THEANIMATION FLASH www.awn.com/flash Ò The Flash is the best newsletter in the cartoon business. It treats the news of animation with the respect it deserves. I look forward to getting it every week. Fred Seibert Executive Producer/Creator of "Oh Yeah! Cartoons!" Nickelodeon Ò It has really proved itself as a one-stop resource for international animation news, information and commentary. Jerry Beck Animation Historian Stay up-to-date on the latest animation industry news from around the world. Get the Animation Flash delivered each week straight to your E-mail. ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE December 1998 64 Ó Ó Advertising: Dan Sarto dan@awn.com Subscriptions: Subscriptions www.awn.com/flash www.awn.com/flash Editorial: Heather Kenyon heather@awn.com AWN Headquarters, 6525 Sunset Blvd., Garden Suite 10, Hollywood, CA 90028, USA tel ++ (1) 323 468 2554 - fax ++ (1) 323 464 5914 www.awn.com
approximately $40 million from the previous quarter while revenues were also down at $616 million compared with $768 million in the same year-ago period. SGI’s initial public offering of its MIPS Technologies subsidiary at $44 million helped significantly alleviate losses for this quarter. While the losses were smaller than predicted, SGI has said that it will take some time to return to profitability. Belluzzo outlined SGI’s plans for continued recovery, “One of our key strategic objectives is to impose discipline on our cost structure which has resulted in operating expenses coming down dramatically for the quarter. We’ve also sharpened our focus on our core businesses with the successful initial public offering of our MIPS subsidiary. And we continue to see strong performance in our origin server program. This quarter’s results validate that our efforts are on target.” Pixar Posts Profit Results. Pixar, the company behind Toy Story, posted a third quarter net profit of $2.5 million, or $0.02 per share, down from a third quarter profit of $5.3 million last year. The positive profits surprised financial analysts who had forecasted a third quarter loss of $0.02 per share. The upcoming release of A Bug’s Life is expected to help further rejuvenate Pixar’s revenues. Cinar Wants A New Name. Canadian company, Cinar Films Inc., recently announced that they would like to change their corporate name to CINAR Corporation (in French, Corporation Cinar). A Management Proxy Circular was sent to shareholders announcing a Special Shareholder Meeting to be held at the company head- quarters in Montreal on December 10, 1998 to vote on the intended name change. The new name was proposed to better reflect the company’s diversification into other areas of children’s entertainment and education besides the film industry. Harvey Posts Third Quarter Loss. The Harvey <strong>Entertainment</strong> Company (Nasdaq: HRVY) reported a net loss of $2,006,000, or $0.48 per share, for the third quarter of 1998 as compared to a net gain of $2,551,000, or $0.62 a share, for the same third quarter period in 1997. For the nine month period ending September 30,1998, Harvey has totaled a net loss of $4,788,000, or $1.19 per share, as compared to a net income of $2,551,000, or $0.64 per share, in the comparable yearago period. Net operating revenues were also considerably less coming in at a negative $1,121,000 compared to revenues of $7,126,000 in the yearago period. The decrease in revenue is attributed to an adjustment of $2,316,00 because of Harvey’s over-estimation of predicted sales of the direct-to-video film, Casper, A Spirited Beginning, as well as the revenue fluctuations related to the timing and accounting treatment of merchandising licenses. Gary Gray, Chairman of the Board, commented, “During this period, we have continued to move forward on two projects, in addition to our ongoing licensing activities. We completed production of Baby Huey’s Great Easter Adventure and have entered into a distribution agreement for this video with a major media company. We have also completed the debut issue of Harvey, The Magazine for Kids available on Novem- ber 17 with an initial 200,000 copy print run.” The Harvey library of characters include Casper, the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, Baby Huey, Little Audrey, Herman & Katnip, and numerous others. Nelvana Gets Puff. Torontobased Nelvana has acquired the worldwide development, production, distribution and merchandise licensing rights to Puff the Magic Dragon. Based on a classic folk song written by Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul & Mary and Lenny Lipton, Nelvana will produce an animated Puff the Magic Dragon feature length film, television series and special, as well as license all Puff merchandise. Production will begin on this property in late 1999 or 2000. The lyrical children’s story which tells the tale of Little Jackie Piper and his dragon friend Puff has sold 50 million copies since first being published in 1963 making it the best-selling folk song in history. BKN Studios Established In LA. Kids programming syndicator Bohbot Kids Network (BKN), the fourth largest US broadcast kids network scheduled to launch August 29, 1999, has acquired Los Angeles-based Epoch Ink Animation to establish BKN Studios. Epoch was established in 1995 and has since completed many projects including Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys, Dot and Spot’s Magical Christmas, Pearl Jam’s Do the Evolution music video, and the Atomic Babies pilot for Landmark. The first projects that will be produced by BKN Studios include the original sci-fi, action-adventure, film noir-ish, animated series Roswell Conspiracies, ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE December 1998 65
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