Category: Business

Barcelona-based Morphe Art Pictures, a short film distributor, has launched a campaign to license its shorts in the U.S. and Latin America. Morphe Art Pictures has agreements with such British animation institutions as The Royal College of Art, the National Film and TV School and the French animation studio Lardux Films. Other independent productions represented by the company are the Prix Arts nominee MOVING ILLUSTRATIONS OF MACHINES, as well as BAFTA New Talent Awards nominee THE LONELY WIDOW, REANIMACION and THE GIFT.

Activision, Inc. has announced record financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2001. Net revenues were US$110.6 million, 31% higher than last years net revenues of $84.6 million. Net income for the first fiscal quarter was $29,000 or a nominal amount per share, compared with a net loss of $5.2 million, or $0.21 loss per share, reported for the same period last year. The company also announced an increase in its fiscal year 2002 earnings per share forecast from $0.80 to $0.87.

Entertainment Rights plc has announced the creation of their home video company Right Entertainment. Along with its recent US$22.5 million acquisition of Link, Right will enable Entertainment Rights to exploit its properties around the globe in all mediums. In turn, Entertainment Rights has signed an exclusive deal with Universal Pictures Video UK to release its properties on video.

Santa Monica-based Zeros & Ones, a media holding company with digital convergence operations in technology, content and production, has announced that it has reached a final settlement agreement with Steve Schklair, former director and officer. The company filed an action against him in Los Angeles Superior Court in October 2000. Schklair was terminated earlier that same year by act of the board of directors.

Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. has announced profitable results of US$0.2 million in earnings before an extraordinary gain on net revenues of $38.6 million for its third fiscal quarter ended June 2, 2001. These profits were achieved before the gain of $7.1 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, from the early retirement of $13.9 million principal amount of the 10% convertible subordinated notes.

San Francisco-based Western Images is restructuring to focus solely on visual effects, CGI, design direction and creative editorial services. Facility services, which include the linear edit suite, Henry, telecine and video service bureau, will be retired. In addition, the company will expand its efforts in long-form broadcast and feature film effects. As a result of the restructuring, five people were laid off. Four were related to fax work and the fifth was executive producer Ken Solomon. "Kenny (Solomon) worked very hard and was very good.

Mainframe Entertainment, Inc. has announced its best financial results ever. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001, the Vancouver-based company reported earnings of CA$2.4 million or $0.14 per share compared to $0.84 million or $0.05 per share for the year ended March 31, 2000. As expected, Mainframe delivered a total of 50 television episodes (27 episodes of HEAVY GEAR and 23 of ACTION MAN) as well as its first direct-to-video, CASPER'S HAUNTED CHRISTMAS. The firm recorded revenues of $39.9 million compared to revenues of $32 million for the previous year.

A Warner Bros. spokeswoman announced that AOL Time Warner will close all of its U.S.-based Warner Bros. Studio Stores by the end of October. The move will cut another 3,800 jobs from the mega-firm and is attributed to the company's failure to find a buyer for the troubled chain store. At its peak there were 130 stores worldwide. "We're in a wind-down process," a Warner Bros. spokeswoman said. "Management decided to get out of the owned and operated retail business."

Ubi Soft Entertainment, an international developer and publisher of interactive games, surpassed its predicted sales growth of 25% for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001. Ubi Soft reported net consolidated sales of US$236 million (259.8 million euros) up 39.4% over the previous year. This growth came in spite of a 5% decline in the video games world market for the same year. Net income for Ubi Soft during the fiscal year decreased to $4.2 million (4.6 million euros). This was attributed to slow sales in the next generation market.