A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM DISNEY MEDIA
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CYNOPSISKIDS!
05.28.14
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, May 28, 2014, and this is your first early morning briefing.
It’s makeover time at Genius Brands International. The company continues its Baby Genius brand re-launch this week with the debut of fresh redesigns of Baby Genius signature characters from artist and self-described “professional doodler” Todd Goldman, founder of David & Goliath. The company also recently extended its agreement with Xfinity TV by Comcast; Baby Genius has amassed 50 million downloads over the past seven years. Select Baby Genius home entertainment titles are also currently available via Netflix. In April, GBI announced the introduction of a new online streaming service at http://babygenius.com, which features the entire Baby Genius content library, including classic nursery rhymes, learning songs, seasonal classics and more. Other Baby Genius products, including books, toys and videos are available for purchase.
Buzz grew over Memorial Day weekend that children’s entertainment hothouse Kidz Bop may be on the block. According to a Billboard story, the company, which recently released the 25th volume of the Kidz Bop CD series, is attracting suitors including Disney. Execs from Kidz Bop and Disney were not available for comment. To date, the imprint developed in 2001 by Razor & Tie co-founders Cliff Chenfeld and Craig Balsam has sold 14.6 million albums in the States, plus 3.7 million download track sales. The brand also no w counts a tour, book series and SiriusXM radio show as part of its empire. Other possible bidders mentioned are Entertainment One; Canadian music publisher Ole, and several major record labels.
CynKids is running Q&As with our Animation Innovators every week leading up to our !magination Awards at the Yale Club in New York on Wednesday, June 11 . This week, Breadwinners creators/exec producers Steve Borst and Gary Doodles are up at bat, spilling their recipe for staying creative and juggling a crazy schedule.
Where the Ideas Come From
Breadwinners is a mix of inspirations from our lives and childhoods that we’ve thrown in a blender. Videogames, particularly old-school Lucas Arts games and Nintendo games, influenced various elements of the show, including a pixilation look we’ve given certain backgrounds. Classic toons like Ren & Stimpy and Animaniacs were also a big motivation.
From a story perspective, we’ve incorporated fantastical creatures, magic, and lore. Action movies like Indiana Jones and Star Wars have also led us to use a strong adventure element. An example of that is the mine carts down in the bread mines; they were a combination of Donkey Kong Country and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Typical day at the “office”
On any given day, we’re working on multiple different episodes that are all at different stages of the production process. Each of us has his own area of expertise. [Steve’s is] story/scripts, and [Gary’s is] direction/art. So half the time we’re in the same meetings, and half the time we divide and conquer. We might start the day with a two-hour meeting with a director to review an animatic. Later we might hop into a voiceover recording with our actors. We might finish the day with a meeting to present yet another episode’s animatic to the Nickelodeon network executives for their review. At around 7pm, we generally split off. If your head is spinning after reading this, you’ve gotten a good sense of what our days are like.
Most fun, most challenging?
Collaboration is super-fun and super-crucial to our process–we’re constantly bouncing ideas off each other. This back-and-forth collaboration, which we encourage across the entire crew, helps an idea grow and evolve through every stage of the process. The most challenging part of running a show for both of us is the schedule. At any given time, there are about 20 different cartoons at different stages of the process. And being perfectionists, there’s always something we want to be working on and improving. During the first season we were working on average seven days a week, 12-14 hours a day, in order to get the show to where we wanted it.
From YouTube short to full-fledged series
Breadwinners seemed to happen almost overnight for us. We made the short over the span of a couple months, put it online, and there was an instant positive response. Within a couple of months we were developing the show at Nickelodeon, and within six months moving into full production on the first season. But the reality is we both spent many, many years developing our skills and working on our own projects. There’s no one right way to get your content discovered. But as a general philosophy, we believe you should just make it and put it out there. The technology is there. You can make animation from start to finish on your own without the tremendous resources it once required. And if you don’t have the skills to execute every stage of the process, you should collaborate with someone who can complement your skills.
Cheers to author R.L. Stine. Goosebumps, Scholastic Media’s children’s television series based on Stine’s best-selling Scholastic book series, arrived on iTunes in Canada, the U.K. and Australia for the first time yesterday. The TV show, about kids who find themselves in some extraordinaryand creepysituations, airs in the U.S. on Hub Network. Sony Pictures Entertainment will release the Goosebumps feature film starring Jack Black in August 2015; the movie is produced by Scholastic Media president Deborah Forte and Neal H. Moritz.
Did someone say, More Lego? Sept. 23, 2016, is the date Warner Bros. Pictures will premiere Lego Movie spinoff Ninjago, based on Lego’s ninja-inspired mini-figures. Charlie Bean is slated to direct; The Lego Movie posse of Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are producing.
The big tease: The summer won’t see a Pixar movie, thanks to delays to The Good Dinosaur, but the studio is finally letting the masses in on the plot of its next scheduled release, Inside Out, slated for June 19, 2015. Straight from the official Pixar website: “Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it’s no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life.”… Meanwhile, Disney is teasing Big Hero 6, the studio’s first animated theatrical release based on a Marvel Comics animated feature, with clips featuring robotics ingenue Hiro Hamada and his robot Baymax. The film is directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, and follows the two pals as they work to help save the futuristic city of San Fransokyo from a twisted criminal plot. The film is slated to premiere Nov. 7.
