Honkworm is currently being pursued (and pursuing themselves) some interesting co-production deals in Hollywood and elsewhere from within the traditional entertainment world. They profess no interest in being acquired and say they have already turned down numerous large and lucrative work-for-hire type entreaties. As Liedgren puts it, "To be an in house creative shop for one studio, I think, is kind of limiting our 'outside.'" Instead, Honkworm is looking at a future with "Hollywood" that could entail joint projects with, he says, "established brand-name talent -- like well known comics or famous broadcast writers" that would join forces with Honkworm, developing projects where their respective creative sensibilities would overlap into novel programming. Meanwhile, Liedgren feels Honkworm is right where it should be, saying, "We're on a roll and growing as fast as we can." So far, that's been a pretty dynamic and impressive roll.

The Big WB Comes To Play
Entertaindom.com launched onto the Internet November 29th of last year in what felt like one of the largest (if not the most mega) entertainment net-site launches of all time. Although the Time-Warner company's new online destination hub will continue to expand and add one entertainment content in library fashion, the premiere of this site was truly extensive in what it immediately offered to the online audience and the animation world at large.

Jim Banister, Executive Vice President of Warner Bros. Online, has been working over the past five years in architecturally designing and creating Entertaindom's extensive mixture of online entertainment, news (with items coming from sources including Entertainment Weekly, CNN, Reuters and Variety), a myriad of unique Entertaindom services (such as Looney Tunes Teach The Internet, the official "help" area featuring original material with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam), music and TV stories, movie reviews, hit lists and critics' polls, shopping features, interactive community functions such as e-mail and chat, as well as an Entertaindom home page community service, giving fans the capability of viewing or creating their own pages based on celebrity and entertainment properties. This latter service is powered by Acme City which is a joint venture between Warner Bros. Online and FortuneCity.com. Not to be forgotten in entertaindom.com's new online world is an area that could get very hot called Entertaindom Auctions. They describe this area as a personalized entertainment trading community, hosted by eBay.

With a fervent belief that the "time is now" for short-form animated online programming, Banister and his boss Jim Moloshok, President of Warner Bros. Online and the executive in charge of Entertaindom, have developed the site's initial presentation of animation by dividing the three types of toon programming as follows:

1) Born-on-the-web originals that have the possibilities of crossing over to other media;
2) online extensions of their "branded" toons with new webisodes mixing existing footage with newly created content; and
3) original entertainment that has been re-programmed for the web or syndicated from outside sources such as AtomFilms.

One of the premiere web originals is The God And Devil Show, co-produced with Mondo Media and scheduled as a weekly interactive talk show toon featuring celebrity legends like John Wayne. Audiences can use special online "Ask God" confessionals or leave messages on "The Devil's Answering Machine." It's an edgy, very clever show. When asked about the target audience, Banister makes the general note, "Entertaindom is not intended to be a kids site. We will have a version of Entertaindom in the near future that will be specifically and protectively designed for children but for now, this is a site more designed towards 18 and older."

Another original web series called Dr. Science is co-produced with Dotcomix utilizing Pulse Entertainment's new 3D technology which Banister believes is "very articulate for certain types of animation." He is very pleased with their association with the Pulse group and plans are in development for several more original series specifically produced in that style.