AWN Headline News

The Harvey Entertainment Company, which owns the rights to such charactersas Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich, has announced an agreementwith Spumco Inc. (the company founded in 1989 by John Kricfalusi to makeTHE REN & STIMPY SHOW for Nickelodeon) to produce cartoons createdspecifically for the Internet based upon classic Harvey characters. Thecartoons will run from two to seven minutes in length utilizing newstorylines written for Harvey characters such as Spooky, Little Audrey,

Work, in the form of original concept drawings, as well as 18 seconds of animation, done by Salvador Daliin 1946 at the Disney studio for a never-completed film called DESTINO, isbeing dusted off by Disney vice chairman Roy Disney (Junior) and will becompleted as an art house cartoon by the Disney studio, according to theLondon SUNDAY TIMES. "I am going to finish the work of Salvador Dali,"Disney told the newspaper. "At Disney, we need to recover our history." Theproduction will be supervised by Disney, who is a son of Roy Disney (Walt

WALT DISNEY FEATURE ANIMATION has promoted BOB BACON to the position ofvice president of finance. Bacon will oversee production finance for all ofFeature Animation, including both traditional and CGI-based projects atDisney's Burbank, Orlando and Paris animation studios. Most recently, Baconserved as Feature Animation's director of production finance.

Destination Films' newly released horror film, BATS, with visual effects byNorth Hollywood, California-based Netter Digital Entertainment, Inc.,finished seventh at the US weekend boxoffice, grossing an estimated $4.7million. Buena Vista's supernatural thriller THE SIXTH SENSE, with visualeffects by DreamQuest, finished ninth, grossing $4.3 million for a total of$255.7 million.

MORE, the stop-motion animated short film in IMAX format that is nominatedfor an ANNIE, is being shown for free as part of the BIG SHORTS FILMFESTIVAL Tuesday night, October 26, at 8 pm. The event is presented by TheSplinter Group, and highlights include: MORE (Mark Osborne's AcademyAward-nominated stop-motion short, CASTRATE BOAR PIGS FOR BETTER SALES,PRIMITI TOO TAA (an animated sound poem), FIRE, and more. Admission isfree, and the program will last about one hour. The event takes place at

Hollywood, California-based ACME FILMWORKS has completed two :30 spots. In"The Challenge," a live-action commercial for commemorative Pepsi cans thatpromote the return of the Cleveland Browns to competition, images offootball plays appear in the stormy sky above Cleveland Browns player ChrisSpielman who asks the viewer, "So are you ready to be a Browns fan?" Thevisual effects were composed, layered and rendered using Adobe Photoshopand After Effects. Scott Ingalls directed the spot for Dallas, Texas-based

FOX FILMED ENTERTAINMENT has named STEVEN BERSCH President of FOXINTERACTIVE, the studio's entertainment and sports computer and video gamesoftware unit. Bersch succeeds Fox Interactive's current President, JonRichmond, who was recently named President of New Digital Media at Fox. Inhis new position, Bersch will be directly responsible for driving allaspects of the business including the development and production of thedivision's interactive entertainment and sports games, as well as

Thursday, October 28 - Sunday, October 31. New York, New York, USA.

The Museum of Modern Art presents The National Film Board of Canada: 60thAnniversary Program, a Retrospective. The Museum is located at 11 West 53Street. For further information Tel. (212) 708-9500.

New York City-based Oxygen Media,Geraldine Laybourne's company founded to provide content for women, hasreached an agreement with Insight Communications to distribute the Oxygencable network. Insight is the 8th largest cable operator in the UnitedStates, serving more than one million customers in six states. Under theterms of the agreement, Insight Communications will launch Oxygen acrossthe majority of its systems. The new Oxygen cable network, which launcheson O2/O2/2000, will be integrated with Oxygen's existing online properties