MEN IN BLACK: THE SERIES has been picking up steam on Kids WB! The Sony
Pictures Entertainment show has increased its ratings by 110% since its
second season last year. It has earned a 4.2 rating with kids 2-11 and a
5.0 rating with kids 6-11.
In a move much like a parent buying their child a toy and then receiving
money from their kids allowance for it, Warner Bros. Features has sold
THE IRON GIANT to Cartoon Network and TNT. Cartoon Network couldn't
handle the license fee of US$3 million, so sister Turner channel, TNT,
came in to help out on a six-month pre-Cartoon Network window. TNT will
get six runs of the critically acclaimed box-office disappointment
within that six month time period. Both networks plan to promote the
Salsa Distribution has put together a deal that will create a new Jim
Henson programming block entitled MUPPET TIME in Panama. FETV will air
MUPPET TIME starting January 3, 2000 in a deal that lasts 2 years. The
block will include the MUPPET SHOW, MUPPETS TONIGHT, MUPPET BABIES,
FRAGGLE ROCK and JIM HENSON'S ANIMAL SHOW.
The Nickelodeon toon THE WILD THORNBERRYS will be coming to a town near
you beginning February 14, 2000. Starting at Toy Fair in New York City,
the Commvee recreational vehicle from the series is making its real
world debut. After Toy Fair, the Commvee will make appearances at Nick's
"All That Music and More" tour venues, "The Big Help" events, and
various "Lucky 10" markets across the U.S. So when picking up wild
berries at the local Lucky 10 don't miss out on meeting the wild
PBS' NATURE recently received a new animated logo for its opening from digital animation and effects house, SimEx Digital Studios. The opening is a montage of snippets from nature. SimEx helped bring together the show's theme in the opening by illustrating how humans relate to nature everyday. Read more about SimEx Digital Studios and their work from Creative Director Allen Yamashita in Heather Kenyon's Animation World Magazine interview.
ZDTV, a 24-hour cable television channel about computing, technology and the Internet, will have Atari founder Nolan Bushnell on BIG THINKERS. Hosted by Mark Eddo, BIG THINKERS features in-depth discussions with the most visionary and influential men and women working in the high-tech industry today. The episode with Bushnell, the creator of PONG, will air January 5, 2000 at 10:30 pm. These interviews, plus additional footage not shown on air, will be available in streaming video on the show's companion Web site.
London-based Passion Pictures has recently finished stings, bumpers, and
indents to promote PBS KIDS. The interstitials were directed by Alyson
Hamilton, who received an Emmy nomination for her work on the title
sequence for U.S.-based TV channel CBS' THE PROMISED LAND.
DARIA fans can start gearing up for a telefilm full of fun-filled teenaged
angst. IS IT FALL YET? will be based off the DARIA series and is slated to
hit MTV in the fall. Karen Disher and Guy Moore will direct, and Glenn
Eichler and Peggy Nicoll will script.
Boston-based animation house Fablevision is slated to create two new shows
for Noggin, the new 24-hour educational network for kids from Nickelodeon
and the Children's Television Workshop. Fablevision will produce CECIL AND
HER VERY OWN UNIVERSE and SWAMP DOG. CECIL will feature a 12-year-old girl
and her robot dog who live in a underground society in the future. Cecil
dreams of leaving her mole-like life to see what above ground has in store.
Recently, Europe has gotten a good old dose of American capitalism,
Japanese style. POKEMON has infested the European television market. The
children's mega-hit first debuted in the UK on Sky 1 in April and quickly
became the channel's #1 kids show. In October, the ITV Network and GMTV
secured UK terrestrial broadcast rights to the show. A month prior to the
ITV and GMTV deal, POKEMON started airing on Germany's RTL2, The
Netherlands' Fox Kids, Belgium's VT4 and RTL, Portugal's SIC and France's
Fox Family's newly picked up ANGELA ANACONDA rings in the New Year with a
14-episode marathon on January 1, 2000. The seven-hour event will start at
7 am and run 'til 2 pm on Fox Family. The show that TV Guide recently named
one of the top ten new kids shows of 1999 regular airs at 1 pm on Saturdays
and Sundays on Fox Family.
Cult comic and TV franchise THE TICK is getting a new lease on life.Producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson (FANTASY ISLAND, MAXIMUMBOB), via their deal at Columbia TriStar Television, will bring alive-action, primetime half-hour version of the clueless hero's show to FoxBroadcasting. The series is scheduled for fall 2000.
Read more about THE TICK from creator Ben Edlund in the Animation WorldMagazine article "Tick Fever Endures" by Deborah Reber.
