Tag: film

By Jamie Lang, John Hopewell )According To The Daily) The Annecy Animation Festival, the most important eight days of the year for the global animation industry, wraps up tonight, so we’re looking back at 10 themes that dominated the dialogue around this year’s event. Annecy is Hollywood’s Favorite Animation Showcase In interviews held before this year’s festival, several representatives from Hollywood studios, speaking on background, told us that Annecy has now replaced Comic-Con as their most important promotional event of the year for animation. During a backstage interview with Variety at a “Transformers: One” panel, festival artistic director Marcel Jean explained that building that reputation wasn’t a quick or easy process. “It’s a long-term work to co...

By Alison Herman According To The Daily) The first season of “House of the Dragon,” HBO’s prequel to “Game of Thrones” and the first spinoff in network history, was widely considered a success. But it was also, in essence, 10 hours of set-up, speeding through decades of context to take audiences to the brink of the Westerosi civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Despite its many strengths, the show began as a structural oxymoron: too rushed to do the patient plotting and character-building that gave its parent show such a strong foundation; too slow to sink its teeth into the real meat of its story until the final stretch of episodes, which saw the death of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) and the formation of factions around his two potential heirs. In Season 2, “House of the...

By J. Kim Murphy According To The Daily) Don’t be afraid to catch feelings. Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” just scored the biggest box office opening day of the year so far, earning a spectacular $62 million across Friday and preview screenings from 4,440 locations. It will have no trouble blasting past the $82.5 million debut earned by “Dune: Part Two” to overtake it as the biggest domestic opening of 2024. It’ll also be the first release to notch a nine-figure domestic opening in nearly 11 months — the last one to get above $100 million was “Barbie” last summer. It’s a welcome bounce back for Pixar Animation Studios, which has struggled at the box office in recent years after Disney sent films like “Turning Red,” “Soul” and “Luca” directly to Disney+ during the COVID p...