Search form

Geographical Region: Europe

Film Headline News

Buena Vista Games Ships 2+ Million Units of Narnia Videogame

Buena Vista Games shipped more than two million units of the multiplatform videogame, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, to retail outlets in North America and Europe. It was released in conjunction with the epic film from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, which debuted Dec. 9, 2005, in theaters.

Game Headline News

Kong Lives In Ubisoft's King Kong Game

Ubisoft revealed that its critically acclaimed game of the year contender, PETER JACKSON'S KING KONG: THE OFFICIAL GAME OF THE MOVIE features an un-lockable, exclusive alternate ending in which players can save the giant ape from his cinematic death, pilot an airplane and discover Kong back home on his native Skull Island. The game, rated "T" for Teen, based on Universal Pictures' release, KING KONG, from three-time Academy Award winner Peter Jackson, is positioned to be the top-selling title for the holiday season and is currently available nationwide.

Series Headline News

British Music Channel Fuses With Animated Empire Square

British music channel Fuse is set to debut its first animated TV series, EMPIRE SQUARE. The show follows three foul-mouthed characters Rabbit, Hooks and Tourette's-afflicted wannabe rocker Richie. The trio always gets into strange get-rich-quick schemes while trying to obtain rock stardom.

Charlie Headline News

Designer Charles McElmurry Passes Away

Designer/illustrator Charles O. McElmurry passed away Dec. 5, 2005, at the age of 84 in Santa Rosa, California. McElmurry grew up in Los Angeles and attended Chouinard Art Institute. He began his career in the animation industry at Walt Disney in 1942, but was soon drafted into the Marine Corps and sent to Quantico, Virginia. He spent the war years in a film unit there. He attended Chouinard Art Institute on the GI bill.

He later worked for many independent studios in New York, France, and California including Quartet Films, Jay Ward, Cartoon Farm and Bill Melendez.

Series Headline News

VIZ Media Offers Diverse Collection Of Anime Titles For Holiday

VIZ Media Llc. has announced a collection of fourth quarter anime releases that will make unique gift selections for the 2005 holiday season. These DVDs include exclusive box sets, the latest episodic volumes for ongoing series, as well as single DVD volumes for newly launched properties.

Series Headline News

No Hibernation For Porchlight & Benjamin Bear Brand

Following its agreement with Canadas Amberwood Ent. for the U.S. broadcast, video and merchandising rights to the animated series, THE SECRET WORLD OF BENJAMIN BEAR, PorchLight Ent. has launched its branding campaign for the preschool hero by signing a home entertainment deal with Genius Products Inc. The inaugural deal grants Genius exclusive DVD and video distribution rights in the U.S. for nine half-hour episodes. The series is already an international hit throughout Canada, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Television Headline News

Zucker & Falco To Lead New NBC Universal Television Group

Jeff Zucker has been named ceo and Randy Falco has been named president/coo of a newly integrated NBC Universal Television Group. Beth Comstock has been appointed to the newly created position of president, NBCU Digital Media and Market Development.

Headline News

Kong Fails to Crack $10M on Opening Day

Peter Jacksons KING KONG captured $9.75M yesterday in its opening box office bow, ranking 21st on the all-time list of Wednesday openers. Falling well below industry expectations, the Universal Pictures release had a per-screen average of $2,735 on 3,567 screens. Overseas, however, KONG opened much stronger, pulling in $8M on 4,659 screens in 36 markets. Biggest openings were in Australia ($860,000), Germany ($664,000) and Jacksons New Zealand home ($297,000). Box office information obtained from boxofficemojo.com and VARIETY.

Effects Headline News

Joni Jacobson to Head New L.A. Office for ILM

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.

Music Headline News

DIC Named Global Entertainment Licensing Agent for Zizzle's iZ

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.

Headline News

NVIDIA to Acquire ULi Electronics

By Rick DeMott | Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 12:00am

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.

