AWN Headline News

The promised land of prime time nirvana will escape GOD THE DEVIL & BOB in

Salt Lake City, Utah, whose NBC affiliate has refused to air the network's

upcoming animated comedy. KSL-TV VP and general manager Al Henderson said

the station decided to pre-empt the "not-so-heavenly" toon because it "was

not very funny." "We didn't think it was written well," Henderson said. "We

found some of the humor tasteless." The new series follows the

misadventures of Detroit auto worker Bob Alman (voiced by French Stewart),

The newest Scooby-Doo adventure, SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE BOO BROTHERS, and

classic episodes on DVD will soon float into stores across the U.S.

Debuting on March 14, 2000, SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE BOO BROTHERS has the

heroes Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy-Doo inheriting a haunted house from

Shaggy's uncle. The terrified trio calls for help from the Boo Brothers, a

family of ghost hunters. But wait, the Boo Brothers are ghouls themselves!

Check out the new adventure to find out if Scooby really hired ghost

On Wednesday, February 23, 2000, the U.S. Recording Academy's premiere

recording awards, the Grammies, were presented, and a few toon-related

tunes took home golden statuettes. In the category Best Musical Album For

Children: "The Adventures Of Elmo In Grounchland" beat out "A Bug's Life

Song-Along" and Walt Disney's "Mannhein Steamroller Meet The Mouse." TARZAN

won for Best Soundtrack Album over THE PRINCE OF EGYPT and THE MATRIX.

Beating John Williams' score for THE PHANTOM MENACE, the award for

ADV Films brings more anime to VCRs and DVD players with the adult drama

SAKURA DIARIES VOLUME 1 on March 15, 2000. The story follows the main hero

Touma's mishaps in trying to court Meiko, who only dates college boys. The

flick is from famed manga creator Ujin. The suggested retail price for the

DVD is US$24.98 and for the VHS $19.98. The DVD features English, Japanese,

and Japanese with English subtitled versions.

Last week Alias|Wavefront unveiled a new upgrade to its powerful 3D

animation system Maya, an upgrade which will add a major new feature to the

software, particularly useful to games developers. Trax is a new non-linear

animation editing solution which will allow games developers to manipulate

extensive amounts of animation and blend it together in a way that can be

reproduced in the final game play. Trax features include reusable time

independent motion clips, blending of hand animation, data filtering and

On Tuesday, February 29, 2000, Shockwave and sponsor CYBERWORLD launched a

Stan Lee premiere, live on shockwave.com. The star-studded event was hosted

by Dick Clark. The celebrities on the attendee list were Tom Hanks, Keanu

Reeves, Michael Jackson, Richard Dreyfus, John Travolta, Quentin Tarantino

and Leonardo Dicaprio. Excerpts from the event will also be televised

internationally on ET and other entertainment news broadcasts. On

Wednesday, March 1, Stan Lee/CYBERWORLD content will launch on their site

The big snow ball of Paramount's SNOW DAY picked up momentum and rolled in

to #2 at the U.S. box office. In its second week in theatres, the kid-pic,

with special effects by Curious Pictures, grossed US$8.34 million bringing

its gross to $43.1 million. USA Films' ALIENS-like PITCH BLACK, with

primary visual effects by Double Negative Ltd. and The Chandler Group,

finished at #5 grossing $7.14 million raising its total gross to $22.9

million. THE TIGGER MOVIE finished the weekend in sixth place, making $6.31

On Wednesday, February 23, 2000, CINAR Corp., the creator of the Emmy

Award-winning ARTHUR, had a lawsuit filed against the company alleging they

artificially inflated its financial results by lying about the use of

Canadian tax credits. As reported [AF 10/19/99], allegations surfaced last

fall that CINAR only pretended to use Canadian authors for its scripts in

order to obtain tax credits. Canadian officials are investigating but no

charges have been filed. The early rumors sent CINAR stock plummeting to