Miramax Films has acquired the worldwide theatrical, home video and television distribution rights outside of Asia to the next Pokemon sequel POKEMON 4: THE MOVIE -- CELEBI: A TIMELESS ENCOUNTER. Miramax also acquired the option to distribute the fifth picture in the series, which is currently in production at Japan's Shogakukan Productions. POKEMON 4 will be released in North American theaters in November 2002, and will then be distributed throughout the rest of the world.

In the newly-released Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies film CLOCKSTOPPERS, Zak Gibbs (Jesse Bradford) finds an odd wristwatch amidst his father's various inventions and discovers he can use it to freeze time -- with the help of the visual effects experts at Cinesite. "Clockstoppers was one of the most challenging and complicated visual effects projects I've ever worked on," said effects supervisor Mike Fink.

With over $100M and counting after three weeks in theaters, Fox Animation and its Blue Sky Studios’ ICE AGE is a success and the studio has announced development on their next project, entitled ROBOTS, based on a children’s book by William Joyce. According to VARIETY, the studio has completed preliminary storyboarding and extensive visual development on the feature.

DreamWorks has officially announced the next project for Vicky Jenson, director of the Oscar-winning hit SHREK. Vicky will team with director Eric "Bibo" Bergeron (THE ROAD TO EL DORADO) to helm SHARKSLAYER, an undersea mob comedy. Will Smith (ALI) voices Oscar, a young fish that is found at the scene of the crime when the son of the "Godfather" of all sharks gets killed. Oscar takes advantage of this opportunity to play the hero, but soon finds that there are serious consequences to his posing as the great Sharkslayer. James Gandolfini, Angelina Jolie and Renee Zellweger also star.

With a weekend take of $30M, the newly-released thriller PANIC ROOM, with visual effects by ComputerCafe, took the top box office spot, but ICE AGE stayed in second place and crossed the $100M mark, making it the first 2002 release to reach that milestone. The animated buddy comedy earned $18.1M for a three-week cume of $116.8M. Disney’s THE ROOKIE swung into third place with $16M, while last week’s number one film BLADE II, with visual effects by Framestore CFC, fell three spots to fourth, earning $13.2M for a total of $54.9M.

An alien resurrection and another dose of sword-wielding vampires went up against last weekend’s box office behemoth ICE AGE, and the vamps of BLADE II tapped a vein with audiences to extract $33.1M for the top box office spot. ICE AGE slipped to second, but still earned $31.1M for a mammoth two-week total of $88.3M. The 20th Anniversary re-release of E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL, including updated visual effects by ILM, landed with a respectable $15M in third place, and last week’s number two film RESIDENT EVIL, with visual effects by AMX Studios Ltd.

On March 24, 2002 at the brand new Kodak Theater in
Hollywood, California, the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences announced the winners of this
year's Oscars. For the very first time, an award was
given in the category Best Animated Feature, and the
winner was DreamWorks’ SHREK. Taking home the prize
for Best Animated Short was Pixar’s FOR THE BIRDS. Another animated film was represented when Randy Newman won the Oscar for Best Original
Song for the MONSTERS, INC. theme “If I Didn’t Have
You.”

Threshold Entertainment, producers of the MORTAL KOMBAT film franchise, has acquired the rights to NINJA SCROLL from Japanese anime studio Madhouse. Threshold is currently in development on a $60 million live-action feature film based on the 1994 anime film by director Yoshiaki Kawajiri (VAMPIRE HUNTER D). The company hopes to cultivate the property into their next martial arts franchise and plans to produce a television series, live stage tours and video games based on the film.

ICE AGE, 20th Century Fox’s first foray into CG animated features, topped the charts this weekend and had the third largest opening for an animated feature ever, behind TOY STORY 2 and MONSTERS, INC. and the largest March opening in U.S. box office history. Debuting with $47.8M, the prehistoric beasts crushed the competition, with second place RESIDENT EVIL scaring up just $18.2M. Based on the video game of the same name, RESIDENT EVIL features visual effects by AMX Studios Ltd. and MagicMove. Third place was held by the DeNiro/Murphy buddy comedy SHOWTIME with $15.4M.

Santa Monica-based visual effects house R!OT recently created visual effects shots for the current Warner Bros. release QUEEN OF THE DAMNED. The 114-shot workload of 3D computer graphics, digital matte paintings and 2D compositing was completed using SoftImage|XSI, Maya and Inferno as well as Armada, R!OT’s artificial intelligence system (AI) for character/object animation and texture management. Originally used for the studio’s work on THE ONE, the application was co-developed by R!OT and SoftImage as a solution for scenes with extensive animated geometry.