Jerry Beck
Latin American kids tell Nick to tune up
NEWSBased on rocking ratings for last year’s S Club 7 pick-up, Nickelodeon Latin America has been focusing on adding more music-centric programming to its sked for the four to 14 crowd. ‘We don’t want to position Nick LA as a music…
Prime-time player fulfills four-color fantasy: Joss Whedon and Fray
NEWSJoss Whedon, best known for his TV creation Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is a comic book fan. Big time. ‘I was a Marvel boy,’ says Whedon of his comic influences. ‘I read everything they put out in the late 1970s into…
Large-format family flicks getting even bigger
NEWSRemember the old expression ‘Bigger is better?’ That’s certainly the case for large-format films, which are moving beyond their traditional museum and science center roots to challenge Hollywood on its own playing field as new-giant screen venues and Imax theaters expand…
And the winner is…
NEWSWhat a great year for toon flicks. For the first time in 30 years an animated film has competed at the Cannes Film Festival (DreamWorks’ Shrek), and the Academy will present an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film for the first…
Harvey character licensing still going strong
NEWSYou can’t keep a friendly ghost buried for long. With a change in ownership that is taking months to complete, the famous Harvey Comics characters are slowly moving into a new home with New York-based Classic Media, joining former UPA properties…
Diversity fuels the animation evolution
NEWSIt was 10 years ago that Nickelodeon introduced Nicktoons, the first original cartoon block for cable. I remember asking then-development manager Linda Simensky (now VP of original animation at Cartoon Network) if kids could really tell the difference between the upcoming…
Keep your mitts off the toons, Hollywood!
NEWSFox Kids has announced the development of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an animated series for Saturday mornings in 2002. An excellent series, Buffy should adapt well to animation.
In fact, many live-action series fare well in their animated reincarnations. Such…
New artist-driven CGI refreshes kids programming
NEWSIt started quietly in 1987 with Landmark Entertainment’s Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future and exploded with ABC’s 1994 debut of Mainframe’s Reboot. Today, computer-generated animation is a well-established technique, regularly grabbing kids attention with eye-popping vistas, swooping camera…
Next-gen video games show promise as property-launchers
NEWSFrom Pac-Man to Pokémon, Hollywood has always taken the video gaming audience very seriously. But this year, the cinematic battles between Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy beg the question: Can video games become tent-pole entertainment franchises? And how will the next-gen…
Crossover hopefuls guaranteed to make Hollywood drool
NEWSLooking ahead, the vid game industry has a slew of exciting new titles on the horizon-ones that might very well have Hollywood sitting up and taking notice. Developed by Volition, a small Illinois-based CGI studio that was acquired by THQ last…
The definitive kids ent resource.Photos
Kidscreen Summit 2010 -