Animated Projects Keep Piling Up

The old, classic Jellystone ... (not to be confused with the new iteration).

What with cable ... and multiplexes and mushrooming streaming services, there are newer animated shows as far as the eye can see. There's DreamWorks and Disney and Universal, of course, but oh, so much more:

Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other classic Looney Tunes characters are getting a new life on HBO Max.

The WarnerMedia streaming platform also will gather a host of Hanna-Barbera characters for a new series called Jellystone, along with a pair of shows from Cartoon Network Studios, as part of its kids and family lineup. They will live alongside classic Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies and Hanna-Barbera cartoons on HBO Max.

A live-action/animated hybrid series from Robert Zemeckis is also in the works. ...

As previously stated, new animated product delivered over the worldwide web has been a boon to animation employment in Los Angeles and elsewhere. But it's been a double-edged meat axe: more people are working, but many salaries are below union minimums because "New Media" is the section of the contract under animation employees work. And "New Media" allows employers -- which are, let us face facts squarely -- mainly large billion-dollar entertainment conglomerates.

Contract terms have slowly improved since the Writers Guild of America went on strike a dozen years ago to get "New Media" product classified as "covered work" (meaning work within union jurisdiction.) Every show biz union, including the WGA, DGA, SAG-AFTRA and the IATSE, have endured lesser terms and conditions since New Media became part of their contracts. As a new cycle of contract negotiations begins, every guild and union will be pushing to close the gaps between features and series episodes delivered on-line, and those delivered by other means.

The days of New Media being "new" or "experimental" are long over.

Golden

Disney veteran Jack Kinney at the first Golden Awards banquet in 1984.

The Animation Guild's new "Golden Awards" ceremony takes place on November 2, as Cartoon Brew relates:

... The awards will honor 28 artists who have worked in the industry since at least 1969, the same year that Nixon became president, man walked on the moon, and The Beatles performed publicly for the last time.

The Golden Awards, which have been held intermittently since 1984, celebrate industry artists, writers and technicians who have dedicated more than 50 years to the craft. This year’s group has a combined 1,400-plus years of animation experience, and has worked on everything from The Yellow Submarine to Samurai Jack, Sleeping Beauty to The Emperor’s New Groove, and Family Guy to Spongebob Squarepants. ...

The Golden Awards had their maiden voyage in 1984 in Toluca Lake California, when old-timers from the 1930s (Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Chuck Jones among them) received statuettes for their years of service in the animation industry.

This year, artists like Robert Alvarez (Yellow Submarine, Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time, Animaniacs, and kajillions of other projects; also six Primetime Emmy Awards) and Floyd Norman (Sleeping Beauty, Jungle Book, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 2, numerous others) will be picking up their trophies for decades of work in the field of cartoons.

But it isn't simply top-line talent that gets honored with Golden Awards, it's the animation checkers and cell painters and assistant animators, people who spend decades putting animated entertainment on television and theater screens, yet receive little recognition for their work. These folks are also honored because the Guild recognizes it takes more than just a director, story artist or writer to put entertainment onto screens around the globe.

Joker In the Deck

One hell of an app ...

Maleficent 2 slides by half in its second week of release as the DC Super-Villain retakes the lead. (Meanwhile, Addams Family has the smallest percentage decline of any talkie in the Top Ten.) ...

Three Days of Grosses

1) Joker -- 3,936 (-154) -- $18.9M (-35%) -- $277.6M

2) Maleficent 2 -- 3,790 -- $18.5M (-50%) -- $65.4M

3) The Addams Family -- 4,207 (+105) -- $11.7M (-28%) -- $72.8M

4) Zombieland 2 -- 3,468 -- $11.6 (-57%) -- $47M

5) Countdown -- 2,675 -- $9M -- $9M (1st weekend)

6) Black And Blue -- 2,062 -- $8.3M -- $8.3M (1st weekend)

7) Gemini Man -- 3,008 (-634) -- $4M (-52%) -- $43.3M

8) Lighthouse -- 586 (+578) -- $3.1M (+626%) -- $3.6M

9) The Current War -- 1,022 -- $2.73M -- $2.73M (1st weeked)

10) Abominable -- 2,196 (-451) -- $2M (-43%) -- $56.8M

DreamWorks Animation's Abominable has performed middlingly in the U.S. and Canada. But its international take weighs in at $87.8 million, $30 million north of what it's taken in across the fruited plain. The current global accumulation: $144,619,495.

As for The Addams Family, it's worldwide gross now sits at $84,000,705, but 87% of that comes from North America, as it is only now rolling out around the globe.

(Oh yes. "The Joker" now owns a grand total of 849.1 million globally, outstanding for an R-rated flick.)

Tom & Jerry in CG Land

Warners has moved the release of its forthcoming Tom and Jerry feature...

Tom and Jerry will liven up the festive season next year as Warner Bros moved the upcoming film to a Dec. 23, 2020 release Friday.

The live-action hybrid film of the beloved cat and mouse, directed by Tim Story, was initially slated for release in April 2021. Warner Bros will instead fill that slot with a yet-to-be titled event film.

The WB/AT&T entertainment conglomerate saw the writing glowing on the wall: better to launch a family flick at the holiday season when the kids are out of school for a considerable stretch than to go for the smaller Easter window.

