At first glance, Albie Hecht's office is cluttered with toys -- a plush gorilla from the Mario Bros. video game, vinyl figurines from the toy line Kidrobot, to name a few. But in fact, they're all relics of the animation industry, where Hecht, 56, made his name launching such mega-hit children's shows such as Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Dora the Explorer," and "Blue's Clues."
Imagine taking the best characters and elements of your favorite fictional universe and weaving them into a new story that captures the imagination of fans.
Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage has pretty much got this acting thing down. After all, he started acting at the age of 15 and, well, he's got that Oscar.
Sarah Silverman, Milo Ventimiglia and Olivia Munn also use gross-out humor to plug Green's Robot Chicken
The Emmy Awards smiled on some unlikely comedy series nominees Thursday morning, giving nominations to "Family Guy" and "Flight of the Conchords" and leaving out such mainstays as "Two and a Half Men."
30 Rock earns 22 nominations, Mad Men 16, as TV's biggest night approaches Sept. 20
Dark glasses are de rigueur on the sun-kissed French Riviera, but this year glamorous cineastes attending the opening night of Cannes were matching another kind of face wear with their tuxedoes and designer dresses.
Homer Simpson and his cartoon family soon will help you get letters, bills and packages to their destinations.
The fashionista will play Queen Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, on a show in 2010
New stamps honor Bart and his family on their show's 20th anniversary
At first glance, Albie Hecht's office is cluttered with toys -- a plush gorilla from the Mario Bros. video game, vinyl figurines from the toy line Kidrobot, to name a few. But in fact, they're all relics of the animation industry, where Hecht, 56, made his name launching such mega-hit children's shows such as Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Dora the Explorer," and "Blue's Clues."
Imagine taking the best characters and elements of your favorite fictional universe and weaving them into a new story that captures the imagination of fans.
Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage has pretty much got this acting thing down. After all, he started acting at the age of 15 and, well, he's got that Oscar.
Sarah Silverman, Milo Ventimiglia and Olivia Munn also use gross-out humor to plug Green's Robot Chicken
The Emmy Awards smiled on some unlikely comedy series nominees Thursday morning, giving nominations to "Family Guy" and "Flight of the Conchords" and leaving out such mainstays as "Two and a Half Men."
30 Rock earns 22 nominations, Mad Men 16, as TV's biggest night approaches Sept. 20
Dark glasses are de rigueur on the sun-kissed French Riviera, but this year glamorous cineastes attending the opening night of Cannes were matching another kind of face wear with their tuxedoes and designer dresses.
Homer Simpson and his cartoon family soon will help you get letters, bills and packages to their destinations.
The fashionista will play Queen Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, on a show in 2010
New stamps honor Bart and his family on their show's 20th anniversary
West gets animated alongside Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson in an episode of The Cleveland Show
The veteran actor's latest role is as a "Bubble Poppin̢۪ Boy" on the popular kids̢۪ show
The animation mogul talks to TIME about the death of the television theme song, Saturday morning cartoons, and pissing off Jon Stewart
Bill Melendez, the animator who gave life to Snoopy, Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters in scores of movies and TV specials, has died. He was 91
Bill Melendez, 91, drew more than 70 TV specials for Snoopy and friends, including A Charlie Brown Christmas
The highs and lows of the annual pop-culture fiesta, from Hugh Jackman's surprise appearance to Star Trek's no-show
Rodolphe Guenoden, 39, originally from Noyon, France, is an animator at Dream Works, and a martial arts veteran. He's worked on blockbusters like Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, and Madagascar.
From "Gladiator" to "The Lion King", "Pirates of the Caribbean" to "The Simpsons," film composer Hans Zimmer's versatile and imaginative scores have added aural color, light and shade to the on-screen action.
The most eagerly anticipated animated film this year hits big screens this weekend, as "The Simpsons Movie" opens worldwide. The Screening Room spoke to creator Matt Groening and writer Al Jean in London about everyone's favorite two-dimensional yellow family.
From bedroom creators to big studios, hand-drawn to CGI, animation has charmed and entertained children -- and, increasingly, adults -- for many years. The Screening Room went to Annecy in France to discover the secrets of success in animated films...
Albie Hecht once had one of the best jobs in television. As president of Viacom's Nickelodeon, he launched hit kids shows like Dora The Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants. He went onto start the monolithic media company's edgier Spike TV channel.
