WB Turns Iron Giant Green. Warner Bros. has given the much-anticipated green light for production to begin on its second animated feature film, Iron Giant. The property is based on the 1968 story, Iron Man by the laureate British poet Ted Hughes. Brad Bird (The Simpsons, The Critic, Family Dog), who has been heading up the long development process, is directing the film, which sources say will be a combination of traditional and computer generated animation. Also attached to the project are producer Allison Abbate, award-winning Broadway and theater producer Des McAnuff, and musician Pete Townsend, who adapted the property into the Iron Man album and musical production in 1989. Production on Iron Giant is slated to take place solely in Warner Bros.' Glendale, California production facility. This news, no doubt, will increase speculation that Warner Bros.' relatively new, multi-million dollar, state of the art London studio will be closing down, as was the fate of the visual effects division, Warner Digital, just last month. Meanwhile, rough animation has been completed on Quest For Camelot, Warner Bros. Feature Animation's debut solo effort, which is due out in summer 1998. Many of the 350 employees working on Quest in Glendale are already moving over to start production on Iron Giant. While there are also rumors of a Space Jam sequel in development, Warner Bros. declined to comment on the project.
A baby doll terrorizes a toy community
in Action League Now!
Photo by Tom Queally. © Nickelodeon.
Chuck-I-Mation Now!
What do you get when you cross the animation style of Mr. Bill,
the fantastic concepts of Toy Story, and the superhero-parodies
of The Tick? Nickelodeon, has the answer in Action League Now!,
a series of stop-motion animated shorts which are being shown as part of
the Kablam! series on Nickelodeon, as well as in a new theatrical
short, currently running in front of the live action feature film Good
Burger. Created by Tim Hill, the theatrical short and 13 subsequent
fall `97 series segments are animated by David Fain, who is probably known
best for his independent short, Oral Hygiene. The shorts feature
a technique Nickelodeon has dubbed "chuck-i-mation," a budget-cutting
technique which explains the live-action footage of characters being "chucked"
or thrown and tossed across the screen. Accompanying Action League Now!
on the Kablam series are creator-driven, unusual-technique shorts
by Ink Tank (Sniz and Fondue), LunaVox Productions (Prometheus
& Bob), Crank it Out! ("Henry and June" bumpers), Federico
Vitali (Lava), Mo Willems (The Off-Beats) and Stephen Holman
(Life With Loopy). Nickelodeon will premiere the new season of "Kablam!"
on October 11, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT).
Iris Animating Grimm Tales. Luxembourg's Iris Productions, which
recently formed an alliance with Cinevox Productions in Germany, has recently
begun production on The Magic Forest, an animated feature based
on the classic fairy tale story of Hansel & Gretel. Iris is also working
on a series of ten animated shorts based on fairy tales such as "Cinderella,"
"Little Red Riding Hood" and "Sleeping Beauty" to be
packaged for television in programming blocks of varying length. Both productions
are slated to be ready in 1998, the year which marks the 100th anniversary
of the Brothers Grimm, making it an ideal time to promote productions based
on these classic stories.
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