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Digital Media FX News Archives

Saturday - June 23, 2001
- Blue Sky Studio Quietly Preps Ice Age
- Walking with Dinosaurs to Become Theme Park Attraction
- Friday Box Office Results
- News Link of the Day - Cinar Agrees to Repay $2.6 Million

Blue Sky Studio Quietly Preps Ice Age
(by digitalmediafx.com) While major media are talking about Shrek, Atlantis, Final Fantasy, and Monsters, Inc. there is another animated movie coming out first quarter 2002 that has received very little publicity - Blue Sky Studio's Ice Age. Being distributed by 20th Century FOX (which doesn't have its own animation department after closing it down last year due to the failure of Titan A.E.), the movie is fully CGI. Ice Age is being released on March 15, 2002.

Blue Sky's Chris Wedge is directing Ice Age. In 1998, Wedge received an Best Animated Short Academy Award for Bunny, a seven minute CGI animated short. Work on Ice Age started in early 2000.

Click here to see a trailer for Ice Age.

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Walking With Dinosaurs to Become Theme Park Attraction
(by digitalmediafx.com) The hit U.K. FX documentary, Walking with Dinosaurs, is about to become a theme park experience. Following in the footsteps of other companies, BBC Worldwide Ltd. and Hyper Entertainment Inc. have entered into a major new partnership to develop a "Walking with Dinosaurs" 27,000 square feet scalable attraction for licensing will to theme park operators around the globe,

The "Walking with Dinosaurs" attraction will give customers a "real-life" experience of dinosaurs with an interactive post-ride show. The theme of the ride is based on the BBC's TV series "Walking with Dinosaurs," which attracted a global audience of more than 360 million viewers.

"We are thrilled to be working with BBC Worldwide on taking an incredible show and creating an exciting attraction that will be fun for all ages," says Mike Swinney, president and CEO for Hyper Entertainment. "We believe that the success of the Walking with Dinosaurs series and the compelling nature of the subject matter will make for an incredibly fun and exciting attraction at premier locations around the world."

Both BBC and Hyper Entertainment are being hush-hush about exact planned details as they search for sponsorship and finalize plans for the attraction.

The attraction will be ready for shipments to theme parks licensing the adventure beginning in late summer 2002.

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Friday Box Office Results
(by digitalmediafx.com) Friday's box office results are in. Here are the top five movies for the day:

1) Fast and the Furious - $14.7 million.
2) Doctor Doolittle 2 - $8.5 million.
3) Tomb Raider - $6.4 million.
4) Atlantis: The Lost Empire - $3.7 million.
5) Shrek - $3.0 million.

Shrek is showing signs of gaining on Atlantis in daily box office receipts. If the gain holds then next week Shrek will start bringing in more money than Atlantis in daily receipts even though Shrek has been playing a month longer. Shrek has already made an astounding $207.8 million at the box office. Atlantis, meanwhile, has made $34.8 million. Both Atlantis and Pearl Harbor receipts combined don't match Shrek. Disappointing numbers for Disney is analyst reasons cited in Peter Schneider's resignation as Disney Studio Chief a few days ago.

In theater counts, Shrek is now playing in 3,007 theaters, Atlantis in 3,071 theaters, Pearl Harbor in 2,668 theaters, and Tomb Raider in 3,312 theaters (more than any other movie).

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News Link of the Day - Cinar Agrees to Repay $2.6 Million

According to the Edmonton Journal:

"Children's TV and film producer Cinar Corp. has struck a deal to repay Telefilm Canada $2.6 million in subsidies, clearing up more of its tax-fraud scandal and making the company more attractive to buyers it is actively seeking.

Cinar, best known for its Arthur and Richard Scarry cartoons, became embroiled in scandal in 1999 when the RCMP began investigating allegations that it had illegally claimed tax credits…"

Click here for the full story.

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