News & Notes

Matt Groening, the mind behind The Simpsons and Futurama, is reportedly intent on coming back with a new original animated series to be developed for Netflix.

No details have been revealed, but the understanding is that Netflix is considering an order of two 10-episode seasons.

Other than Groening, no other key creatives have been named as attached to the project, nor have any production studios that may be working on it.

Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen accepted the Golden Globe for their Best Animated Feature Film winning Pixar flick Inside Out at the Jan. 17 awards ceremony.

The inventive CG family film won out over indie darling Anomalisa, Brit import Shaun the Sheep Movie, The Peanuts Movie and Pixar’s late-year release The Good Dinosaur. The victory marked the seventh Pixar movie to win the category in the ten years it has existed at the Globes.

The feature also triumphed at the PGA Awards, held Jan. 24.

The creator of hit Disney TV animated series Gravity Falls Alex Hirsch has reportedly inked a deal with Fox and 20th Century Fox TV to produce an original script and pilot presen- tation for a new toon.

The potential project remains utterly hushhush. “I’m cooking up some brand-new weirdness,” said Hirsch.

Gravity Falls is capping a 40-episode run with an hour-long special event Feb. 15 on Disney XD.

Japanese film distributor Toho has announced its 2016 release lineup, including the promise that Studio Ghibli’s feature co-production The Red Turtle, directed by Oscar-winning Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit ( Father & Daughter), will hit Japanese screens in September.

The project is co-produced with French production and distribution house Wild Bunch. Animation is being completed in France.

Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli previously collaborated on the 2010 film The Secret World of Arrietty.

DreamWorks Animation and the celebrity voices of the upcoming Trolls feature (out Nov. 4 through Fox) took recently to Twitter to give a first look at the film’s colorfully coiffed characters.

Justin Timberlake (voice of Branch), Anna Kendrick (Poppy), Gwen Stefani (DJ Suki), James Corden (Biggie), Russell Brand (Creek), Swedish musical duo Icona Pop (The Fashionistas), rapidly rising comedian Ron Funches (Cooper) and The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar (Guy Diamond) all posed with their CG counterparts.

Timberlake also will write and perform original songs for Trolls, directed by Mike Mitchell

and Walt Dohrn and produced by Gina Shay.

Sony Pictures Animation’s belabored CG Popeye project finally looks to be moving forward as the studio announced that T.J. Fixman has signed on to draft a new screenplay.

Fixman is one of the writers behind the popular Ratchet & Clank video games and penned the upcoming feature adaptation from Rainmaker Entertainment.

Fixman is keeping busy, having been tapped by Hasbro Studios as a creative consultant for their future TV and film notions, and is currently attached to a couple features in development, including Disney’s Gargoyles.

Netflix and DreamWorks Animation are expanding their multi-year deal, announcing a number of new original family series from the studio that will debut on the streaming service in the near future.

Among the upcoming titles is a new take on Voltron and a fantasy-adventure concept from Guillermo del Toro called Trollhunters.

The deal also covers streaming rights to the DWA feature film library, and extends the rights of current original kids’ series available on Netflix in operating markets, as well as expanding to include second window rights for the shows globally (outside China).

These include The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dinotrux and Dragons: Race to the Edge.

FXX has preemptively nixed the female lead action-buddy comedy Cassius and Clay before its TV debut.

The 10-episode series was picked up back in August but never received a premiere date.

A pilot was produced by creators Adam Reed ( Archer) and Megan Ganz ( Modern Family).

Cassius and Clay was the latest project to come out of the animation production deal be-

tween FX Productions and Floyd County, which delivered FX comedies Chozen and Unsupervised — both canceled after one season.

Comedians Louis C.K. and Albert Brooks have teamed up to create and voice an animated comedy pilot for FX.

C.K. and Brooks will write and executive produce the new show, which is untitled. No premise has been released for the show. The comics worked together voicing characters for the upcoming feature The Secret Life of Pets, from Illumination Entertainment.

