Florida closed its doors in 2004.

There are, of course, other studios that sprang briefly to life and then vanished. (Image Movers Digital, anyone?)No need to list them all in a footnote.

Teen Titans, Moneymakers

From Deadline:

Warner Bros. previewed Teen Titans Go! To the Movies last night and made $1M. Teen Titans Go! cost around $10M for the studio and they’re hoping for mid teens this weekend. Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michail co-direct this feature take on the WBTV/Cartoon Network series. ...

Twenty-three years ago, Warner Brothers was spending huge sums on feature films that badly under-performed at the box office. (Quest For Camelot, anyone?) Two decades on it's had more success with approaches now different than Disney.

It takes TV properties and morphs the most popular of them into feature-length properties.

For original features, it uses its Southern California studios for pre-production, then sends the CG to offshore sub-contractors. (Animal Logic in Sydney is a favored destination).

It appears the company has resolved not to replicate its middle '90s missteps of sinking big money into L.A.-based studios and turning out a string of under-performers.