Dubbed the "Godfather of Animation" in South Korea, Nelson Shin is behind such iconic animated characters as the Simpsons, Pink Panther and Transformers. His work also extends to live action, including the famous Star Wars lightsaber.
"The Simpsons Game's" most notable trait is that it's funny, so funny that I can't believe how often I actually laughed out loud at the wonderfully produced cutscenes that have been made for the game, despite how weird it is seeing Simpsons animation in HD.
Alf Clausen never knows what to expect.
The scene fades to black, the movie is over, and the credits begin to roll. But wait! Don't leave just yet. You might miss some of the great custom-made artwork being cooked up by today's filmmakers.
Toy-inspired movies like Transformers and Bratz are lucrative for Hollywood, but experts warn they could also be harmful for kids' development
The amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne is back, and this time he clobbered Homer Simpson on his way to scoring the biggest film opening ever for the month of August.
After 18 years and 400 episodes of a show that refuses to grow old, "The Simpsons" finally graduates to a movie theater near you. It doesn't take Homer long (about two minutes) to ask the obvious question: What kind of sucker pays for something he can watch at home for free?
The miracle, says Richard Corliss, is that their new film plays out at four times the length without giving you a headache
Animated films like Ratatouille, which topped the U.S. box office this past weekend, give great pleasure but get no respect
Is there really such thing as bad publicity? Time Warner and its Cartoon Network unit are about to find out.
The head of Cartoon Network resigned Friday after the network's guerilla marketing scheme for one of its shows went bad last week and led to a bomb scare in Boston - a fiasco that cost its parent company $2 million.
Turner Broadcasting System and Interference Inc. have agreed to pay $2 million to make amends for last Wednesday's guerrilla marketing scheme that led to a bomb scare in Boston, the Massachusetts attorney general said Monday.
Authorities have arrested two men in connection with electronic light boards depicting a middle-finger-waving moon man that triggered repeated bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday and prompted the closure of bridges and a stretch of the Charles River.
Fox's animated comedy Family Guy has a huge fan following -- so much so that fans bought 5 million copies of the TV series on DVD after it was cancelled, prompting Fox to put the show back on the air.
Emmy has taken a few hits to her expansive wings lately -- but the show, as always, will go on.
It's been 23 years since Dirk the Daring first vowed to rescue Princess Daphne from the clutches of a nasty dragon, Singe.
Brad Pitt was named one of "15 People Who Make America Great" by Newsweek magazine for using his megawatt star power to shine some light on some often neglected causes in Africa.
Here's the scene: It's 3 P.M., Wednesday, Jan. 25, in Sound Stage 7 on the studio lot of Walt Disney Co. in Burbank. Five hundred cartoon people - artists, producers, voice artists, etc. - are jammed into the warehouse-like building, murmuring and fidgeting in anticipation.
HERE'S THE SCENE: It's 3 P.M., Wednesday, Jan. 25, in Sound Stage 7 on the studio lot of Walt Disney Co. in Burbank. Five hundred cartoon people--artists, producers, voice artists, etc.--are jammed into the warehouse-like building, murmuring and fidgeting in anticipation. Just yesterday, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Pixar chairman Steve Jobs announced a surprise $7.4 billion deal in which Pixar Animation Studios, which brought the world the Toy Story movies, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, would become a wholly-owned part of Disney. The deal is surprising because Pixar's longtime distribution pact with Disney fell apart in acrimony and is due to expire after the release in June of Cars, a kaleidoscopic celebration of racing, Route 66, and life in the slow lane. But in an amazing plot twist, not only is Pixar becoming part of Disney, but the upstart studio is also taking over the creative direction of Disney's own flailing animation operations--the people in this very room! For Iger, the deal is a bet-the-ho...
After a long break, John Travolta's got the music in him again.
Actress Rachel Weisz and the creators of animated pair Wallace and Gromit were the British winners at the 78th Academy Awards.
It was 2 A.M. when John Ledford heard the banging at his door. Stumbling from bed on that night in the fall of 1999, he threw on a robe over his boxers and opened the door of his Houston apartment ...
Taking a page from their adult contemporaries, Hasbro will now offer kids the chance to take episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Dexter's Laboratory" with them anywhere they go.
"Garfield," it's not. And it's definitely not "Family Circus."
Bat Boy, phat girls, and 8 other things we recommend this week:
The company behind the new "Wallace and Gromit" film said Monday its "entire history" has been destroyed in a fire at a warehouse containing props and sets.
