HOWZAT

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This production frenzy is reminiscent of a decade ago, when Disney’s traditionally animated blockbusters such as The Lion King spurred other studios to jump in — only to drown in red ink with such box-office duds as Titan A.E. and The Road to El Dorado. Such failures led studios to shut down their animation operations. Could such a downscaling happen again?

This year box-office fortunes have been mixed. Twentieth Century Fox’s Ice Age 2, perhaps benefiting from being released early in the year, has earned a staggering worldwide gross of $640 million. Pixar’s much ballyhooed Cars earned $235 million in America but it is the company’s lowest grosser since A Bug’s Life in 1998.

Yet Yair Landau, the president of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, which includes Sony’s animation division, remains bullish. The company recently made its CG feature debut with Open Season and is committed to three more productions. “Animation still has a huge global appeal,” he says. “For kids in Mexico City, Boog and Elliott [the main characters in Open Season] will be Mexican. In Germany they’re German and in Japan they’re Japanese. People’s experience with them is different than it is seeing Will Smith or Tom Cruise dubbed.”

But how many bright blue skies, realistic-looking shadows and cuddly talking creatures can audiences take, even sexed up in 3-D, and especially when they seem to be following a rigid blueprint?

“To brand all these cartoons as formulaic is like saying you don’t like romantic comedies any more because the boy keeps getting the girl,” Landau says. “Family films tend to involve similar parent-child dynamics and dilemmas, so there are bound to be similarities.”

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld certainly feels the need to be different when it comes to CG films. He has written the insect cartoon Bee Movie for DreamWorks but has chosen to sell next year’s release with teaser trailers in a bid to snag audience attention by mocking the idea of doing it with real actors. It features the comedian in a fluffy honeybee suit and Chris Rock as a mosquito, both stuck on a car windscreen, in what’s meant to be a live-action family film about the insect world. Have audiences become so jaded with animation that they need stunts such as this?

Far from it, Landau believes. He sees a fruitful interchange between special- effects artists and feature animators that is “raising the bar” as audience expectations grow. “We’re seeing a generation that is growing up on CG cartoons and will mature and expect more sophisticated stories and characters,” he says.

So far, apart from stray bursts of maverick inspiration such as Tim Burton’s stopmotion The Nightmare Before Christmas, reissued next Friday in 3-D, and Richard Link- later’s recent A Scanner Darkly, more original animation in America tends to come from overseas, where grown-up audiences have always been less uptight about the form. “In Asia they accept every kind of genre, from action and romance to comedy, in animated form,” DeMott says.

Sam Fell adds: “I think such Japanese anime as Spirited Away has shown what’s possible to Western audiences. Any story is possible with the talent and technology to back it up. That’s why you won’t be seeing Aardman turning its back on Plasticine.”

All industry eyes seem to be on the latest project by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, The Polar Express), a version of Beowulf in 3-D, starring Angelina Jolie, Ray Winstone and Anthony Hopkins. “Everyone is wondering how this stylised blend of animation and live action is going to work,” DeMott says. “It may herald the start of Western audiences accepting that animation can be used for more than family fare.”

But we’ll have to be patient as a CG-crazy Hollywood continues to expand its menagerie of gabby critters. As Landau says: “It’s like any branch of the entertainment industry, you’re always going to get the good, the bad and the indifferent.” But in this case it’ll probably be in 3-D with a talking rat and a cute penguin.

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