Respected industry vet Joni Jacobson has been hired to head the new Los Angeles offices of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Jacobson steps into the newly created role of exec in charge of Production Marketing, and will lead marketing efforts going forward.
Jacobson will also develop the L.A. marketing beachhead for Skywalker Sound. The new Los Angeles offices will be opened in January and are located at The Lot in West Hollywood.
KING KONG has arrived and VFXWORLD has a two-part series exploring Wetas innovative CG characters and environments in the highly touted Peter Jackson remake thats expected to be the box office juggernaut of the holiday season. In fact, Jackson was so pleased with the animation for Kong that, in an unprecedented move, he upped Christian Rivers and Eric Leighton to animation directors. Read all about the new technology advances and aesthetic choices in re-envisioning a classic 30s romantic adventure.
Bill DesowitzEditor
The ION Animation, Games and Short Film Festival, held at the James Bridges Theater on the UCLA campus in Westwood, is only a couple of days away.
DIC Ent. has been appointed the global entertainment licensing agent for Zizzle Toys new, innovative musical icon iZ. As part of the licensing initiative, DIC will translate the toy into animated direct-to-DVD movies.
The winner of Miss Digital World 2005 is the Asian model Mi, designed by Shinichi Yoshimoto. Miss Digital World is a virtual beauty competition, open to only exceptionally beautiful models designed in 3D graphic.
Animation master Hayao Miyazakis son Goro Miyazaki will make his feature directing debut with an animated version of Ursula K. Le Guin's EARTHSEA fantasy novel series, reports various online outlets. The Studio Ghibli production will be titled GEDO SENKI (TALES FROM EARTHSEA) and is set to hit theaters in Japan July 2006. The film will be based on the third and fourth books in Le Guin's six-volume series, which was first published in 1968. Le Guin's series was previously adapted as LEGEND OF EARTHSEA, a live-action miniseries that aired in 2004 on the SCI FI Channel.
Continuing its strategic business focus on leveraging its famous brand and legendary reservoir of comedy material, National Lampoon Inc. announced a partnership with the newly-formed Half Shell Ent. Films to develop all-new feature films based on material from the classic NATIONAL LAMPOON magazine and NationalLampoon.com.
NVIDIA Corp. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ULi Electronics Inc. (ULi), one of the PC industry's most highly-regarded core logic developers. Headquartered in Taipei, ULi also has offices in Hsinchu; Shanghai; Shenzhen; and San Jose, California.
Peter Jacksons popular online production diaries chronicling his eight-month KING KONG shoot, which first appeared on the official website (kongisking.net), have been assembled as a limited edition DVD set (Universal Studios Home Ent., $39.98) for release Dec. 13, 2005 one day before the highly anticipated remake hits the big screen.
Taking inspiration from ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE, KRONKS NEW GROOVE is a DVD premiere from DisneyToon Studios (Walt Disney Home Ent., $29.99) that hits stores Dec. 13, 2005.
The sequel to the underrated EMPERORS NEW GROOVE stars the endearingly dim Kronk (voiced again by Patrick Warburton), who hatches a get-rich-quick scheme to impress his dad (John Mahoney), only to discover the importance of friendship.
For those who have been waiting for the recut SIN CITY on DVD, the wait is over. SIN CITY: RECUT, EXTENDED, UNRATED (Buena Vista Home Ent., $39.99) bows on DVD Dec. 13, 2005. The new set by director Frank Rodriguez contains the theatrical cut on disc one (with vfx by Troublemaker Digital Studios, CafeFX, Hybride Technologies and The Orphanage) and also reassembles the movie on disc two, reinserting a few bits of business but more crucially allowing you to view each chapter separately. Thus, the chapters have been extended to more closely resemble the experience of Frank Millers stories.
Pendulum has completed three :30 spots for the Kellogg Co. and international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. The spots involve a detailed cliff-hanging plot, combining live-action sequences with 3D CGI characters and environments, as well as traditional 2D animation. The San Diego-based 3D-animation studio provided on-set effects supervision and turn-key digital post production services by creating all 3D CGI elements, compositing the three spots and integrating the 2D cel animation provided by a third-party studio sub-contracted by Kelloggs.