The 21st annual Critics Choice Awards took place in Santa Monica Jan. 17, with Pixar’s Inside Out snapping up the Animated Feature prize.

Pete Docter’s internal-adventure flick won out over indie favorite Anomalisa, Blue Sky’s The Peanuts Movie, Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep Movie and Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur.

On the TV side, Netflix original series BoJack Horseman took the top prize for first-time show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. The Tornante Co./ShadowMachine production beat out Fox’s The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers as well as Comedy Central’s South Park and Disney XD’s Star Wars Rebels.

Star Wars: Episode VIII has been pushed back from its previously announced May 26, 2017 debut to Dec. 15, 2017. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will now open in Episode VIII’s prior slot instead of July 7. ... International animatics service studio Animated Storyboards has opened a new office in Toronto, and tapped Maria Hanafy to lead the local team as managing director. ... Cartoon Network announces that Pacific Licensing Studio will represent the company’s consumer products division in Southeast Asia. ... Samsung announced at Sundance it will be opening a studio in New York to produce immersive VR entertainment experiences. ... Splash Entertainment’s CG animated feature Norm of the North will see a theatrical release in China in April thanks to deals with Shanghai-based investor Yang Yang Pictures Corporation and distributor Chinawood Media Corp. ... Sony Pictures Entertainment has appointed Randy Lake as President, Studio Operations & Imageworks. ... Funimation Entertainment has set a March 4 limited release for Mamoru Hosoda’s latest animated feature, The Boy and the Beast. ... Mature audiences animation outfit Augenblick Studios has kicked off production on an original R-rated feature film, The Adventures of Drunky. Directed by Aaron Augenblick from his original concept, the film follows Drunky (voiced by Sam Rockwell), a barfly who finds himself in the middle of a cosmic battle be between God (Jeffrey Tambor) and the Devil (Steve Coogan) over the fate of the Earth. ... Viacom International Media Networks and Mexico’s Televisa have extended a content deal that will deliver 400 hours of Nickelodeon content south of the border. ... Industry veteran Pam Lifford, previously EVP of global licensing for Quiksilver, has been named President of Warner Bros. Consumer Products. ... Paris-based studio TeamTO has promoted consultant Patricia de Wilde to the permanent position of Director of Marketing and New Business for the entire TeamTO group. ... Toon Goggles’ on-demand children’s entertainment service will appear on Philips Smart TVs under a new deal with the electronics company announced at CES. ... Indie production company The Asylum, which achieved worldwide notoriety for its hit Sharknado franchise for Syfy, is launching a new animation division, with a feature length family film titled Izzie’s Way Home in the works. Tori Spelling and Joey Fatone are set to star.

Frank Armitage, an Australian-born American painter who created backgrounds for several classic Disney animated films and murals for Disney parks, died Jan. 4 at his home in Paso Robles, Calif. He was 91.

Robert Balser, animation director on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, died of respiratory failure Jan. 4. He was 88.

David Bowie died Jan. 10 of cancer. He was 69.

Alan Rickman, who played Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, died Jan. 14. He was 69. [

8Today on disc: The Peanuts Movie, Open Season: Scared Silly, Beyond Beyond, Pokemon Movie 18: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Season 3, Littlest Pet Shop: Pet Tales, Psycho-Pass 2: Season 2 BD, Peppa Pig: The Golden Boots, Brothers Conflict: The Complete Series BD, Kingdom: Season 2, Digimon Fusion: Season 2. Today’s home releases: Eden of the East: The Complete Series + Movies BD, The Jungle Book: The Legend of the Giant Claw, Hero Quest.

Zdigs in and does its homework to create a convincing and modern new take on the talking-animal movie. By Tom McLean.

ootopia may not be a real place that can be visited the same way you can visit Paris, New York or Tokyo, but that doesn’t mean a tremendous amount of work wasn’t put into using animation to make it look as real as those famous cities.