You’ll love our new Cynsiders column on why there’s been a resurgence of the historical Miniseries. Check it out. http://www.cynopsis.com/cyncity/complex-characters-real-life-stories-historical-content-matters/
The Biebs is back. Justin Bieber will appear on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance to introduce a new element to the show: competing dance crews. Viewers vote via Twitter; winner gets to perform on the season finale. Two-hour season premiere is tonight at 8p.
Discovery Education yesterday took U.S. students on a STEM-minded virtual field trip to the fourth annual White House Science Fair as part of the Of the People: Live from the White House webinar series. The live event, open to K-12 classrooms nationwide, featured Discovery Channel and Science Channel Star Kari Byron, a young innovator and White House officials. Students will the opportunity to listen in on a panel discussion about the importance of STEM education, and submit questions.
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE
What are you waiting for?
We’ve announced the Cynopsis Kids !magination Award finalists, Kids People Award winners and our 2014 Animation Innovators… now join us in saluting them at the Awards Breakfast!
Date: June 11, 2013
Time: 8AM – 10AM
Location: The Yale Club of NY – Register Here
Questions?
Registration: Pete Romas; 203.899.8483 | Sponsorships: Mike Farina; 203.218.6480
PROGRAMMING PICKS
We got a little detail on the premiere episode of Kid President: Declaration of Awesome, which bows on Hub Network June 21 at 7 ET. In the heroes-based ep Kid President wants to be just like his hero Corndog Jones, so he sets out to make an epic action film but rethinks things when he sees ordinary people recognized as heroes. Guest appearances include Kevin Costner, David Wain and Urijah Faber.
Cloud-based comics platform ComiXology is kicking off summer with some freebies. Beginning this week, the Amazon subsidiary is giving away one new comic every day for the next 20 days as part of its “The ComiXology Summer Reading List” event. ComiXology’s selection of digital comics in the world includes 50,000 comics and graphic novels from more than 75 publishers.
Two new apps from Cupcake Digital this week: Strawberry Shortcake Summer Fun, based on the franchise’s new Summer Fun in the Sun DVD, features a surf-themed story, two games and coloring pages. Tree Fu Tom: Squizzle Quest is based on a popular episode of the BBC-FremantleMedia series and packs a story, three games and coloring pages. The titles will be out Thursday on the App Store, Amazon Appstore for Android, Google Play and for Nook, Nabi and Tabeo devices.
DreamWorks Animation appointed Saban Brands Israel as its consumer products licensing agent in Israel. SBI will represent upcoming DWA feature film and television properties-including upcoming theatrical How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Wooky Entertainment is expanding its collection of sketchbooks, with new offerings featuring popular Disney characters that include back-stories and more on Disney princesses, villains and other characters.
9 Story Entertainment secured international sales of perennial hit animated series Arthur, a co-venture with WGBH Boston and PBS. Longstanding broadcast partners for the series, CBBC (UK), ABC TV (Australia) and Noga (Israel) signed on for new seasons 18 and 19. The series, tone of the longest-running TV shows on PBS Kids in the States, also has been licensed to CBC (Canada), Minika (Turkey), Minimax (Eastern Europe), True Visions (Thailand) and EBS (Korea). It’s now in HD and has been digitally refreshed.
Editor’s Note: Due to the Memorial Holiday, Weekly Rankers are not available by our press time. They’ll return next week.
Weekend box office estimates for the 10 top-grossing kids/tween/teen movies rated G, PG or PG-13, provided by Rentrak for May 23-25, 2014:
X-Men Days of Future Past (20th Century Fox) PG-13 $90.7 million (weekend) $90.7 million (1-week cume)
Godzilla (Warner Bros.) PG-13 $31.42 million (weekend) $148.77 million (2-week cume)
Blended (Warner Bros.) PG-13 $14.24 million (weekend ) $14.24 million (1-week cume)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Sony) PG-13 $7.8 million (weekend) $184.9 million (4-week cume)
Million Dollar Arm (Disney) PG-13 $7.09 million (weekend) $20.63 million (2-week cume)
The Other Woman (20th Century Fox) PG-13 $3.68 million (weekend) $77.77 million (5-week cume)
Rio 2 (20th Century Fox) PG $2.5 million (weekend) $121.6 million (7-week cume)
Heaven Is For Real (TriStar Pictures) PG $1.95 million (weekend) $85.75 million (6-week cume)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Disney) PG-13 $1.72 million (weekend) $253.56 million (8-week cume)
Belle (Fox Searchlight) PG $1.7 million (weekend) $3.9 million (4-week cume)
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE
How to Maximize Tune In, Brand Engagement & Revenue Through Licensing
Thursday, May 29, 2014 | 1:30 – 3:00pm ET | Sign-Up Now Speakers Include:
Erin Dippold – VP, Consumer Products {DHX Media}
Kirk Bloomgarden – SVP, Global Consumer Products {Saban Brands}
Gregory Economos – SVP, Global Consumer Products {Sony Pictures}
Marty Brochstein – SVP Industry Relations and Information {LIMA}
Manuel Torres – SVP Global Toys and Publishing {Nickelodeon}
Answer to yesterday’s Trivia Question: In the TV show Penguins of Madagascar, what does the penguins’ license plate say? ILOVEBONJOVI Kudos to: David Stern, BARD Entertainment, NY.
Today’s Trivia Question: Who plays the hooded man with the briefcase in the opening sequence of the TV show? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and time zone.)
Cheers — Cathy Applefeld Olson
[email protected] for Cynopsis Kids!
05.28.14
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