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Animation breaks another major box office record in 2016.

The post Two Animated Features Will Cross $1 Billion Box Office Mark For First Time Ever appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Between "The Secret Life of Pets" and "Finding Dory," animation is owning the U.S. summer box office season.

The post ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ Breaks Record For An Original Animated Film Debut appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Disney is finding money with animation in 2016.

The post ‘Finding Dory’ Makes History With Largest-Ever Animation Debut In U.S. appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The annual mega-animation festival is happening in a few weeks, and we're here to help guide you through it.

The post 9 Can’t-Miss Events At Annecy 2016 appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The outspoken animation legend speaks with Cartoon Brew about his new film "The Last Days of Coney Island" and other topics.

The silver lining: Brad Bird is returning to animation.

A new book explores the original, un-Disney-like goals of Pixar's first feature effort.

'Toy Story 4'. It's Happening.

As part of their website redesign, the "New Yorker" has made every article they've published since 2007 available for free on their website, including some animation-related pieces.

SCBWI (The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) is a great organisation. There is a chapter of it here in Ireland and similar ones all over the world. It was founded in LA in 1971 by a group of children’s writers and has gone from strength to strength since then.

One of its services to writers is a magazine they bring out every two months, the SCBWI Bulletin – and without fail it is jam packed full of useful information, opinion pieces and reviews. It is an invaluable resource.

This month one of the articles is entitled TED Talks that May Change the Way You Work, Think and Live. For those who don;t know TED go and take a look - http://www.ted.com/ It’s tagline is: Riveting talks by remarkable people – free to the world! And so it is.

One of the talks mentioned in the SCBWI article is by Andrew Stanton – The Clues to a Great Story. Definitely worth a look. He makes many valuable points in his talk but one of them stands out. To quote – ‘When you’re telling a story, make me care. Please. Emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically. Make me care.’

How true is that? Of any story in any genre any format and for any age. Perfectly true.

Anyway, will not transcribe the whole talk but worth a look and a listen. Lots to be learned.

Many other links recommended to TED talks in the article – including those on the Power of Introverts, Ken Robinson on Education, Jill Taylor on accessing the creative, bliss filled part of our brain and Elizabeth Gilbert on Your Elusive Creative Genius. .

And all for free!

An SCBWI illustrator Elena Ospina

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres announced on her show today that Disney-Pixar will make an Andrew Stanton-directed sequel to Finding Nemo called Finding Dory.

Of course, Ellen’s fans went crazy:

Reactions outside of her studio audience were somewhat different:

I have to exercise now to keep alive and when I'm gasping away in the privacy of my office, I like to listen to Director's Commentaries of my favourite movies. Today's director's commentary has got to be the best - Finding Nemo not only features the voices of director Andrew Stanton, co-director Lee Unkrich and co-writer Bob Peterson, but cuts away to details and mini documentaries about the

Whatever you thought of John Carter (Me? I liked it, a lot!), its director Andrew Stanton is one of the good guys. Full disclosure, I met Andrew when I moved to LA way back in 1986, when he was one of the artist/writers behind Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. A few years ago, Andrew allowed me and small crew special access to shoot some of the interviews for the Mighty Mouse DVD bonus documentary at Pixar. He told me then that his next film was a live-action/animation adaptation Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars – and his excitement for the project was intense.

Today, The L.A. Times ran a front page story (must be a slow news day) on how John Carter’s failure has affected him. The article gives some insight in how this project was produced – Disney pretty much gave Stanton a green light and no other supervision, notes or interference. It’s failure was a humbling experience for him and any hope for a Carter sequel has been squashed. Stanton is now back at Pixar directing a follow-up to Finding Nemo.