The fictional locale — created by intelligent animals in a world where humans don’t exist — shares its name with the title of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 55th animated feature, in which a young bunny comes to the big city to be a police officer and finds herself having to solve a crime with a cynical and often unreliable fox in order to stay.

Directed by Byron Howard of Tangled fame and Rich Moore of Wreck-It Ralph, Disney’s newest animated feature — in theaters March 4 — takes the classic Disney idea of talking animals into a new realm with the help of the most-recent CG animation technology.

Howard says the project began about five years ago when, after finishing Tangled, he suggested the idea of anthropomorphic animal movie to Disney animation creative chief John Lasseter. “He was very much into that,” says Howard. “He said we haven’t done a movie like that in a very, very long time — especially now with CG — and it would be really exciting to see what that kind of Disney film would feel like with the new technology.”

Joining forces with Jared Bush, creator of the Disney TV Animation series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, as a writer and later co-director, Howard dove into the research to fulfill an edict from Lasseter to make the movie look like no other CG-animated talking-animal movie. “We really wanted to make sure that the world felt like animals built it and not humans, and that led to some really amazing things,” Howard says.

Finding the Story The story itself went through multiple iterations, starting out as a spy story, then becoming a detective yarn before settling into shape as a tale about Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, an idealistic young rabbit who leaves Bunny Burroughs for the big city and a job as Zootopia’s first lapine police officer. She meets up with sly fox Nick Wilde, played by Jason Bateman, and winds up needing his help to solve a crime in a couple of days before she’s forced to return home a failure.

While earlier versions focused on the Nick

FDirector Mark Osborne uses the beloved novella to demonstrate the power such tales

have over people’s lives. By Tom McLean.

ew books are as beloved as The Little Prince, a stunning fantasy novella by French pilot and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery. First published in 1944, it has since become one of the most popular books in the world. The tale of an aviator stranded in the desert who tries to explain the world to a young prince fallen to Earth from an asteroid featured lovely watercolor illustrations and was styled like a children’s book, but offers deep insights into human nature that are especially compelling to adults.

To Mark Osborne, best known for directing DreamWorks Animation’s 2008 hit Kung Fu Panda, the book had a personal connotation that made him hesitant when he was first approached about possibly directing a big CG animated adaptation.

“My reaction was, ‘no,’” says Osborne, who took that call about five years ago from Francebased Onyx Films, which was working with Saint-Exupery’s estate. “I said, ‘ You can’t make a big movie out of this little book.’ It’s just too precious and it’s too important to the people that read it.”

But then an idea crept in that changed his mind. “I realized there was this incredible opportunity to tell a story about how powerful the book can be in somebody’s life,” he says. He came back to Onyx and said he thought there was a way to tell a larger story with CG, but the book itself should be done with stop motion. “That idea never got shot down,” he says. That idea was to tell a story about a little girl (voiced by Mackenzie Foy) who lives in a very ordered world where her mother (Rachel McAdams) has organized her life down to the minute in an attempt to give her the very best shot at succeeding in life. But the girl’s attention is pulled away by her eccentric neighbor the Aviator (played by Jeff Bridges), who causes all sorts of trouble and passes on to her the story of The Little Prince as an experience he himself had. As the girl is drawn into the story, it changes her life and leads to an unexpected merging of the two realms in the film’s final act.

A Slow Start The idea, though, came about slowly as Osborne worked on a treatment and then a script with Irena Brignull in collaboration with the story team, headed by Bob Persichetti.

“There were some big ideas in the beginning and there were some really interesting and bold notions about how to take this very special work and how to bring out the themes and the elements from the book as much as possible,” Osborne says. “That was really the goal from the beginning, but there’s a lot of artistic collaboration along the way to get us to the final result that you see in the film.”

