Digital – nate funaro

Animation News Last Month’s Wrap 10/6/22

Lots of news in the last month – did not include much of the Disney / D23 announcements (there were a ton). A couple unionizations, some layoffs, and a bunch of Justin Roiland projects. Here we go!

If you missed it, the Solar Opposites Halloween Special is up on Hulu…

Paloni Show! Halloween Special! set to stream on Hulu on 10/17
More Roiland stuff on Hulu! Should be good nonsense. Props to my friends who have been slammin n jammin on getting this out.

Production workers vote to join the Animation Union at Bento Box

Harley Quinn renewed for Season 4 with new showrunner (Sarah Peters)

Lightyear had a decent launch on streaming considering it was up against Stranger Things

Rango Director Gore Verbinski shops his Netflix feature around town

Pinocchio live action getting some mixed responses

King of the Hill not going to be at Fox
Sounds like it could very well find a home at one of the streamers, just won’t be airing on Fox

Pixar releasing their first longform series on Disney+ starring Will Forte
Wondering how this will look compared to their features – I’m sure it will be classic Pixar high quality stuff

More layoffs / restructuring at Netflix Animation

Rick and Morty Season 6 premiere getting some good numbers

Emoji Movie creating some competition for the Queen’s funeral

Disney Parks attractions first looks – Coco, Frozen, Moana, Zootopia, Villains
Lots of parks news and lots of new attractions based on Disney properties

Netflix debuts Entergalactic trailer and key art

Great cast for the new Andy Samberg Digman series at Comedy Central
Have some friends working on this as well over at Titmouse – looking forward to seeing it

Tooning Out The News Animators Vote to Unionize

Animation News Wrap 9/2/22

Here’s the cornucopia of animation trades news over the last month. Lots of HBO Max drama…

Emmys Individual Achievement Winners – Netflix almost swept it this year (lots of Arcane wins)
TV Academy Reveals Emmy Winners In Juried Categories

Good take from CNN on how Netflix is changing business models – this explanation is directly related to the changes at Netflix animation
Netflix is not in deep trouble. It’s becoming a media company

Dreamworks sets the Kung Fu Panda 4 Release Date (it’s March 8, 2024)

Love Death and Robots renewed for Season 4

Tubi orders Adult Animated Comedy Series from Julien Nitzberg about drug dealing bears – there’s not a ton of Tubi originals yet, so maybe they will start to have a presence in original animation

AMC shows off some ‘Pantheon’ trailer and key art finally – We have been making this at Titmouse and I haven’t seen much of it, so it’s cool to see how it’s turning out. Some definite Ghost in the Shell vibes.

Streaming views surpass cable for the first time (from Nielsen) – Everyone knew this was coming, so here we are at the crossroads where streaming is beginning to pass cable in scale

Ok, we have to talk about HBO Max here … lots of big changes this last month.

Lots of shows were to be pulled from HBO Max abruptly – 36 titles, with 20 titles being originals

Then we heard about more cuts from HBO Max – including a stack of Batman & WB projects, as well as the JJ Abrams Batman project

Cartoon Network creators then jumped in to blast Discovery’s decision (and handling) on removing these shows from HBO Max…
Fungies creator Stephen Neary “slams” HBO Max
Summer Camp Island creator Julia Potts reacts
Infinity Train creator Owen Dennis calls out HBO Max

So at least after all that, John Oliver called out HBO Max over pulling the series (no clip – not exactly surprising)

Ok that’s enough of that – I’m sure there will be more HBO Max stuff next time.

And closing this out on a lighter note – some footage of the lost American Sailor Moon pilot has been unearthed. It’s great and terrible in all the best ways.

Ok that’s it for this time. Stay frosty.

Big Mouth 7 and Human Resources 2

It’s hard to believe we are already making Big Mouth season 7 – it was not that long ago we were sitting in an office talking about the rules of how the Hormone Monster (he wasn’t called Maury yet) appears into scenes, who can see him, does he have super powers?

Well we figured all that out along with lots of other questions and slowly a big world started to evolve, which is even bigger now with the world of Human Resources. Here we are years later, now starting to work on Big Mouth season 7 and Human Resources season 2 – we are excited for the fans to see what we have been cooking up!

Lots of new characters, new nonsense, and new adventures (that we can’t talk about yet) coming for our favorite friends and monsters in the Big Mouth universe.

Thrilled to be doing many more episodes with such a fantastic crew. Here’s to Big Mouth 7 and HR s2!

Human Resources Season 1 Launch

The wait is finally over – Human Resources season 1, the show we have been working on, produced entirely during the pandemic (remotely), launches today! It’s all about the monsters – we get to see more about their lives, their jobs (and clients), and all their coworkers (and the associated work drama of course).

It’s probably our best looking season yet, and the one we are most proud of. We loved making this series and hope everyone who watches, enjoys it as well.

It is a very tough thing to make a new series, so I want to show some love for everyone who made this show come to life…

Big shout outs and thank you to the Human Resources crew – phenomenal writers and script team, killer dialog editors, the powerful director crew, an amazing storyboard team, the ninja animatics editors, our fleet of expert timers, beastly design teams, our talented comp department, an absolutely badass production team, our eagle eye checkers, the unstoppable accounting crew, and our last line of defense – the incredible post editorial commando group. I could not imagine a better team I would want to have made this series with. You guys made this all happen!

Muchas gracias to all our teams at Margarita Mix making this show sound the best, to our relentless recording engineers, the fantastic crew at Light Iron, and of course our hard working overseas animation crews at Yeson and Yearim making some outstanding animation.

Appreciation to Kevin and his team at Chromosphere for designing / building a stunning main title sequence.

Thank you thank thank you to our incredible partners and execs at Netflix getting us what we need, all the brass at Titmouse who clear the way for us every week of production.

And a big big BIG thank you to the Executive Producers / creators of this show – Mark, Jen, Andrew, Nick and Kelly – they are the best EPs in the biz! Lastly, thanks to Anthony Lioi – the magic man, and the guy who makes all this animation sparkle and come together. I would have thrown in the towel years ago without that guy.

I could keep going – it would be an endless sea of thank you’s. So many people worked to make this show come together. Without rambling on – thank you to each and every one of you guys – big love, appreciation and gratitude that you were there with us on the journey make this amazing series.

Human Resources Season 1 came out today! Watch it on Netflix! Enjoy!

Human Resources Series Trailer

Last week Netflix released the full trailer for our new Big Mouth spinoff series – Human Resources! It’s hard to believe the series is almost here – we are a little under two weeks away from the premiere.

New humans, new monsters and we finally get to see what life is like for a hormone monster (and all the other monsters) working at the office. And yes, the hormone monsters can be gross to work with in an office environment.

The cast this season is amazing – we were very lucky to get to work with such incredible talent (you will see a slice of some of them in the trailer).

Shout out to our crew who absolutely killed it and worked together to make an unbelievable series we are all very proud of. Enjoy the trailer!

Future Worm is Coming

FutureWorm01 Future Worm is an upcoming Disney ‘XD’ show from creator Ryan Quincy (Out There, South Park) about a twelve year old boy who discovers time travel and teams up with a fearless worm from the future (also a special appearance by a robotic fish who explodes in every episode). They’ve got a fantastic cast and crew, and most importantly – it’s funny. All the pieces are here for a great show – and by the looks of it, they are trying some new stuff to make sure this launch is successful. Continue reading “Future Worm is Coming”