WELCOME
to Animation Europe, the first site dedicated to
producers, distributors, investors and anyone else interested in film
and TV animation in Europe.
This site
hosts the most comprehensive list of all full-length animated feature
films produced and theatrically released in Europe - starting with Lotte
Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926 and carrying
on to the most recent releases.
You will
also find details of all the animated movies currently in production
in Europe, a list of distribution companies which have released European
movies in the major territories, some good websites offering information
about the animation business, and the latest addition, a news page.
News
briefs
27 July
2010
It's
been far too long since the last entry on this page, but I have been
keeping the site up to date, with plenty of new additions to In
Production, Upcoming
US films and the database (see box, top right). To follow on from
the last entry, The Illusionist has now got a UK release through
Warner Bros and Pathe next month,
while Jackboots on Whitehall (Vertigo Films, apparently, though
it's not mentioned on their site
at time of writing) and A Town Called Panic (Optimum Releasing,
again not
seemingly worth publicising) are coming out in October. Three
Mills Film Studios could not confirm whether Tim Burton's stop-frame
Frankenweenie was in production there... but referred me to Walt
Disney Co.
28 February
2010
Change
to the programme of this week's Cartoon Movie in Lyon: there will a
screening of images from Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist as opposed
to the whole film. Makes me wonder what is amiss with this long in gestation
follow up to the Oscar-nominated Triplettes de Belleville. The film
seems to have been shown at Berlin earlier this month and got this
favourable write-up (though not a full-scale review) from Wendy
Ide in The Times. Clips from the film can also be found on You Tube
here.
16
February 2010
In
a first for an animated movie based on a 9th Century book, The Secret
of Kells has been nominated for this year's animated film Academy
Award. This makes it the fifth European movie to be nominated since
the category was introduced in 2001, the others being Les Triplettes
de Belleville (2003), The Corpse Bride and Wallace and
Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit (2005) and Persepolis
(2007). Not a bad record for a truly European effort from Ireland's
Cartoon
Salon, Les Armateurs and Vivi Film. I actually really enjoyed the
film (which in an era of overblown 3D crafts real beauty out of two
dimensions), but Up seems close to a dead cert to bring Pixar its fifth
award next month. Wider release for Kells might, of course, be the real
upside for the film's nomination.
10
February 2010
Cartoon
Movie will be in Lyon on 3-5 March this year. New films being presented,
currently in production and added to the In
Production page, are: Lotte and the Moonstone Secret from
Eesti Joonisfilm (of Estonia) and Rija Films (Latvia); Moomins and
the Comet Chase from Oy Filmkompaniet Alpha AB (Finland); Project
Chopin - The Flying Machine from Denis Friedman Productions (France)
and BreakThru Films (Poland); Ramon (IB Cinema, Spain) and The Great
Bear (Copenhagen Bombay, Denmark). Another 11 films in development
will be presented and the eight films completed and screened include
Around the World in 50 Years from stereoscopic 3D specialists
nWave and Yona Yona Penguin (Denis Friedman Prods). There will
also be a special screening for Sylvain Chomet-directed The Illusionist.
21
November 2009
The
first-ever Czech stereoscopic 3D film is in production, with release
set for next year. Fimfarum 3 is, as the name suggests, the third of
a series which started in 2002 with the highly successful Fimfarum Jana
Wericha. Maur Film
in Prague is co-producing with Czech TV, ACE and Kratky Film as well
as HBO. As with the previous films, Fimfarum 3 will be stop-frame and
the producers have developed their own 3D technology. Hope it gets some
sort of release outside its home country.
30 September
2009
The European Film
Academy is introducing an annual award for best animated feature
film. Three films will be selected by a committee of experts and the
award will be made at the EFA event in Bochum, Germany, on 12 December.
The Academy, made up of more than 2,000 film professionals in Europe,
was founded in 1988. Seems like a good idea to give European animators
a bit of the limelight.
