The Long Goodbye?

Forbes speculates thusly:

... Though Fox has made billions from The Simpsons since the show debuted in 1989 from ad revenue, video games, movie tickets, and theme park rides among other things, the cash has dried up in recent years as viewership plummeted. Odds are slim that The Simpsons will ever be able to recapture the ground that it has lost though it continues to have legions of devoted fans. ...

Aren't the devoted fans the point?

Kantar Media's educated guess is that The Simpsons pulled in $94 million in ad revenue in '17, and the money flow is declining. But of course there are merchandise sales and ancillary rights, and the thirty-year-old cow still produces hundreds of millions of cash.

And of course there is one large rodent in the room: Disney didn't buy Fox so that the entertainment conglomerate could turn around and shutter the franchise. If a new Simpsons feature is actually in development, why not two or three or four? The Walt Disney Company has a history of squeezing acquired franchises until every last drop has leaked out; witness the Intellectual Property of Lucasfilm (purchased by Diz Co. for billions) as exhibit "A".

The Disney purchase should give pause to anyone who thinks The Simpsons will soon fade away. They might not keep making a half-hour sitcom, but there will be specials, there will be streamed shorts, and there will be features.

Weekend Box Office -- August 24-26

After a long while, there are no animated features (Hotel Transylvania 3 having just departed) in the Box Office Top Ten. Crazy Rich Asians has a single digit, weekend-to-weekend decline. This happens very seldom. The C.G.I. Christopher Robin and The Meg hold their own, while the new C.G.I. A.X.L. (debuting in 10th place) lands with a muted thud.

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) Crazy Rich Asians -- 3,526 (+142) -- $25M (-6%) -- $76.8M

2) The Meg -- 4,031 (-87) -- $3.3M -- $12.2M (-42%) -- $104.4M

3) The Happytime Murders -- 3,256 -- $10.2M -- $10.2M (1st weekend)

4) M:I – Fallout -- 3,052 (-430) $2.2M (-27%) -- $8M (-25%) -- $193.9M

5) Mile 22 -- 3,520 -- $5.9M (-56%) -- $25M

6) Alpha -- 2,719 -- $5.8M (-44%) -- $20.4M

7) Christopher Robin -- 3,394 (-208) -- $5.6M (-37%) -- $76.8M

8) BlacKkKlansman -- 1,914 (+126) -- $5.1M (-31%) -- $31.8M

9) Slender Man -- 2,065 (-293) -- $2.6M (-46%) -- $25.2M

10) A.X.L. -- 1,710 -- $2.48M -- $2.48M (1st weekend)

Hotel Transylvania 3 (off the Big List a couple of days ago) has now earned $158 million and change domestically; its worldwide total: $434,745,420 (approx.)

Incredibles 2, still in a number of theaters, closes in on a $600M domestic total; the global accumulation is now $1,125,745,538 (or thereabouts).

Ellation in Burbank

From Forbes Magazine:

Ellation, the company behind anime streaming platform Crunchyroll and general geek streaming platform VRV, is about to do more than just serve others’’ content. Beginning this year, the newly developed Ellation Studios will produce and deliver “anime-inspired shows.”

Out of production studios in Burbank, California and Tokyo, Japan, Ellation will begin developing new original shows targeted toward its current, geeky audience—beginning with its audience for Japanese media specifically. The first installment in what the company is calling Crunchyroll Originals, High Guardian Spice, will have a Japanese anime-inspired story and visuals.

Asian studios setting up shop in Southern California is not new. The animation talent pool in Los Angeles and surrounding cities is wide and deep, so why not set up an outpost facility there and take advantage of it?

I had no idea that animation veteran Marge Dean had ankled Stoopid Buddies Studio to set this new operation up, but I get around so little...

"Asians" Rule Box Office -- August 17-19

Warner Bros. owns the top two titles in the Big Box Office List -- Crazy Rich Asians, The Meg -- while Hotel Transylvania 3 declines 36% weekend to weekend at remains at #8. ...

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) Crazy Rich Asians -- 3,384 -- $25.2M -- $34M (1st weekend)

2) The Meg -- 4,118 -- $21.1M -- $83.7M

3) Mile 22 -- 3,520 -- $13.6M -- $13.6M (1st weekend)

4) M:I – Fallout -- 3,482 (-406) -- $10.5M (-46%) -- $180.7M

5) Alpha -- 2,719 -- $10.5M -- $10.5M (1st weekend)

6) Christopher Robin -- 3,602 -- $8.9M (-31%) -- $66.9M

7) BlacKkKlansman -- 1,788 (+276) -- $7M (-35%) -- $23M

8) Slender Man -- 2,358 -- $4.9M (-56%) -- $20.7M

9) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 2,187 (-402) -- $3.6M (-36%) -- $153.8M

10) Mamma Mia 2 -- 2,270 (-542) -- $3.3M (-42%) -- $111.2M

A few notches under the Top Ten, Incredibles 2 (#14) has now collected $594.1 million domestically and $1,120,919,848 around the globe. (Teen Titans Go! To The Movies! (#18) has earned $27.3 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $32,561,352 worldwide.)