Work on the film began in Paris with development at Onyx, which transformed during production with some of its partners to become On Entertainment. Production took place in Montreal, with Mikros Image handling the CG side of things and several companies, among them TouTenKartoon, working on the stop-motion sequence.

How to make a film that effectively moves from CG to stop-motion and back again was the first big challenge for the show. “It was a compelling idea conceptually but very complicated to work out, and to be honest it was a notion that only became real once (stop-motion creative director) Jamie Caliri joined the project,” says Osborne.

Caliri brought production designer Alex Ju-

Talking animals have been around as long as animation has, but the lives of non-human creatures trying to get by in the urban jungle that is modern day New York City serves up a fresh take on the idea in HBO’s new series Animals.

Debuting Feb. 5, the adult-oriented series is created by Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano, produced by filmmaking brothers Mark and Jay Duplass and animated by Starburns Industries. The 10-episode first season has a homemade, improvised feeling and features guest voices such as Marc Maron, Nick Kroll, Rob Corddry, Aziz Ansari and Molly Shannon.

“It’s really a ‘Mike and I right now’ thing,” says Matarese. “If you don’t like it, they you really don’t like Mike or myself.”

The duo met three years ago while working at an ad agency. One day, between projects, they were looking out a window at some pigeons and improvised a conversation between them.

“And we said, that’s funny, let’s record us doing that, and we did,” says Matarese, who at the time was experimenting with a new Wacom tablet and figured out his own way to animate his sketches using Illustrator and Final Cut.

“He sent me a text of the first pigeon that he had drawn for it, with the city background, and it just suddenly was clear that our little riffing thing is going to have an entire esthetic that to me was just so exciting,” says Luciano.

After completing one sketch, they submitted it to Channel 101 in New York and were having fun, so they kept at it. “Each episode got a little bit better and a little more involved looking,” says Matarese. “And then we just kind of found ourselves in animation.”

They next produced a 12-minute version and submitted it to the New York Television Festival, where it was well received and helped the duo make connections and secure agents and managers through which the project came to the attention of filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass.

“They wanted to come on as executive producers to make it independently and that was right up our alley because we had been doing it just the two of us this whole time,” says Matarese. The connection helped them raise funding, and they moved out to an apartment in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they set up production with a small handful of animators and worked seven days a week on the first season.

With 10 episodes complete, two episodes were screened last year as a special event at the Sundance Film Festival, leading to HBO picking up the show for two seasons. That’s when the production began looking for a more established studio and ended up at Starburns Industries, makers of Rick and Morty and Anomalisa.

“Every step of the way, it’s just been an interesting process of taking people who are all pretty talented but who have maybe a set way that they’re used to doing animation or drawing, and saying, let’s scale this back,” says Luciano. “We don’t want that much movement or animation, and the characters need to have this kind of quality to it, and that’s been a learning process.”

Watching the show evolve over its first season has been a challenge but also a lot of fun.

“It really grows in an interesting way,” says Matarese. “Not necessarily in quality but in how we tackle different worlds and stuff like that. I think it’s going to be an interesting thing for people to see over a 10-episode stretch.” [