Laika -- the first dog the former Soviet Union sent to space and who died there -- lives on, thanks to Nike founder Phil Knight.
Gene Simmons, the fire-breathing, blood-spitting KISS star, just might be the next SpongeBob, thanks to his latest project: "My Dad the Rock Star."
Hasbro Inc., the No. 2 toymaker after Mattel, is gearing up to make its first foray into the hot market for electronic learning toys and games with its new "ION" educational gaming console.
The term art collector can be intimidating. To most of us it implies a wealth of cultural and historical knowledge, a high-class sophistication bordering on stuffiness, and huge piles of money—in s...
It was an incredible night for "The Incredibles."
EVERY PIXAR MOVIE has unsung heroes, from the whiny dinosaur in Toy Story to Violet, the sullen and insecure teenage superhero in Pixar's latest 3-D extravaganza, The Incredibles, which hits U.S. t...
Weeks or months from now, there is a good chance that DreamWorks Animation's decision to go public Thursday will look not only smart, but pure genius.
Move over Nemo. A great white shark named Lino and his vegetarian son Lenny just gave investors another option.
Some see "Shrek 2" as this summer's "Finding Nemo."
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) -- Andre 3000, one-half of the chart-topping hip-hop group OutKast, is developing a potential series project with Cartoon Network.
Attention Shrek, Simba and Nemo. Meet your new computer-generated neighbors: Delgo, Kyla and Sedessa.
The three most important words in animation? Location, location, location. Noodlesoup, a three-year-old company, has inked freelance work for Saatchi & Saatchi and Warner Brothers in large part by ...
Entertainment and media conglomerate Walt Disney Co. will soon close an animation studio in Orlando, Florida, possibly leaving some 258 animators out of work.
For as long as the California garage has housed convertibles, it has also fotered a different type of vehicle: innovation. Although Hugh Hefner started at his card table and Tom Golisano in his old...
ROGER AILES He made Richard Nixon telegenic (as much as anyone could). He made CNBC the official channel of the stock market boom. Then Ailes, 63, built Fox News Channel into an inescapable politic...
Coming soon to a TV near you: toons aimed at adults. Networks have been emboldened by Adult Swim evenings on the Cartoon Network (which, like FORTUNE's publisher, is owned by AOL Time Warner); its ...
Breakthrough In 1998, when Jane Hurd co-founded her medical-animation firm, animation was an afterthought in pharmaceutical marketing. With a roster that now includes all the top-ten drug manufactu...
Against all odds, karaoke and Hello Kitty have become familiar icons in U.S. pop culture. Now, San Francisco-based Viz Communications is betting that American readers will develop a taste for manga...
Homer Simpson isn't much of an investor--he once bought stock in a company hours before it declared "superduper bankruptcy"--but he still makes money. Between syndication, licensing, and merchandis...
At least one company, Pixar Animation Studios, has embraced workplace joy: Then again, it stands to reason that the people behind Toy Story and A Bug's Life would.
In the past decade broadcast networks have lost so much of their audience to cable giants like ESPN, USA, and Nickelodeon that pundits have wondered about their long-term viability. But like all th...
Pop.com sounded like a can't-miss idea. The Internet entertainment venture was created last fall by some of the most powerful and talented executives in Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg, Jeffr...
Can you name the first feature-length animated movie?
Last winter, Disney's power Michaels, Eisner and Ovitz, were eager to get a big star onto their newly purchased network, ABC. So they flew the star's people out to L.A. Met for lunch in the Disney ...
THE INTERNET probably deserves its abysmal reputation among business executives. They're barraged daily with hype about the World Wide Web, the Net's flashy multimedia strip, with its glitzy movie ...
ABOUT A DOZEN years ago, way back when Steve Jobs still ran Apple Computer, an irreverent underling first used the expression "reality distortion field'' to describe the beguilingly rosy scenarios ...
AN IMPRESSIVE turnaround, a popular CEO, a magnificent stock performance, and the potent deployment of a great brand name -- no wonder Wall Street can't stop genuflecting before the Walt Disney Co....
What's up, Doc? Answer: cels, the celluloid building blocks of animated films. In the past year the value of the transparent rectangles on which animated characters are painted has soared. Last Nov...
| Most Viewed | Most Emailed | Top Searches |
© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