Award-winning visual effects studio Digital Dimension makes a splash in fully animated entertainment with the completion of DEEPO, an underwater adventure piece that marks the companys first all-CG entry. Renowned themed park attraction developer Gary Goddard entered a partnership with Digital Dimension to produce and direct the film, which is the centerpiece of the 4-D theater presentation at the recently opened 500,000-square-foot, $250-million-dollar new Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.
Relativity Media, IDG Films, Platinum Studios and Arclight Films have announced that they have arranged financing to bring the Top Cow Prods.' WITCHBLADE comicbook to the big screen. Production will begin in 2006 on two feature films, to be shot back-to-back, based on the best-selling action/fantasy comicbook, which also earned a loyal following as a TNT television series.
Axed ABC sci-fi series NIGHT STALKER is back from the dead thanks to SCI FI. The channel has acquired all 10 episodes of Touchstone Television's series remake. In addition to the seven episodes that aired on ABC this fall, SCI FI will have the exclusive premieres of three never-before-seen episodes. The series is slated to launch next summer.
NIGHT STALKER is exec produced by Frank Spotnitz (X-FILES) and stars Stuart Townsend, Gabrielle Union, Eric Jungmann and Cotter Smith.
Writer Jared Stern has signed a two-year overall deal with Walt Disney Feature Animation, VARIETY reports. Under the exclusive contract, Stern will write original projects for the division as well as existing projects. Sterns made his name by selling his idea for a third installment of TOY STORY to the studio when he was participant in the Feature Animation Development Program. No word has been given which project he has been assigned to first.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Assoc. announced the nominees for the 2005 Golden Globe awards. To interest for the visual effects community, Peter Jackson earned himself a Best Director nomination for KING KONG, which also received a Best Score nod for James Newton Howard.
Skillset and the South West Regional Development Agency are supporting an exclusive professional masterclass offering unique insight from stop frame to CGI, designed and taught by animators for animators. Participants will have an opportunity to discover how Aardman Animations and DreamWorks are translating the skills of highly experienced stop-frame character animators into CGI.
Sony Pictures Consumer Products (SPCP) announces a sea of licensing opportunities for SURFS UP, the second animated feature film from Sony Pictures Animation, scheduled for release in summer 2007.
The third PETTSONS PROMISE (THE TOMTE MACHINE), featuring internationally popular TV-Loonland heroes Pettson and Findus (the grouchy old man Pettson and his curious little tomcat Findus), got off to a successful start in Scandinavian cinemas. In Sweden, the homeland of the popular cartoon characters, some 61,080 viewers have seen the new TV-Loonland feature film since its Nov.
Walt Disney TV, EMEA and Asia Pacific are reorganising in an expansion drive, both into new technology and into new business areas, which take effect on Jan. 1, 2006. Leading off the new structure is Robert Gilby who joins Disney Channel UK and Disney Channel Scandinavia and the Middle East as vp/md.
Gilby most recently was vp, network development and strategic marketing for Turner Ent. Networks Asia in Hong Kong.
Kuma Reality Games, the company that utilizes revolutionary videogame technology to re-create military events, launched a compelling online documentary gaming series on Saddam Hussein. The latest installment takes gamers through the frenzied search through the town of Adwar, and the capture of Hussein by U.S. troops in the infamous "spider hole."
Kuma's previous episode was a recreation of the events that led to Saddam's war crimes trial, now in progress in Iraq. Both episodes are available for free download at KumaWar (www.kumawar.com).
Realscan 3D, an industry leader in the creation of digital doubles using 3D scanning technology, announced innovations in its proprietary hardware and 3D scanning pipeline that will improve the way that digital assets are created for all CGI entertainment assets.
Exceeding all expectations, Disney's THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE bowed with a strong $65.5M at the box office for the weekend ended Dec. 11, 2005. Disney confirmed that it would now greenlight the next movie in the epic C.S. Lewis NARNIA saga: PRINCE CASPIAN. VFX provided by Rhythm & Hues, Sony Pictures Imageworks, ILM and others.
Electronic Arts has launched a studio in Singapore to localize and customize popular EA games into at least five different languages for distribution throughout the Asia region. Based in the heart of the city at No 1, Fifth Ave #04-07 Guthrie House, the studio is poised to evolve into an online game development facility. A development team is already in place and the first localized projects have already started to be shipped.
