Industrial Light and Magic Singapore, an animation studio that was formed by George Lucas 20 years ago has been shut down by Disney. ILM is the only part of LucasFilm that is making big money for Disney. All of the "creatives" in that studio have cost Disney hundreds of millions in failed entertainment projects. They have to be scared to death now because Disney is pruning the healthy branches on the LucasFilm tree, they have to know that...
Not a great opening weekend for TMNT and The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has had a very bad drop on its second weekend. It is now standing at a gross of $70 million against a budget of $75 million, it’s going to leg out before it turns a profit. And it’s not going to matter in the least because this thing was all about Paramount maintaining a license. They have a real TMNT that is...
Generation X is the last comic book generation. Don’t get me wrong, storytelling by sequential art will be a thing so long as humans are humans but an adolescent boy sitting on the basement steps immersed in a pamphlet reading stories of the fantastic and superhuman will not happen again. The comic book industry could have planted seed corn in the 1990s but chose to eat it instead. The culture has been skipped for two generations and that is more than...
BUMPED: (8/9/23) The Disney earnings call wasn't as earth-shaking as the stockholder meeting. Nonetheless, I'm going to need a little time to dig through Iger's fog machine. So enjoy this classic.This one is really more for fans of the original version of Iron Chef. It's Bizarro Food-Porn. Kantaro has a kind of all-encompassing, Mister Spock-like obsession with desserts, which in and of itself totally makes sense if you have ever known a high-end Chocolatier. Seriously, those guys are like...
If true I'm going to miss the High Republic rather badly. It was a source of intense amusement for me."I can’t fathom the approval process here.The navigator is a rock. I loved the tableau with the rock striking a heroic pose with the rest of its intrepid nekama in their action poses.I mean, the vessel is named; “The Vessel.” I’m sure that Claudia Grey thought that this was vastly more clever than naming the ship, “The Ship,” but I’m not seeing...
This weekend Barbie did the impossible and crossed the $1 billion mark. The question all of Hollywood is asking now is; HOW? Barbie is the kind of movie that film executives adore, the kind with a restrained budget that results in unrestrained profit. Barbie isn’t the kind of Disney budget monster where raking in a billion bucks is barely making up for the outlay. The very highest estimate I’ve seen for Barbie’s budget is $150 million. Okay, since the theaters get a...
Welcome to the Arktoons Spotlight, a regular feature at the Arkhaven Blog. The Spotlight is where I take a look at one title from the amazing world of Arkhaven’s webtoons.If you aren’t familiar with Arktoons, this is meant for you. I am the Dark Herald; I do the blogging here at Arkhaven.com. The blog is mostly pop culture news, reviews, and opinion, in short, the usual.And you aren’t here for the blog. You’re here for the webtoons. Arkhaven is different from other webtoons publishers. While...
That is what I keep hearing from younger guys. Okay, obvious baseline statement: Barbie. Was. Not. Made. For. Me. Also, the sky is blue, water is wet, and poop smells like poop. That doesn’t change the fact that by any objective standard Barbie is a substandard story and is heavy handed politically. Starting with little girls apishly smashing their baby dolls to pursue the influencer lifestyle of the very first influencer, Barbie (We don’t talk about Lilli, no, no, NO!). We...
ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!!!Yesterday, Disney’s stock price almost broke the $90 barrier, it might still be sometime today. That will give Bob Iger one thing he can claim which is all sunshine and puppies at the earnings call on August 8th. It’s pretty much the only thing, but at the end of the day, it’s the only thing stockholders care about. So what happened? It’s not like Haunted Mansion blew it out of the water. The parks are doing...
