All AWN Content

* Wednesday, May 3 - Sunday, May 7, 2000. Fredrikstad, Norway.

* Thursday, May 11 - Sunday, May 14, 2000. Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film was celebrated March 16-21, marking its 20th year in existence. The biannual festival presented a wide ranging programme, giving prizes worth 142,000 German marks (70,000 euros or US dollars) and enjoying a growth of 25% in the number of spectators. With approximately 42,000 spectators and some 500 films in the programme, Stuttgart calls itself, "The second largest animated film event world wide," a definition which might well be true. A new competition category this year was for feature animations.

* Sunday, April 10, 2000. Orange, California, U.S.A.

* Tuesday, April 25 - Saturday, April 29, 2000. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

With live-action film ERIN BROCKOVICH staying firm at #1, the new special effects enhanced action flick, ROMEO MUST DIE, finished at #2 in the U.S. box office. In its first week in release, the new Jet Li film brought home US$18.01 million. Opening in theatres Wednesday, March 22, the Warner Bros.' martial arts pic has made a total of $24.6 million. The teen terror pic, FINAL DESTINATION, stayed dead still at third, grossing $7.22 million. The New Line flick has made a total of $20.4 million in two weekends of release.

Nelvana Limited has announced the introduction of Nelvana New Media, a new division that will focus on developing new applications, products and delivery channels for Nelvana's valuable character library. The new branch will create a children's Web entertainment site and interactive games based upon their characters for both CD-Rom and Internet distribution. "Nelvana New Media is an initiative that solidifies the future success of the Company," added Michael Hirsh, Nelvana Limited's co-chief executive officer.

The executive producer of STUART LITTLE, Stephen Waterman, has signed on to exec produce the new animated feature STARCARS, a co-production between Korean-based entertainment conglomerate Ameko Entertainment Company Ltd. and Hyper Image LLC, an American animation studio specializing in sci-fi CGI. Dong Chung, COO of Ameko will co-executive produce the project. "I am genuinely excited about taking animation beyond the next level and into a new universe," Waterman said.

Giant Studios' Motion Reality system has been selected as the technology of choice for motion-capture services on the highly anticipated New Line Cinema feature film trilogy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS. New Line Cinema has signed Wellington, New Zealand-based Weta, Ltd. to handle the visual effects, and Weta has named Giant Studios as the exclusive motion-capture resource for all three films.

India-based company Colorfront has announced the release of their high-end colour correction tool color*star. color*star is the industry's first plug-in for digital film grading, advanced selective colour correction and creative look-creation running on Discreet's high-end visual effects and editing systems. The plug-in currently runs on inferno*, flame*, flint*, effect* on O2, fire* and smoke* systems from Discreet. Colorfront has recognized the convergence of film, HDTV and video to the 1080p/24 Universal Mastering solution and have standardized color*star's workflow in this format.

Shockwave.com has finalized an exclusive deal with Oscar and Emmy award-winning director, producer, screenwriter James L. Brooks' Gracie Films to create animated programming. Gracie Films and Brooks, whose credits include executive producer of THE SIMPSONS, THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and TAXI, will hold complete artistic control over the characters and properties created for shockwave.com. "We couldn't be more pleased about being in business with Gracie Films," said Rob Burgess, chairman of shockwave.com. "Jim's creative talent and versatility has entertained so many of us for so long.

Jeffrey Kramer has been named the new president of Honkworm International's cross media division. Kramer's main role at Honkworm will be to attract new major talent to the Internet company. Kramer comes to Honkworm from David E. Kelley Productions, where he served as president. He was the executive producer on ABC's THE PRACTICE and Fox's ALLY MCBEAL.