Wide distribution is still a major roadblock for European animated features. A rare exception is last year’s The Triplets of Bellville. © 2003 Sony Pictures Ent. Inc.

A year after a first panorama of the European animated feature landscape, AWN asked us to look into what’s happened since. A year is not a long time to evaluate the possible sea of changes in this business, but what’s happened in the last 12 months appears to reinforce the impressions we had a year ago.

That said, new productions are not wanting and European animation seems to have finally embraced CGI.

A Recurring Problem
While Europe continues to produce more animated features than the United States or Japan, distribution remains a problem. Very few of them get distributed outside of Europe and only rarely are successful, even in their own countries. In the past few years — with the exception of Chicken Run from Aardman Animation, a unique case — only such films as Help, I’m a Fish or The Triplets of Belleville have had anything approaching wide distribution, both distributed in a significant number of European territories. The majority of European animated films do 90% of their box office in their home territory, not to mention those that don’t even manage to muster local interest. It would be masochistic to list them here, but the reality is that there were more failures than successes in 2004.

Obviously, this situation is troubling to the profession: besides the rather mediocre films, this was also the case for some very good and, at times, very ambitious films, which could give the already small number of investors cold feet. Or, worse, scare off other potential investors.

Many European projects suffer from an artisan approach, which prevents a constant flow of product from being created. A recent example is Raining Cats and Dogs. © Folimage 2002.

Multiple Sources of Financing
Our preceding article spoke about government funding and broadcaster involvement in many projects which simply wouldn’t have seen the light of day without this aid. At the end of the day, though, budgets remain extremely modest compared to American films, which could attract investment from outside Europe if any of these films should ever break out to become big box offices successes. Warner Bros. Ent. Gmbh, a German subsidiary of the Warner Bros. Group, is a good example of private investment from outside the European animation industry. Although an expansion of this type of investment in Europe could encounter obstacles as a result of the existing financing structure for European animated films.

The brouhaha surrounding the live-action film, A Very Long Engagement, by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and also produced by a subsidiary of Warner Bros., illustrates the difficulty in France: the Union of Independent Producers (Syndicat des Producteurs Indépendants or S.P.I.) decided that Jeunet’s film, even though he used a French technical and artistic team, was an American production and that the substantial subsidies awarded by the C.N.C. (a French government organism that provides funding to national cinematography) to this very large project meant that much of a loss for the French movie industry. The crucial question concerning the diversification of European film financing has been raised as a result and the answer, highly anticipated, is to be provided by the French justice system where the Union has taken their complaint.