AWN Headline News

Universal Pictures chairman Casey Silver was forced to resign after a year of consistent box office flops such as "Primary Colors," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Out of Sight," "Meet Joe Black," and this weekend's disastrous opening of the expensive sequel "Babe: Pig in the City," which was slaughtered by two other family-oriented features, Disney's "A Bug's Life'" and Paramount's "The Rugrats Movie." Silver had been head of Universal's movie production, marketing and distribution since November 1995.

The Santa Clarita International Film Festival (SCIFF) is now accepting entries in many categories including Feature-Animation, Short-Animation, Tele/Feature-Animation, Screenplay-Animation and Student Shorts. All entries must be postmarked by January 5, 1999. The festival takes place from February 19-26, 1999. For more information or submission guidelines, contact the SCIFF office at (805) 257-3131 or visit their web site at http://www.sciff.org.

Animation and visual effects house Pacific Data Images (PDI) has appointed industry veteran George Merkert as Executive Producer of the Motion Picture Visual Effects division. This decision comes on the heels of PDIs announcement of their intention to grow their operation and core business capabilities beyond its present size and scope, and to further develop its traditional animation/visual effects support work with a new emphasis towards content creation.

Disney/Pixar's "A Bug's Life" dominated the box office this weekend with a staggering number one debut of an estimated $33.3M over the Friday-to-Sunday period and a record-setting $45.7M over the five-day holiday frame. If the estimates hold, the computer-generated bug picture will become the largest Thanksgiving opening in history topping Disney's 1996 release "101 Dalmatians" which debuted with $33.5M and $45.1M over the comparable periods.

* Monday, December 7. Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

The Association of Northern Animators (ANA) will hold a Christmas partycalled 'Animate 98' at 8 p.m. at the Telegraph Hotel. Everybody is welcome.Local animators will come together to meet, view each others' work, discussand network. The evening will include DJs and screenings of localanimators' work. Cost £2. For more details, e-mail alys.hawkins@unn.ac.ukor ring (0191) 232 8432.

BEAU CAMERON has joined Santa Maria, California-based COMPUTER CAFÉ as a 3Dcharacter animator. His first project is animating a flock of penguins fora Mervyn's television spot.

Not only are the RUGRATS burning up the big screen but they're also settingrecords on the small screen. A Thanksgiving-themed episode, "The Turkey WhoCame to Dinner," which aired on November 10 garnered Nickelodeon's biggestratings ever among the age 2-11 demographic. The special outperformed allcompetition, even broadcast networks, in its time period earning a 9.4/28national rating share (3.7 million viewers) among kids 2-11.

Sunday, November 22, marked the end of the 7th Holland Animation FilmFestival 1998. Awards were presented for both the international competitionfor applied animation and student films. The jury for the internationalcompetition for applied animation consisted of Garri Bardin (Russia), PaulBush (United Kingdom), Dingeman Kuilman (The Netherlands), Adriaan Lokman(The Netherlands), and Linda Simensky (United States). They chose thefollowing films to receive the Golden Pegbar Awards:

The 32nd annual U.S. International Film and Video Festival is now seekingsubmissions in computer animation and non-computer animation categories.Entries must be received by March 1, 1999. For entry kits and additionalinformation, contact (630) 834-7773 or visit www.filmfestawards.com.

Balmur Entertainment, a music management and publishing company owned by singer-performer Anne Murray, has acquired Evening Sky Productions and The Animation House in an effort to produce original animated series, live-action family entertainment and music-driven television specials for global distribution. Evening Sky (headed by David and Mary Corbett) and Animation House (headed by Bob Fortier) will merge to become a wholly-owned division of Balmur Entertainment and will operate as Evening Sky Productions.

Columbia Tristar Home Video and the Harvey Entertainment Company willrelease "Baby Huey's Great Easter Adventure," a live-action, feature-lengthmusical comedy, starring the classic oversized, diapered duck in his firstmovie ever. The direct-to-video film, which will be released on March 2,1999, stars Joseph Bologna, Maureen McCormick, Harvey Korman, David Lander,and David Leisure. The song-filled film also includes a bonus Baby Hueycartoon, "Daycare Duckie," packaged with the film. The film is about how

Animated films played a very big role at this weekend's box office whichsaw strong performances from three animated features. After eight weeks,"ANTZ" remained in the Top 10 at No. 9 pulling in $2.3 million. "A Bug'sLife" was impressive in its one-theater debut in Hollywood, California'shistoric El Capitan theater grossing an amazing $291,000 during theweekend. This opening set house records at the El Capitan according tosources at Buena Vista. The biggest story this weekend though was