Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

April 18, 2011

Welcome to the Promised Land, Mr. Berkman.

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Bruce Hall: For the most part we're talking about films aimed at children and if its a cartoon, there are talking animals and cute songs, most pre-teens will happily sit through it a thousand times. But what about their parents? How much time and money are parents willing to put into something that drives them insane, even if their kids love it? I tend to think that unless a project is just an utterly misguided monument to creative hubris (Mars Needs Moms), it's hard NOT to entertain kids. But the difference between an average return on investment may be whether or not you can reel in the adults as well. The Toy Story franchise is an example of a wildly successful children's property, in part because parents love it as much as their kids do. So I fully expect the average plain as oatmeal, paint by numbers talking squirrels singalong full of half baked lessons on friendship and loyalty to scrape together $30-40 million opening weekend. But if you want to differentiate yourself in this area, it's really no different from anything else in life. Innovation is the key. If adults are as eager to take their kids to see your movie as their kids are to be taken to it, you're more likely to break out from the pack.

Edwin Davies: I don't think that we have reached saturation point yet, but we could reach it soon if studios don't get a little smarter when it comes to scheduling their films. Having them all bunched up together as they have been this year doesn't benefit anyone, since we get a situation where films which have been out for a few weeks wind up getting their audience taken away from them, and new films can be hurt by a kind of fatigue as parents get sick of taking their kids to see talking animal film after talking animal film.

Pete Kilmer: Like any other genre I think we'll see more and more but it will settle into layers of quality spread throughout the year. Pixar and DreamWorks will stake out special times of the year for their animated releases (they already have) and the other studios will fall in around them. There is a lot of money to be made from these at the home market level. With DVD players in vehicles now, parents are buying a ton of these things to keep the kids occupied, so with the uptake in releases for family computer animated films we'll see more and more.




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Max Braden: I don't have kids to entertain, but my feeling is that if the kids are content enough to watch at home and not cost parents $50/month in tickets, I'd rather switch up that earworm my kid is obsessed with every four weeks rather than every eight or so. Even though they tend to be aimed at kids, I like the creative avenue that the animated format offers and I wouldn't want to see that constricted by some arbitrary limit on the number per year. From that perspective, I'd vote for more animated movies and fewer run-of-the-mill "adult" comedies.

Jim Van Nest: I don't think animation is really different than any other genre of film. If the quality is there, the audience will be there. So, if you're releasing a handful of Gnomeo and Juliets (yes, this is my animation whipping boy right now), people will start to tire. But if you're putting out several How to Train Your Dragons, it'll never over-saturate.

David Mumpower: The true crisis here is that we're running out of adorable animals to animate. I think the platypus is next in line for a feature. I strongly suspect some animation teams use CuteOverload.com as their home page and the instant a new animal appears, they greenlight a project. This is the most logical explanation for Alpha and Omega.


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