AWN Headline News

By special arrangement with Nielsen Media Research, AWN publishes the Nielsen ratings for animated programs on a monthly basis in the Animation Flash. The ratings included herein are only for U.S. national network television. The following list of animated national network programs is ranked by Household Ratings. A Rating is the percentage of households that tuned into the program. This percentage can provide us with the number of households that tuned into the program on average during the month. The universe estimate for the 1997-98 television season is 98 million TV homes.

MEDIALAB, a real-time performance animation production company, and Cine-Groupe, a production house and distributor of animation, have joined forces for the first time in a co-production deal that will see two properties, Pinocchio 3001 and Sphinx@com, developed into computer-generated animated feature films and television series. These projects will be produced over the next four years using MEDIALABs propietary performance animation techniques.

Coming off their successful animated feature, Antz, Pacific Data Images (PDI) and DreamWorks have announced that their next collaboration will be Tusker, directed by Tim Johnson (co-director of Antz) and Brad Lewis (producer of Antz). The film will be PDI/DreamWorks third project and will follow the release of Shrek, which is currently in production. Tusker follows a herd of elephants as they make a perilous trek across Southeast Asia confronting numerous dangers including a malevolent group of poachers.

* Monday, November 30 - Thursday, December 3. La Reunion Island, France.

The biennial 3rd Encounters of the Indian Ocean Institute of the Image isexceptionally well organized this year, featuring a tribute to the lateanimation teacher Pierry Ayma, a co-founder of the Indian Ocean Institute.Fifty European professionals will meet to discuss the following theme:real-time data and sound transfer for production and [long distance]training purposes. AWN's General Manager Annick Teninge, will attend the

After two weekends at No. 1, "A Bug's Life" slipped to second with $11 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period due to a strong opening for "Star Trek: Insurrection," the ninth entry in the consistently profitable sci-fi franchise. Warner Bros.' effects-laden film "Jack Frost" had an acceptable but underwhelming $7 million opening. Paramount's "The Rugrats Movie" continued to attract little tykes taking fifth place with $4.5 million. "A Bug's Life" has now grossed a total of $83.3 million in 24 days of release while "The Rugrats Movie" has brought in $73.2 million in the same amount of time.

* Sunday, December 13. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Hollywood Shorts, a monthly film festival dedicated to independent short films and videos, will take place 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at The Joint (8771 West Pico Boulevard in West LA). The screening includes the animated film "Call Me Fishmael." A holiday party follows the screening. If you don't live in L.A. and would still like to still see the films, they can be seen through the Internet at http://www.lalive.com.

Savage Steve Holland, co-creator of "Eek! the Cat," has signed on with the William Morris Agency for representation in all fields. He will be repped by Rob Wolken, Spencer Baumgarten and Greg Lipstone. He is currently creating, writing and directing DIC's "Sabrina, the Animated Series." In addition, he's also written and directed live-action films including "Better Off Dead" (1985) and "One Crazy Summer" (1986).

A.D.V. Films has announced the acquisition of "Queen Emeraldas," a new film from Leiji Matsumoto (creator of the '70s animated series "Space Cruiser Yamato," a.k.a. "Starblazers"). The film features Matsumoto's unique sense of character design utilizing traditional and computer animation. The story takes place in the far future when humanity has expanded into space and colonized the stars. Since pirates ply the space routes preying on the weak and helpless, the rebel Emeraldas sails the Sea of Stars fighting evil using her array of futuristic weapons.

The largest worldwide licensing event is set to take place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, New York on June 8-10, 1999. The convention has moved to the main exhibit hall, the premiere space in the Convention Center, to better accommodate the many companies that will exhibit there, including Universal, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, MTV, Harvey, Jim Henson, Mattel, Hasbro, and Polygram, among others.

Nickelodeon made a major announcement Tuesday, December 8 regarding their 1999 lineup. 259 original episodes of returning shows, both live-action and animated, are scheduled for the 1999 TV season. The animated shows that will have new episodes are Rugrats, featuring the addition of new family member Baby Dil Pickles, Hey Arnold!, The Wild Thornberrys, CatDog, Oh Yeah!

St. Louis, Missouri-based Unity Motion, the first company to offer 24-hour high-definition television (HDTV) programming via satellite, has acquired the rights to air six original animated films by independent animator Sally Cruikshank. The films in the package include Face Like a Frog and her cult hit, Quasi at the Quackadero. Through the year 2000, Unity Motion has made a commitment to spend more than $250 million on movie acquisitions. Cruikshanks work will air in regular rotation on the channel.

Disney/Pixars A Bugs Life led the way at the box office for a second straight weekend beating out Universals shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcocks classic Psycho. The computer-animated film dropped a respectable 48%, earning $17.4M for a total cume of $68.7M. In fourth place, Paramounts The Rugrats Movie had a heavier drop of 64% from Thanksgiving weekend adding $7.6M for a grand total of $67.5M in 17 days.