Question: Will Warner Bros. insist the picture is live-action front to back, followin in the footsteps of the Disney fiction that Lion King 2019 is a "live-action" movie, because (illusory) prestige? Or will they just stare the obvious in the face and continue to call it a hybrid feature?

My guess is the latter.

Boglehead Investing

Years ago, I stumbled on an internet investing forum entitled "Bogleheads", named after Vanguard founder Jack Bogle . On it, physicians, government workers, tech specialists, lawyers, active duty military personnel and numerous others threw around their investing experience, and (most importantly) what they had learned.

Every year, Bogleheads hold an investing conference in Philadelphia and share the investing wisdom that they sling about on-line at panel discussions, power-point presentations, and one-on-ones in the hallways. Janette and I have attended a lot of them, but this year was the FIRST over which Jack Bogle didn't preside. He died early in '19, at age 89. Even so, the conference was one of the best that we have attended. Lots of good info, lots of good memories about Mr. Bogle. He died wealthy by most standards, but he didn't die a billionaire. He structured the world's largest mutual fund company so that its investors were (and are) also its owners, not him.

(This, in contrast to the Johnson family which started Fidelity Investments. Fidelity is a perfectly fine mutual fund company. But the Johnsons are billionaires several times over, since THEY are the owners of Fidelity, not the people who invest with them. Makes a difference.)

Jack Bogle had a clear-eyed view of investing. The core of it was: be diversified; keep costs as low as possible. Beyond that? ...

I have realized over the years that many individual investors regard the financial markets as enigmatic, occult, and driven by forces unseen. Mysterious though the markets may seem in the short run, in the long run it is the basic fundamentals of investing that determine the returns on financial assets.

For stocks, returns are driven by earnings and dividends; for bonds and money market instruments, by interest coupons over specified periods. It is the reality of underlying financial forces, not the illusion of superficial emotions -- optimism and pessimism, hope and fear, greed and satisfaction -- that is at the heart of intelligent investing.

-- Bogle on Mutual Funds -- 1993

And this:

My judgment and my long experience have persuaded me that complex investment strategies are, finally, doomed to failure. Investment success, it turns out, lies in simplicity as basic as the virtues of thrift, independence of thought, financial discipline, realistic expectations, and common sense. The one great secret of investment success is that there IS NO SECRET.

-- Jack Bogle -- 1999

As regards simple investing, you can't get much simpler than Jack B.'s advice: "Don't try to find the needle in the haystack, just buy the haystack." (meaning, buy Total Market funds, rather than funds that have parts of the market.)

One of the pillars of Boglehead investing is The Three Fund Portfolio, which consists of ...

Total Stock Market Fund

Total International Stock Fund

Total Bond Fund

If you invest in the above, you cover the entire global stock market and the U.S. bond market. Up to you what ratio of each you want to invest in. But if three funds is too complicated, there's Target Date funds, that manage and rebalance investments automatically from your earning years to your retirement.

Jack Bogle, until the end of his life, had a simple prescription for investment success: 1) Invest early and consistently, 2) Stay Diversified and low cost*, and stay the course.

*There are a number of investment companies (beside Vanguard) that can do this: Schwab, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price. Any number of firms can create low cost, broadly diversifed portfolios.

.

Re-Mining the Vault

So Disney goes back for another dose of an evil witch and discovers that audiences aren't so eager to revisit the property. Maybe exploiting old animated properties only takes a giant conglomerate so far ....

Three Days of Grosses

1) Maleficent 2 -- 3,790 -- $37.7M -- $37.7M (1st weekend)

2) Joker -- 4,090 (-284) -- $28.3M (-49%) -- $246.3M

3) Zombieland 2 -- 3,468 -- $26.5M -- $26.5M (1st weekend)

4) Addams Family -- 4,102 (+95) -- $14.2M (-53%) -- $55M

5) Gemini Man -- 3,642 -- $7.8M (-62%) -- $35.8M

6) Abominable -- 2,647 (-849) -- $3.37M (-44%) -- $53.8M

7) Downton Abbey -- 2,258 (-761) -- $2.9M (-41%) -- $88.4M

8) Hustlers -- 1,575 (-782) -- $2M (-48%) -- $101.8M

9) Judy -- 1,418 (-209) -- $1.95M (-39%) -- $18.9M

10) It Chapter 2 -- 1,528 (-775) -- $1.4M (-55%) -- $209.5M

Current animated features are doing only middling well. Happily, both The Addams Family and Abominable are lower budget productions, with global totals running at $112,485,070 for DWA's Abominable not yet showing an overseas tally.But if Addams does similar numbers to what it's earning domestically, it should be a profitable feature.

The next animated feature down the pike will be Netflix's hand-drawn Klaus, due out November 9th, and then Frozen 2 on November 22.

New Media??

A better description would be super-rich media.

... Comedy Central’s South Park is exploring the booming streaming marketplace for established shows. Bids for the series, now in its 23rd season, have approached $500 million, sources confirm. ...

I think we could agree that half a billion dollars is not chump change.

And throwing around that kind of money for a cartoon series knocks one more pillar from beneath the idiot idea that "New Media" is experimental, and so must pay bargain-basement rates to the folks who make cartoons* streamed out to an eager public.

* Kindly note: "South Park" works under no Animation Guild contract, and so can pay whatever salaries it wants, with whatever distribution pipeline to which it releases its shows.