Globally, Hotel Transylvania 3 has now taken in $425,988,700

Oldest Living Animation Employee

Ruthie Tompson, now 108 years old, worked in animation from 1935 to 1975, at which point she retired.

Think about this: Ruthie ended her cartoon career before a lot of people who are now board artists, designers, and directors were born.

... “I just got in on the tail end of Snow White,” Tompson said. “I got in on the dirty work, more or less. It was at the end of it where you had to clean cels and patch up little things that might have popped off, and do legwork. I was a gopher, really.” ...

Ms. Tompson did a pack of different jobs during her four decades at the House of Mouse. She inked (for less than a week). She painted cels. She animation checked, and final checked. She was in Scene Planning for a long while, and this makes her today the oldest retired member of The Cinematographers Guild, since scene planners at Disney worked under the camera local.

She lives, as she has for several years, at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills.

(The oldest living animator? That would be 104-year-old Don Lusk. Don hired on at Walt Disney Productions in 1933, assisting on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and animating sections of "Fantasia". He left the studio in 1960 and worked as an animator and director for another thirty years. Don's interview with me is here, here and here.)

Prime Time Animated Series That Went South

The A.V. club lists a host of prime-time shows that never made the full-season cut (though several had a full season produced).

...We pay tribute to the 18 animated programs that have appeared on network TV post-Simpsons that failed to make it through an entire season. These are the wannabes that never were, cut down before they had a chance to make a lasting impression—unless you count failure. With each one, we take stock and determine whether it was jettisoned too soon, or agree that a swift death was probably for the best. ...

Many of these specimens were written under WGA contracts (God, the Devil and Bob, Baby Blues and Bordertown being three examples.) Two were written under the Animation Guild's jurisdiction (Father of the Pride and Sit Down, Shut Up). A few times, there were jurisdiction fights between the two unions. Regardless of the behind-the-scenes wrestling matches, all the half-hours failed to connect with a sizable audience.

And one (Murder Police) fails to get a mention by A.V. at all, because while the Fox Broadcasting Network* ordered thirteen half-hours of the opus, after the thirteen were completed, the network decided not to air the series at all.

Yikes.

* Fox has been the only network that has made a strong investment in night-time animation over the years. Its Sunday line-up of animated half-hours has been a staple of network television for over two decades. Why ABC, NBC, and CBS have been skittish about putting prime-time cartoons on their schedules is a mystery known but to front-office execs and God, but there it is. Live-action in hourly and half-hour formats is the only type of 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. entertainment in which the other three nets are interested.

Sharky Weekend -- August 10-12

A big, fat, animated shark churns to the top of the box office list:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) The Meg -- 4,118 -- $44.5M -- $44.5M (1st weekend)

2) M:I – Fallout -- 3,888 (-507) -- $20M (-43%) -- $161.9M

3) Christoper Robin -- 3,602 -- $12.4M (-49%) -- $50M

4) Slender Man -- 3,359 (-155) -- $11.3M -- $11.3M (1st weekend)

5) BlacKkKlansman -- 2,725 (-663) -- $10.8M -- $10.8M (1st weekend)

6) The Spy Who Dumped Me -- 3,111 -- $6.6M (-45%) -- $24.5M

7) Mamma Mia 2 -- 2,812 (-547) -- $5.8M (-35%) -- $103.8M

8) The Equalizer 2 -- 2,373 (-352) -- $5.5M (-37%) -- $89.6M

9) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 2,589 (-573) -- $5.1M (-36%) -- $146.8M

10) Ant-Man & The Wasp -- 1,863 (-370) -- $4M (-37%) -- $203.5M

At present, only one pure animated feature -- Hotel Transylvania 3 (#9) remains on the Big List. It's made $146.8 million domestically and $378.3 million on a global basis.

Incredibles 2 sits at #11 with a domestic gross of $589.9 million and a worldwide take of $1,088,474,600.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies has dropped to #15 and has a domestic gross of $25.5 million. Around the globe it's collected $28.6 million.

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)!