Film Headline News

Third Pettson and Findus Movie Premiere Successful in Scandinavia

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.

Disney Headline News

Walt Disney TV, EMEA & Asia Pacific Set New Structure For Expansion

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.

Headline News

BlueArc Provides Rhythm & Hues with Storage for Narnia

Rhythm & Hues chose BlueArc's Titan Storage System as the storage foundation for the company's visual effects work on THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.

For the film, Rhythm & Hues provided 400 shots, using a production pipeline that included motion capture, modeling, rigging, animating, technical animation/fur, lighting, rendering and compositing.

Headline News

Park Village Signs Directors James Rogan & Aasaf Ainapore

Park Village, one of Londons leading production companies, has signed directors James Rogan and Aasaf Ainapore. They join Park Village alongside Johan Brisinger, Jim Hayton, Omid Nooshin, Charlie Stebbings, Peter Webb and Roger Woodburn.

Rogan started his film career at the tender age of 14 when he worked as a cameraman on the Channel 4/Childrens Film Units production, WILLIES WAR. He went on to shoot another two further features for the CFU as cameraman and advanced to director of photography.

David Headline News

Cartoon Kings Chronicles History of Cosgrove & Hall

In the week that beloved British actor David Jason married long time partner Gill and received his knighthood from the Queen he also quietly returned to a leafy suburb of Manchester where he helped bring to life the classic characters of DangerMouse and Count Duckula.

Films Headline News

New Tax Credit System Offered to British Film Industry

The government of the U.K. announced a new tax credit system this week designed to support the British film industry, which was applauded by the UK Film Council. In the Pre-Budget report, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed the new rate of tax relief for low budget films (films budgeted up to £20 million) would be a net 20%. For big budget films (£20 million and above), the rate will be a net 16%. Both rates apply to the U.K. spend of a films budget, capped at 80%.

Headline News

MAXON Adds ‘HAIR’ to CINEMA 4D

3D software developer MAXON has launched the first completely integrated professional CINEMA 4D module for the creation of hair, fur and feathers. Known simply as HAIR," this new module lets users quickly and easily add realistic-looking hair to objects. The hair can be styled using HAIR's extensive tool palette, and a custom 3D shader gives artists complete control over the appearance of the hair. HAIR is not only easy to use, it's very fast, offers excellent rendering quality, and requires very little memory. An average configuration can easily render millions of hairs.

Film Headline News

TV-Loonland’s Heidi Valuable to the Wiesbaden Film Evaluation Board

The renowned Wiesbaden Film Evaluation Board (FBW) honored the new TV-Loonland feature film HEIDI and others this week with the distinction of "valuable." The co-production of TV-Loonland, Telemagination and Nelvana directed by Alan Simpson marks its premiere in German cinemas on Dec. 22, 2005.

"We are very pleased at FBW's recognition and are convinced that HEIDI will be a very special movie experience for moviegoers, young and old alike," said Selma Käppel, ceo of TV-Loonland.

Films Headline News

MTV Films Acquires Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

MTV Films has acquired the feature film rights to MARC ECKO'S GETTING UP: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, the highly anticipated videogame from Atari and Marc Ecko Enterprises. The videogame is scheduled for a February 2006 release for the PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, for the Xbox videogame and entertainment system from Microsoft and for Windows.

Festival Headline News

Slamdance Film Festival 2006 Announces Lineup

By Rick DeMott | Wednesday, December 7, 2005 at 12:00am

The Slamdance 2006 Film Festival, which runs from Jan. 19-27, 2006, in Park City, Utah, has announced the films to screen at the 12th annual festival. Festival films come from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Cuba, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain, U.K. and the U.S.

The films competing in the Animated Short Competition include:* THE FLOODED PLAYGROUND (2005, 20 min., USA) Directed by Lisa Crafts.* THE LOVE TRAIN (2005, 8 min., UK) Directed by Eva Bennett.

Pages