AWN Headline News

Perhaps, Neitchze was correct because GOD is dead. At least NBC's rendition of him is. The troubled toon GOD THE DEVIL AND BOB has been excommunicated from NBC's line-up. The decision to pull the series out of the line-up came in response to the lowest ratings ever for a regularly scheduled program in the Tuesday 8:30 pm time slot. Nearly 5% of the country's NBC affiliates had already pre-empted the show from their schedule for either religious concerns or they felt it just wasn't funny. Recently, advertisers were even turning their attention away from the ify animation series.

*Wednesday, April 5, 2000. Burbank, California. U.S.A.

* Friday, April 21 - Sunday, April 23, 2000. Toulon, France.

The 9th edition of the Cartoonist International Animated Film Festival & Market is expecting 30,000 participants, including production and distribution companies, as well as comic book and game companies. For more information contact Cartoonist M. Gilbert at: Residence du Port, Impasse St Dominique, 83000 Toulon, France; Tel.: ++ 33 (0) 4 94 03 12 67; or Fax: ++ 33 (0) 4 98 02 57 06.

* Tuesday, April 25 - Monday, May 1, 2000. Soprani, Hungary.

* Monday, May 8 - Thursday, May 11, 2000. Santa Clara, California, USA.

The executive producer of STUART LITTLE, Stephen Waterman, has signed on to exec produce the new animated feature STARCARS, a co-production between Korean-based entertainment conglomerate Ameko Entertainment Company Ltd. and Hyper Image LLC, an American animation studio specializing in sci-fi CGI. Dong Chung, COO of Ameko will co-executive produce the project. "I am genuinely excited about taking animation beyond the next level and into a new universe," Waterman said.

Giant Studios' Motion Reality system has been selected as the technology of choice for motion-capture services on the highly anticipated New Line Cinema feature film trilogy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS. New Line Cinema has signed Wellington, New Zealand-based Weta, Ltd. to handle the visual effects, and Weta has named Giant Studios as the exclusive motion-capture resource for all three films.

India-based company Colorfront has announced the release of their high-end colour correction tool color*star. color*star is the industry's first plug-in for digital film grading, advanced selective colour correction and creative look-creation running on Discreet's high-end visual effects and editing systems. The plug-in currently runs on inferno*, flame*, flint*, effect* on O2, fire* and smoke* systems from Discreet. Colorfront has recognized the convergence of film, HDTV and video to the 1080p/24 Universal Mastering solution and have standardized color*star's workflow in this format.

With the AOL merger coming near, Warner Bros.' Entertaindom.com employees are threatening walkouts and blackouts of the site. Reuters reported that staffers are angry with parent company Time Warner's lack of interest in Entertaindom as the America On-line deal is coming to a close. Hopes of Internet-made millionaires at the fledgling entertainment site were dashed when Time Warner called off the planned spin-off of Entertaindom as a public stock. In addition, the amount of previously agreed-upon Time Warner stock that Entertaindom employees will receive continues to drop.

Shockwave.com has finalized an exclusive deal with Oscar and Emmy award-winning director, producer, screenwriter James L. Brooks' Gracie Films to create animated programming. Gracie Films and Brooks, whose credits include executive producer of THE SIMPSONS, THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and TAXI, will hold complete artistic control over the characters and properties created for shockwave.com. "We couldn't be more pleased about being in business with Gracie Films," said Rob Burgess, chairman of shockwave.com. "Jim's creative talent and versatility has entertained so many of us for so long.

Jeffrey Kramer has been named the new president of Honkworm International's cross media division. Kramer's main role at Honkworm will be to attract new major talent to the Internet company. Kramer comes to Honkworm from David E. Kelley Productions, where he served as president. He was the executive producer on ABC's THE PRACTICE and Fox's ALLY MCBEAL.