UPDATE (27 October)... And the nominations are: Mia and the
Migou directed by Jacques-Rémy Girerd, produced by Folimage
(France) and pictured below; Niko
and the Way to the Stars by Kari Juusonen and Michael Hegner, produced
by Anima Vitae, Cinemaker (Finland), Ulysses (Germany), A. Film (Denmark)
and Magma Films (Ireland), and The Secret of Kells by Tomm Moore,
produced by Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Les Armateurs (France) and Vivi
Film (Belgium).
14 September
2009
Iginio Straffi, the creator of the Winx Club franchise and
CEO of animation studio Rainbow told me today that production of the
second Winx Club movie is 75% complete at its Rome CGI studio.
Pre-production has started on a third feature film with the working
title Gladiator Academy, a comedy set in ancient Rome and penned
by one of the writers of Ice Age. The first movie, Winx –
Il Segreto del Regno Perduto, came out in 2007 and registered
a repectable 840,000 admissions in Italy and another 395,000 in France.
6 June
2009
New additions
to the in production page
include la Nuit des Enfants Rois, a French film made using motion
capture due out next year. The sci fi type film is based on (what I’m
guessing is) a cult novel by Bernard Lenteric about five children who
are mugged in Central Park but take their revenge in what presumably
is a clever way (they are geniuses). One of their friends tries to stop
them. The film is being made in stereoscopic 3D; one of a handful of
European films being made in the format that Hollywood is backing in
a big way. The others are Holy Night (Dygra Films - above), Rock
the Boat (Gaumont) and Around the World in 50 Years (nWave).
2 May
2009
Aardman Animations has started production on two new feature films,
both of which will be distributed by Sony Pictures: Arthur Christmas
and Pirates!. Arthur Christmas is written by Peter Baynham
(a comedy writer whose credits include Borat the Movie) and Sarah
Smith, who also directs. It will be a CGI film with Sony Pictures Imageworks
collaborating on the animation. Pirates! is based on books by
Gideon Defoe and will be a stop-motion movie directed by Peter Lord,
Nick Park and Jeff Newitt with Defoe writing the script. Both projects
have been around for a while (as reported on 24 July 2008) so release
dates could be 2010, or even 2011.
1 February
2009
Films being
presented at next month's Cartoon Movie (held for the first time in
Lyons) include a couple I had not heard about and which have duly been
added to the In Production page. Egill, the Last Pagan, is based
on an Icelandic saga and is being produced by a puppet animation studio
in Poland and Hungary's Lichthof, producers of the successful Nyocker.
From Belgium comes Suske en Wiske, based on a comic strip and
set in Texas - or at least in the parallel universe that is Belgian
comic strip artists' reimagined version of Texas. Or so I imagine.
Speaking
of Belgian comic strip artists, I am increasingly disturbed to hear
more news of Stephen Spielberg's movie version of Tintin this week.
Apparently the film will be an adaptation of Red Rackham's Treasure
(Le Tresor de Rackham le Rouge for French-speakers and Tintinophiles
pretentieux, comme moi), with the main characters created in motion-capture
and voiced by, inter alia, Jamie Bell (as Tintin), Captain Haddock (Andy
Serkis), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Thomson and Thompson). More detail
here,
including the detail that new characters will be introduced including
Tintin's editor (famously, Tintin is a celebrated reporter who never
actually files a story) and an American Interpol agent.
I must
avoid knee-jerk reactions, but I'm worried. I grew up on Tintin, mostly
reading the English translations by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael
Turner, blissfully unaware of Tintin's nationality. Moulinsart? An English
country house, of course - Marlinspike Hall. I only found out Sir Francis
Haddock was actually a Frenchman when I was about 30. That's a tribute
to the brilliance of their work, which is a shining example of sensitive
translation - preserving and enriching Herge's humour and seamlessly
bringing his wonderful characters to life in another language. I just
worry whether Spielberg and the writers are up to it, or will 'reinterpret'
the books for coke-quaffing multiplex audiences. I am almost tempted
to start some sort of campaign to preserve Tintin from defilement
