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AWN Headline News

Blu-ray Headline News

Dinosaur Among First Buena Vista Home Ent. Blu-ray DVDs

Buena Vista Home Ent. (BVHE) announced that it will begin releasing titles beginning summer of 2006 on the Blu-ray Disc format in conjunction with the hardware manufacturer's release of Blu-ray Disc products. Titles will include Walt Disney Pictures DINOSAUR; Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL: VOL. 1; HERO; DARK WATER; LADDER 49; THE BROTHERS GRIMM; THE GREAT RAID; ARMAGEDDON, directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer; Kevin Smith's JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK; and the documentary EVEREST narrated by Liam Neeson.

Headline News

Ballance and Messana Rejoin NewTek

Don Ballance and Ralph Messana have rejoined NewTek. They have spent the last two years developing and promoting the 3D Arsenal suite of software tools, a companion to LightWave 3D. 3D Arsenal is designed to make the creation of motion graphics quick and easy for video producers and editors not already versed in 3D animation.

Home Headline News

Incredibles DVD Wins Top DEG Honors

DEG: The Digital Ent. Group, which held its annual reception at CES 2006 in Las Vegas, honored THE INCREDIBLES: COLLECTORS EDITION (Buena Vista Home Ent.) as the Theatrical DVD Title of the Year.

Other winners included KING KONG: COLLECTORS EDITION (Warner Home Video) for Catalog; LOST: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Buena Vista Home Ent.) for TV; and the animated FAMILY GUY PRESENTS: STEWIE GRIFFIN, THE UNTOLD STORY (Twentieth Century Fox Home Ent.) for Direct to DVD.

Watch Headline News

Night Watch Invades U.S. on Feb. 17

With the popular Russian sci-fi thriller, NIGHT WATCH (NOCHNOI DOZOR), set to platform Feb. 17 in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco from Fox Searchlight Pictures, the second part of the trilogy, DAY WATCH, has just shattered box office records in Moscow. Fox Searchlight will release DAY WATCH theatrically later in 2006. The third part, DAWN WATCH, is currently in pre-production.

DAY WATCH premiered in Moscow on Jan. 1 with the biggest opening day gross ever at $2.1M. The three-day cume was $7.8M. DAY WATCH is now approaching a record $30M.

Headline News

VFX Continues to Dominate Domestic Box Office

The final box office numbers for 2005 are in and, not surprisingly, seven of the top 10 finishers were vfx-intensive blockbusters. Foxs STAR WARS: EPISODE III REVENGE OF THE SITH led the way with $380.2M. Following in second, third and fourth place were Warner Bros. HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE with $278.6M, Paramounts WAR OF THE WORLDS with $234.2M and Buena Vistas THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE with $232.1M.

Comedy Headline News

South Park Going Mobile

For the first time ever SOUTH PARK and CHAPPELLES SHOW will be available on mobile phones beginning January 2006

"These deals further represent Comedy Central's multi-platform strategy to deliver content anywhere, anytime," said Michele Ganeless, evp/gm, Comedy Central. "We are committed to giving our audience quality programming beyond the boundaries of television. With the mobile launch of SOUTH PARK and CHAPPELLE'S SHOW, two of the top-rated shows on our network, Comedy Central is leading the charge in the wireless entertainment content arena."

Headline News

Caved In Debuts on SCI FI Jan. 7

The SCI FI Channel opens 2006 with giant killer beetles in its original movie, CAVED IN: PREHISTORIC TERROR, premiering Jan. 7 at 9:00 pm with a repeat at 1:00 am and an encore airing Jan. 12 at 9:00 pm.

CAVED IN, a cavernous adventure starring Christopher Atkins (THE BLUE LAGOON), Colm Meany (STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION) and Angela Featherstone (ARMY OF DARKNESS), was produced by CineTel Films Inc. in conjunction with the SCI FI Channel.

Headline News

EA Announces Lord Of The Rings, Battle For Middle-Earth II Collector’s Edit

Electronic Arts announced THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH II COLLECTORS EDITION the first ever Collectors Edition DVD release from the highly successful THE LORD OF THE RINGS franchise. The sequel to last holidays critically acclaimed PC game is filled with exclusive THE LORD OF THE RINGS game content.

Scheduled to ship simultaneously with THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH II in February 2006, the collectors edition will be available at select retailers for $59.99 and is rated T for Teen by the ESRB.

Animated Headline News

Toonz to Produce Mahabharat Animated Musical Series

Toonz has signed a deal with Mumbai-based production house Impact Vision to produce the great Indian epic, MAHABHARAT, as an animated musical, reports ChennaiOnline.com.

"The song sequences will be suitably strung together to create standard half-hour episodes for television," Toonz ceo P Jayakumar said.

