Industry news for the professional cartoonist
The movie “Over the Hedge comes out on DVD on the 17th of this month. If you didn’t take my advice from my review and see it in theaters, make sure you pick up a copy of the DVD. The movie is of course based on the comic strip by T. Lewis and Michael Fry.
Open Season opened as the number one movie in America on it’s debut weekend. According to “Movie Web,” Open Season grossed $23 million knocking Jackass Number Two to, well, number two and edging out new movies The Guardian and School for Scoundrels.Open Season’s executive producer is Steve Moore.
Steve Moore’s movie, “Open Season,” wasn’t intentionally planned to open up in the fall around the time of traditional hunting season, but sometimes timing is everything in the entertainment industry. Steve ought to know that. In many ways, his entertainment career has been aided by providential good timing since the day he decided to take a swing at cartooning. His “In the Bleachers” submission landed on the editors desk at Tribune Media at the same time another sports cartoon was ending. Pitching the movie idea for “Open Season” to Sony Pictures came at a time when they were just opening their animation studio and were hungry for a great movie project.
In case you missed the last Garfield: A Tail of Two Cities movie, you can pick up the DVD which is slated to be released on October 10 according to E&P. The DVD includes unseen footage, a music video, games and a ‘Drawing with Jim Davis” feature.
Several puzzle pieces point to the possibility of Berkeley Breathed’s Opus making the leap to the big screen. Coming Soon.net…
According to the Reuter’s story the DVD will include a hybernated feature that can be activated after November 28 (presumably to coincide with peak Christmas buying season), a four minute mini-movie with all the original voice talent. The mini-movie is a parody of reality tv called “Hammy’s Boomerang Adventure.”The DVD also includes “Behind the Hedge,” a look at the real-life animals that inspired the film’s critters; filmmaker commentaries; a mock “infomercial” spoofing the career opportunities of pest control; a “making-of” documentary; cast interviews; and a virtual drawing lesson by a DreamWorks animator on how to sketch Hammy.Over the Hedge took in $151.7 million domestically.
Steve Moore, creator of In the Bleachers is an executive producer and co-creator of the upcoming movie Open Season that hits the theaters on September 29th. While Steve is no stranger to animation (he’s created animation shorts for ESPN and a children’s television series), this is his first feature film.
“Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties” was number 7 over its opening weekend and only took in $7.2 million according to The Numbers.Most reviews that I read thought the script was less than stellar, but I’m sure as a parent, if I had a choice between Pixar’s “Cars” and “Garfield,” I’d take the former. “Cars” is in its second week at number 1 and took in $31.2 million over the weekend for a growing total of $114.5 million.Here are a couple of more reviews: The Patriot News in Harrison, PA thinks it wasn’t too bad, but the VUE Weekly hopes Garfield doesn’t have nine lives; The Boston Globe wasn’t impressed as well.
I’m late in getting in contact with the Garfield/20th Century Fox crowd to see if there is a prescreening of the new Garfield movie that is coming out this Friday, so I’ll try to be diligent in posting links to other reviews.First up we have a disappointed MSNBCDespite (Bill Murray) droll delivery and a couple of amusing lines here and there, Murray can?t wring many laughs out of the mostly lame script from returning writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow…. A sure sign of complete creative bankruptcy in any sequel, this time the action shifts overseas to England, where Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) is given the opportunity to do the usual European vacation things, including a pit stop at Buckingham Palace where his dog pal Odie pees on the stoic royal guards.
Like clockwork, every time a successful movie comes out, someone comes out of the woodwork claiming that the movie idea was based on their earlier work and that the creators are plagiarists who are raking in money off of someone else’s idea.According to Minnesota public radio, Moira Manion is a cartoonist from Minnesota who had a comic strip about a fox and a snake living on the edge of suburbia back in in the early 1990’s that was distributed through Argonaut Entertainment…. Despite the hand-written notes of encouragement in their margins, she decided to lay down Franky & Ralph temporarily to pursue other ideas.A few months later, with her suburban streetwise fox and naive rattlesnake still fresh in her head, Manion ran across a notice in a newspaper trade magazine.”It said that coming in October, United Feature Syndicate would be launching a new strip about a streetwise raccoon and a practical, naive turtle who lived in the suburbs because their woods had been destroyed by the suburbs,” Manion says.It was her first notice of a strip called Over the Hedge.
Wall Street estimates Wall Street trims “Hedge” box-office forecast | Reuters.com:LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Over the Hedge” managed a modest 30 percent box office decline in its second weekend, though some analysts are concerned that the animal cartoon still could underperform and put pressure on the stock of its producer, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.The film earned $84 million in its first 11 days, after a $35.3 million performance over the Memorial Day Holiday weekend, but has just one more weekend to itself before arch-rival Walt Disney Co. releases the Pixar-produced “Cars.””It now appears unlikely that ‘Over the Hedge’ will reach either our estimate of $195 million in domestic box office or original consensus expectations of $180 million,” Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen wrote in a research note Wednesday after others had raised concern last week.The analyst said DreamWorks Animation likely will earn less than 50 cents per share this year, which would be a significant earnings miss relative to her 57 cents per share forecast.The analyst said she is reining in her box office prediction to $150 million-$160 million domestically for “Hedge.”
The new Garfield movie “A Tail of Two Kitties” opens up in theaters on June 16 and the first Garfield movie will be re-released on DVD as a collectors edition by Fox Home Entertainment. The collectors version will have several special features such as: games, 10 jigsaw puzzles, 17 deleted scenes, a Garfield documentary, story board and of course the ever popular feature often called “and a whole lot more.”If that wasn’t enough, two new Garfield books will be published next month according to E&P.
Michael Fry and T Lewis’ movie “Over the Hedge” was up against two other new movies this week end…. The third and last place honor went to “See No Evil” which earned $4.4 million over it’s initial weekend.Over the Hedge has three more weeks to be the top animated movie in the theater until Disney/Pixar’s movie “Cars” is released on June 9.All figures are according to IMDB.
Last night I caught a prescreening of T. Lewis and Michael Fry’s “Over the Hedge” movie.
T. Lewis and Michael Fry with the cast of “Over the Hedge.” ‘ DreamWork SKG Animation. Used by permission. All…