Director/animator Mike Dietz, founder of Orange County, CA-based MikeDietz Studios, has signed on to direct an episode of THE PJ'S, thestop-motion animated show starring movie-star Eddie Murphy, for Portland,OR-based Will Vinton Studios. Mike Dietz was one of the founding partnersof The Neverhood, the stop motion animation studio that produced severalprojects for Steven Spielberg's interactive division of DreamWorks SKG.Since leaving The Neverhood to start his own animation studio, Mike has
The Disney Channel and Toon Disney gear up for the holiday season with a newmillennium celebration. The Disney Channel will feature holiday episodesfrom Playhouse Disney series BEAR IN THE BIG HOUSE, ROLIE POLIE OLIE, andPB&J OTTER. To highlight FANTASIA/2000's January 1st opening in IMAXtheatres around the country, MOVIE SURFER'S will go inside the new film.Toon Disney, the 24-hour all-animation network, will present variousholiday-themed features as well as the television premiere of the Annie
On December 10, 1999, Cartoon Network will debut the one-hour milleniumspecial DEXTER'S LABORATORY'S EGO TRIP. The special will center around Dexter's over-zealous reaction to receiving a message from the future which informs him that he will one day save the planet. The show will air at 7pm on December 10 and repeat at 12am on Janurary 1, 2000.
We have more information to add to the Pokemon insanity. Last weekend whenPOKEMON: THE FIRST MOVIE debuted in theatres, the TV series POKEMON stoleenough kids away for the local movie house to finish #1 and #2 for both weekdays andSaturday morning. The weekday 7am POKEMON averaged a Kids WB! record 4.8rating, 32 share, in kids 2-11, and surprisingly beat all other weekday kids series,morning and afternoon,except for its chief competitor the WB's 4pm. POKEMON.
On Friday, November 19, 1999, Universal Studios Hollywood celebrated the 40thanniversary of the first airing of the Jay Ward cartoon ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE.Guests were treated to a hand-carved chocolate moose weighing almost 4000pounds. Estimated calories nearing 40 million.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, The Learning Channel will feature a specialentitled ULTIMATE SPECIAL EFFECTS. Premiering Sunday, November 28th from8pm to 11pm ET/PT, the special event will be comprised of three showshighlighting the effects in recent films like THE MATRIX, THE HAUNTING,ARMAGEDDON, and STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE.
Fox has removed Saban Entertainment's SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, the futuristicSpider-Man series, and Columbia/TriStar Television's BIG GUY AND RUSTY THEBOY ROBOT, which was based on the Frank Miller/Geoff Darrow comic bookabout a little Astro Boy-like robot and his Gigantor-like pal, from the FOXKids line-up. Both series debuted in September. They have been replaced bySaban Entertainment's THE AVENGERS, and additional time slots for BKN(Bohbot Kids Network)'s MONSTER RANCHER and Toei Animation Co.'s DIGIMON:DIGITAL MONSTERS.
North Hollywood, California-based Film Roman has begun production on THE OBLONGS, a television series that will be distributed by Warner Bros. Television on The WB Network for the 2000 season. THE OBLONGS is the second animated prime-time series, after Howard Stern's DOOMSDAY for UPN, that Film Roman has added for the 2000 television season.
The WB has already removed its new primetime animatedseries MISSION HILL from its Friday night line-up due to poor ratings. (Itspremiere episode finished 115th in the ratings for the week of October 4 -10.) It's expected to return as a midseason replacement. New episodes of SOUTHPARK return beginning next Wednesday, October 27 at 10 pm on COMEDYCENTRAL, with an all-new Halloween special, KORN'S GROOVY PIRATE GHOSTMYSTERY, guest starring the band, KORN. . . MTV is developing an animated
Fox has removed FAMILY GUY from its Thursday night line-up due to poorratings. (Apparently UPN's new WWF SMACKDOWN! is creating stiffcompetition.) According to a Fox spokesperson, the network remainscommitted to the show, and its return date will be known in about twoweeks. The show did well last spring when it launched in a Sunday nighttimeslot and Fox committed to another season. Therefore, it seems likelythe show will return as part of the Sunday night lineup when one of the
Kids' WB! has ordered 13 episodes of MAX STEEL, a new 3D CGI animated action-adventure half-hour series from SonyPictures Family Entertainment (SPFE) which is set to debut in January 2000.Set in the fictitious suburban city of Del Oro Bay, it centers around MaxSteel, a young international secret agent who was the product of abio-technical accident which infused him with nano-technology giving himbionic abilities. The teenage hi-tech hero is dedicated to protecting theEarth by fighting the most dangerous and sinister mercenary organization,
To celebrate Scooby-Doo's 30th anniversary, Cartoon Network will present a 24-hourSCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? marathon beginning Saturday, October 23 at noon,a 10-hour marathon of Scooby-Doo movies on Saturday, October 30, and aneight-hour SCOOBY & SCRAPPY-DOO marathon on October 31. Immediately beforeeach of the marathons, as well as during them, Cartoon Network will airlive-action footage which will be called THE SCOOBY-DOO PROJECT, in whichthe real Scooby Gang heads out into the woods for a documentary in a spoof
United Kingdom's ITV Network Centre has commissioned a second series of 13episodes of the animated series THE STORYKEEPERS from Dublin, Ireland-basedMonster Productions, an animation studio and distribution company formed in1995 by former management and artists from the Don Bluth studios. The newseries, produced by Shepherd Films, and distributed by Monster Distributes,will be delivered in Spring 2001 for broadcast on Sunday mornings. The newseries, which is a prequel to the existing series, is set in AD 8, and
