Geographical Region: Europe

The 10th annual Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children announced 10 awards on April 22, 2007, at the Sprockets Awards ceremony at the Winter Garden Theatre. Four awards were decided upon by children's juries (three designated for feature films, one for shorts), two audience awards were determined by festival goers, three awards for Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase were decided by a jury of film industry professionals and one Students Choice Award was determined by high school students attending the festival.

Next Limit Technologies announced the upcoming release of Maxwell Render 1.5. Next Limit Technologies announced the upcoming release of Maxwell Render 1.5. The release, scheduled for mid-May, will bring a great number of improvements, new features and enhancements for new and existing customers, including:

Corus Ent. Inc.'s Nelvana Enterprises announced that it will sell its animated and live-action content through Amazon Unbox, Amazon.com's video download service that offers digital downloads of movies and television shows.

Nelvana's fans in the U.S. will be able to download-to-own episodes of well-known classics like THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, BABAR and BOB AND MARGARET, as well as current hits like DI-GATA DEFENDERS for just $1.99. The content will be available starting in early summer at www.amazon.com/unbox.

Mike Young Prods. (MYP) and Gamania Digital Ent. (GDE) have partnered with Cartoon Network Int'l to co-produce the new animated comedy/action series HERO:108. This Flash animated series has been conceived with an eye towards online gaming and interactivity with its intended 6-11 year old worldwide audience.

Xilam's canine comedy RINTINDUMB (75 x 1 minute 30 seconds), featuring Lucky Luke's sidekick, the dumbest dog in the west, has been picked up by a raft of broadcasters at MIPTV. The animated series, which debuted in September on France 3, has been licensed to Mediaset (Italy), Dutch kids TV channel Z@pp, TV5 (France) and TeleQuebec Canada.

Building on the success of the TV series, award-winning animation companies Xilam (France) and Zinkia (Spain) are launching the 75-minute SHURIKEN THE MOVIE at MIPTV.

The movie is in production, with delivery due August 2007.

Taffy Ent. will pull into MIPTV with new deals for animated series FANTASTIC FOUR and BOBBY'S WORLD.

Taffy Ent. has signed a U.K. deal for FANTASTIC FOUR, the animated series based on Marvel's superhero franchise. GMTV has acquired the program for its weekend children's strand, Toonattik, which airs on ITV1 and CITV.

In separate deals, the series has also been snapped up by TV Globo in Brazil, MRTL in Hungary and Fox Video for Europe and Latin America.

Lionsgate will be the domestic distributor for Jackie Chan and Jet Li's previously untitled J&J project, which is now known as THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Lionsgate will co-release the film with the Weinstein Co.

The story follows a disgruntled 17-year-old wannabe kung fu trainee, who, after being beaten up by a street gang, is transported to ancient China where he must free the Monkey King (Li) and locate his all-powerful staff. John Fusco penned the screenplay from which Rob Minkoff will direct.

The Platform International Animation Festival has announced the films that have been selected for competition. The films cover categories for short films (including films in different budget ranges), student films, television films, television series for children, films for children, commercials and promos, title sequences, music videos and installations. The films for the Internet category and films for mobile device category will be announced April 23, 2007. The selection committee included Yvette Kaplan, Chris Hinton and Laura Heit.