PIxar is developing Finding Nemo 2, according to a report on Deadline Hollywood. Andrew Stanton is on board to direct. Stanton, who has experienced success with his animated films including the original Finding Nemo, had a less-than-stellar live-action debut with John Carter, which resulted in a $200 million write-down for the Disney Company earlier this year.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, Finding Nemo 2

Disney’s John Carter, a live action film, was the first VFX movie to be directed like a keyframed feature animation. Animator Patrick Giusiano put this interesting video together, showing the process involved with animating his shots.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, John Carter

Disney’s John Carter, a live action film, was the first VFX movie to be directed like a keyframed feature animation. Animator Patrick Giusiano put this interesting video together, showing the process involved with animating his shots.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, John Carter

In a rare trifecta, animation artists ruled the top three spots at the box office this weekend. The number one spot, with an estimated $35 million, belonged to the TV adaptation of 21 Jump Street. It heralded the live-action feature directing debut of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who were the co-creators of MTV/Teletoon’s Clone High and the directors of Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Second place went to Illumination Entetainment’s The Lorax which earned an estimated $22.8M in its third weekend, pushing its total to a robus $158.4M. Rounding out the top three was Andrew Stanton’s John Carter, which dropped 55% from its first weekend to an estimated $13.5M. The Disney flop’s two-week total is $53.2M and is headed to a final domestic tally of $90-100M.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: 21 Jump Street, Andrew Stanton, Chris Miller, Illumination, John Carter, Phil Lord, The Lorax

As Ward Kimball’s biographer, I am obligated to share with you this post on Progress City, U. S. A. that talks about the time Ward oversaw the animation of John Carter of Mars as part of his TV special Mars and Beyond.

It’s a matter of personal taste whether you prefer Ward Kimball’s vision of a thoat:

Or Andrew Stanton’s vision of a thoat:

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, John Carter, John Carter of Mars, Mars and Beyond

If you still haven’t had your fill of “Why John Carter Failed” articles, then don’t miss New York Magazine’s lengthy read “The Inside Story of How John Carter Was Doomed by Its First Trailer.” The piece goes to excruciating lengths to absolve Disney marketing of any wrongdoing over the film’s US box office performance, and lays the blame squarely at the feet of Andrew Stanton:

While this kind of implosion usually ends in a director simmering in rage at the studio marketing department that doomed his or her movie, Vulture has learned that it was in fact John Carter director Andrew Stanton — powerful enough from his Pixar hits that he could demand creative control over trailers — who commandeered the early campaign, overriding the Disney marketing execs who begged him to go in a different direction.

The article, juicy as it is, should be taken with a grain of salt. Much of the information in the article appears to be sourced from public statements by Stanton, and only one anonymous “Disney marketing insider” is identified as having been interviewed. There are factual errors too that made me question the piece’s accuracy—the writer claims that Disney marketing approached the New Yorker in September 2011 to profile Stanton, when in fact, if you read the New Yorker piece, the writer of that piece said he’d been working on it since April 2011. At best, NY Mag’s takedown offers one version of how the film’s marketing plan derailed. The real story is likely far more complex, and won’t be understood until some point in the future.

A more insightful piece is the aforementioned New Yorker profile of Andrew Stanton, which has finally been posted online. Unlike an earlier New Yorker piece about Pixar that left me unimpressed, this profile sheds much light on Stanton’s personality and his collaboration with the lauded Pixar “Braintrust.” In spite of the profile’s positive tone, Stanton comes off as overly self assertive and oblivious to the effect of his comments, like:

“We came on this movie so intimidated: ‘Wow, we’re at the adult table!’ Three months in, I said to my producers, ‘Is it just me, or do we actually know how to do this better than live-action crews do?’ The crew were shocked that they couldn’t overwhelm me, but at Pixar I got used to having to think about everyone else’s problems months before all their pieces would come together, and I learned that I’m just better at communicating and distilling than other people.”

(Illustration by Luis Grañena)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 11 comments | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, John Carter, The New Yorker

We don’t usually post trailers for live action films but have, when time to time, one is closely related to our field (Brad Bird’s Mission Impossible, Cameron’s Avatar and Disney’s The Muppets come to mind). Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) has been working on a live action adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Princess of Mars for the past few years, and the trailer has just been unveiled. There’s plenty of CG character animation involved (did Pixar animators do it?) and lots of action. The movie will be released in March – and I’m crossing my fingers for its success.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 6 comments | Post tags: Andrew Stanton, John Carter