AWN Headline News

On Friday, May 19, 2000, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences bestowed the honor of outstanding childrens animated program on STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS: PINKY, ELMYRA AND THE BRAIN. The toons left in their wake were ARTHUR, DISNEYS DOUG, MAURICE SENDAKS LITTLE BEAR and THE NEW BATMAN/SUPERMAN ADVENTURES. SESAME STREET beat out BLUES CLUES in the category of outstanding pre-school series. Other animated winners were given out on Saturday, May 13 at the technical achievement ceremony. ROLIE POLIE OLIE won the award for outstanding special class animated program.

Pokemon has caught new deals with several eastern European countries and renewals from around the rest of the continent. New locations of Pokemon infestation include Polsat in Poland, RTL-Klub in Hungary, Nova in Czech Republic, ETV in South Africa and Fox Kids Scandinavia Satelite service. The countries that renewed the second seasons 52-episodes were TV2 in Denmark, TV2 in Norway, TV4 in Sweden, Star Channel in Greece and RTL in Belgium.

Special effects facility Digital Domain has promoted Senior VP C. Bradley Call to head of business development and chief administrative officer and Yvette Macaluso to VP finance. As the company's new #2 man, Call will continue as general counsel, but will help expand Digital Domain's feature development arm. Call will now head the effects houses human resources and purchasing departments. With the company from its inception 7 years ago, Maculas has managed the finance and accounting departments.

Former TriStar Pictures chairman Mike Medavoy has joined the board of directors of Film Roman. The current head of Phoenix Pictures, Medavoy becomes the sixth member of Film Roman's board. Film Roman president John Hyde said Medavoy's appointment would serve to "complement" the company's business plan rather than change it. Film Roman, which produces animation for TV (SIMPSONS, KING OF THE HILL), expanded its operations in 1998 to include limited development and production of feature-length films and recently increased its commercial output.

Visual effects pioneer John Dykstra has swung onto the SPIDER-MAN project. The new project will reunite Dykstra with the effects team from Sony Imageworks, where he was recently special effects supervisor on STUART LITTLE. The Sam Raimi directed flick has also hired former PDI character animator Karen Goulekas. Dykstra told the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER that he doesn't know how many effects there will be yet, because the script (by Raimi and David Koepp) isn't done. "We're still sorting the character out.

Comedy Central and iN DEMAND have struck a deal that will provide 25 episodes of SOUTH PARK on a pay-per-view basis. IN DEMAND executive VP entertainment Mark Sonnenberg said that the pact illustrates that video-on-demand is vibrant. "It's not just movies," Sonnenberg said. "It's everything consumers want -- movies, library products, TV series, local programming." Both companies plan to work together in the future to bring other Comedy Central content to PPV, like uncut stand-up shows.

Marvel Enterprises and Artisan Entertainment have entered into a joint venture that will send 15 Marvel superhero characters to Artisan for feature, TV, direct-to-video and Internet programming. Both companies will share in the money made from the properties and tied-in merchandising. Each company will own the programming library.

Time Warner chairman, Gerald Levin, announced that the company has reached a "agreement in principle" with Disney about the carrying of Disney cable stations on Time Warner operating systems. The recent dispute over the price Time Warner would pay for the cable networks led to Time Warner aggressively pulling ABC from its cable system. This action quickly drew heat from regulators and the public, who had service interrupted during sweeps week specials of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?