Satish Mutatkar, Impact Vision ceo, who wrote lyrics for the animated feature film HANUMAN, will be the creative director of the project, which is going by the title Titled GEET MAHABHARAT.

Comics Headline News

Virgin Forms Virgin Comics & Virgin Animation

Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Books Ltd. announced a new entertainment partnership with world-renowned author Deepak Chopra, acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and South Asia's leading publisher of comic magazines, Gotham Ent. Group Llc. The partnership will launch two new Virgin branded companies, Virgin Comics Llc., based in New York City and Virgin Animation Private Ltd., based in Bangalore, India, focused on creating original comic books and character properties for a global audience.

Television Headline News

LA ACM SIGGRAPH, Autodesk & nVidia Give a Taste of TV

A Taste of TV A Smorgasbord of Effects for the Small ScreenNorth Hollywood, California, USAJanuary 10, 2006

The Los Angeles Professional Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH along with Autodesk and nVidia presents "A Taste of TV A Smorgasbord of Effects for the Small Screen. The event will present the latest in the world of computer graphics on television. This soup to nuts presentation will cover visual effects and animation in episodic television, commercials, music video, 2D animation and broadcast packages.

Headline News

Rendercore Extends Virtual Renderrack Promotion

Rendercore Inc. has extended its promotional offer of unlimited use pricing model. Though Virtual Renderrack was only launched in December 2005, it was highly successful and generated a lot of requests from clients for the promotional offer to be extended. This promotion is available to those who purchase unlimited solution from Jan. 4-6, 2006.

Producers Headline News

PGA Announces First Producer of the Year for Animation Noms

For the first time, the Producers Guild of America has issued nominations for Producer of the Year Award Animated Film. The list of five is a list of the top performing animated features of 2005. Box office champ MADAGASCAR from DreamWorks earned Mireille Soira a nod. For Disneys CHICKEN LITTLE the nominee was Randy Fullmer. Foxs ROBOTS Jerry Davis, John C. Donkin and William Joyce were all nominated. For Warner Bros. CORPSE BRIDE, the nominees are Tim Burton and Allison Abbate.

Animation Headline News

AWN Discussion Forums - What's New? for January 3, 2006

This week in AWN's Forums, members share some Flash tutorials. Theres a thread about drawing the body. A post looks a whats ahead in the next year for members. Others are still debating the importance of animation history knowledge. A junior members asks how critical is it to pick the right school? Members are chiming in on what they think is some really bad animation. Another member asks what is the correct method to render animation. Others continue to post their work for members to check out.

Headline News

12 Scholarships in International Art Program

Transart Institute announced that 12 scholarships, amounting to $40,000, have become available to students of its low-residency Master of Fine Arts program for the academic year 2006/7. Eight scholarships of $2,500 each will go to students of merit and four scholarships of $5,000 are available to candidates from East Europe and new EU-member countries.

Application deadline for the academic year 2006/7 is April 1, 2006.

Headline News

News Corp. Ups Jeremy Philips to EVP/Office of the Chairman

News Corp. has promoted Jeremy Philips to EVP/office of the chairman and will focus on acquisitions and strategy across the company and will oversee Internet investments. He will continue to report to News Corp. chairman/ceo Rupert Murdoch.

Philips, 33, will also join the company's executive management committee.

Prior to joining News Corp., Philips was vice-chairman of ecorp Ltd., and worked at Citigroup and McKinsey & Co.

Games Headline News

Vivendi Universal Games Acquires High Moon Studios

Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) has acquired leading independent developer, High Moon Studios. Under terms of the agreement, VU Games will retain High Moons team of more than 100 development professionals, as well as rights to the studios intellectual properties. John Rowe, president/ceo of High Moon, will continue to manage the studio from its state-of-the-art facility located in Carlsbad, California.

Digital Headline News

Sony Focuses on Future of Entertainment at CES 2006

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES Booth # 14200), Sony will be focusing on four "pillars" or categories of entertainment to highlight its moves into the future of entertainment. The company will announce new products and strategies as it pertains to high definition, digital cinema, videogaming and e-entertainment, during the conference in Las Vegas, running Jan. 4-7, 2006.

Mobile Headline News

MFORMA Releases Call of Duty 2 Mobile Game

MFORMA announced that it has released Activision Inc's. CALL OF DUTY 2 to mobile users everywhere. A sequel to MFORMA's CALL OF DUTY mobile game of 2004, one of the most successful mobile games of all time, CALL OF DUTY 2 is the mobile version of Activision's critically-acclaimed CALL OF DUTY 2 game.

Animation Headline News

Indian Studio Boasts 12 Seconds of Animation Per Day

Bangalore, India-based Ittina Studios boasts that its employees are producing 12 seconds of animation a day, reports THE BUSINESS STANDARD. U.S.-based studios like Pixar and DreamWorks expect their animation artists to produce no more than 3-5 seconds per day.

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