AWN Headline News

To celebrate the holidays, Warner Bros. will release the direct-to-video title GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER. Produced by Phil Roman Entertainment, GRANDMA is based on the popular song of the same name and follows the misadventures of young Jake Spankenheimer on his journey to discover what happened to his missing grandmother. The original song was written by Randy Brooks and was recorded by Elmo Shropshire in 1979. Shropshire will provide the narration for the new cartoon. The new toon will arrive in video stores on October 31, 2000 and will sell for US$14.95.

One of the founders of the UPA animation studio, William Hurtz, has passed away. He was 81 years old. Hurtz started his career at Disney in 1938 as an assistant. He assisted Art Babbitt on FANTASIA's "Mushroom Dance Sequence." Hurtz was an active member of the Hollywood Cartoonists' Union and made the motion to strike at Disney in 1941. Hurtz spent the war years at the Film Motion Picture Unit. FMPU was stationed in Culver City as part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps under Major Rudy Ising of Harmon & Ising fame. Throughout World War II they did training cartoons for overseas servicemen.

Paris-based Mac Guff Ligne, a part of the Ron Soodalter Associates International consortium of post-production studios, has finished two 3D dinosaurs for a new Lego commercial. The 30-second "Dino's Dinner" spot combines walking and talking dinosaurs in live-action settings juxtaposed against kids playing with their Lego sets. Mac Guff Ligne, which produced the spot for New York ad agency Lowe, Lintas, used the Web as a means to deliver the images to the client. "I think this arrangement worked brilliantly," said spot producer Eve Frumkin of Lowe, Lintas.

Toronto-based TOPIX/Mad Dog, a computer graphics and animation facility, has signed New York-based Richard Fink and The Richard Fink Agency to head East Coast sales. Specialists in character animation, special effects, film titling, type and broadcast design, TOPIX creates photo-realistic, computer-generated animation for the advertising, feature film, broadcast and music video industries. At the same time TOPIX's post-production arm, Mad Dog, is one of Canada's leaders in the high-end post industry, using inferno* and flame*.

* April 2001. Hollywood, California, U.S.A.

Entry Deadline: February 28, 2001.

* Thursday, April 5 Monday, April 9, 2001. Positano (Amalfi Coast), Italy.

Entry Deadline: January 21, 2001

Italian animation studio Mondo TV released second-quarter revenue reports, which were up 250% to 6.7 billion lire (US$2.94 million). This report is the first since going public on the Milan stock exchange in June. In the quarter, Mondo TV's gross operating margin inflated 484% to 5.3 billion lire ($2.32 million). The big gains are attributed to the firm's increasing presence in Asia and its new co-production deal with Seoul-based Hahn Shin Corporation. Mondo TV is the owner of Italy's largest library of domestic and imported television cartoons.

* Thursday, April 19 Thursday, May 3, 2001. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. Narrative Feature Deadline: January 3, 2001. Entry Deadline: December 1, 2000.