Directors: Starzak Producers: Lockhart Writers: Mark Burton, Richard Starzak, Nick Park, Callum Blades Studios: Aardman Animations, Lionsgate Release date: Aug. 5 Box office: $19 million domestic, $64 million foreign Key noms to date: Annie Awards (Best Animated Feature, Best Directing, Best Production Design, Best Writing, Best Editorial), BAFTA Awards (Best Animated Feature), Critics Choice Awards (Best Animated Feature), European Film Awards (European Animated Feature Film), Golden Globes (Best Animated Feature) VES Awards (Best Created Environment). Review: “Like a great silent movie, it creates its pathos and comedy out of the concrete objects being animated, building elaborate gags involving everyday items transformed into Rube Goldberg devices.” — Peter Keough, Boston Globe. Quote: “I sort of felt that Shaun as a series was sort of punching above its weight, so as a feature it was great to have that canvas, and to have that time — especially with no dialog — to get into the storytelling in a big way.” — Richard Starzak, Animation Magazine #252 (Aug.-Sept. 2015) Why it might win: Inventively evoking the age of silent movies with its good-hearted slapstick humor, Aardman has always generated lots of love and good will from the academy and moviegoers in general. Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi Producers: Yoshiaki Nishimura, Toshio Suzuki Writers: Masashi Ando, Keiko Niwa, Hiromasa Yonebayashi Studios: Studio Ghibli, GKIDS Release date: May 22 Box office: $561,000 domestic, $30 million foreign Key noms to date: Annie Awards (Best Animated Feature - Independent, Best Directing, Best Writing), Awards of the Japanese Academy (Best Animation Film) Key wins to date: Seattle International Film Festival (Films4Families Youth Jury Award), TIFF Kids International Film Festival (Best Feature Film [Ages 11-13]). Review: “The old-school hand-drawn animation celebrates sweeping landscapes and but also the telling detail, revealing character through spare gestures.” — Kerry Lengel, The Arizona Republic. Quote: “The original story was written almost completely from the perspective of Anna’s internal voice. It wouldn’t have been possible to make the entire film a monologue. As an animator, I wanted to show the character’s internal psychology through her behavior. I thought I could do that by making her a girl who likes to draw.” — Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Animation Magazine #255 (Dec. 2015). Why it might win: Studio Ghibli has earned plenty of Oscar love, and with Hayao Miyazaki nominally retired from filmmaking, Yonebayashi’s lovely and picturesque ghost tale easily satisfies the need for intelligent and elegant storytelling for all ages. Director: Gabriel Osorio Producer: Pato Escala Running time: 11 mins. Key wins to date: Florida Film Festival (Audience Award - Best International Short), IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival (IndieJunior Award), RiverRun International Film Festival (Jury Prize), Washington DC Independent Film Festival (Audience Award — Best Animation). Quote: “When you take someone away from their family, it’s the worst thing you can do. I wanted to talk about this, to say something positive, that you can survive this, that you can come back to your home as my grandfather did.” — Gabriel Osorio, Animation Magazine #257 (Feb. 2016) Why it might win: Osorio’s film tells an emotional and tragic story that builds an unmistakable and unforgettable emotional bond with its audience. Director: Richard Williams Producer: Imogen Sutton Running time: 6 mins. Key noms to date: BAFTA Film Awards (Best Short Animation) Quote: “I’ve been thinking about this since I was 15 years old. I grew up under the shadow of world war and after Hiroshima everybody thought that was finished. We still live in a world where man endlessly fights man.” — Richard Williams, Animation Magazine #257 (Feb. 2016) Why it might win: Prologue has a visceral impact that’s hard to ignore, using strikingly beautiful images to convey a message about the ugly side of human nature. Director: Sanjay Patel Producer: Nicole Grindle Running time: 7 mins. Key nom to date: Annie Awards (Best Animated Short Film) Quote: “I thought that if I kind of kept pushing it away they’d leave me alone. But John Lasseter saw my artwork at an employee art show and said I had to make a movie and then they started coming to me and asking me to put something together.” — Sanjay Patel, Animation Magazine #257 (Feb. 2016) Why it might win: Pixar’s magic comes in the short variety as well, and few shorts can match up to the level of invention and craft the studio brings to this heart-warming tale with near-universal appeal. Director: Konstantin Bronzit Running time: 16 mins. Key noms to date: Hiroshima International Animation Festival (Grand Prix), Nika Awards (Best Animated Film), San Francisco International Film Festival (Best Animated Short). Key wins to date: Aspen Shortsfest (Special Jury Award), China International New Media Short Film Festival (Best Animation), Melbourne International Film Festival (Best Animation Short Film), Rhode Island International Film Festival (Best Animation), Tokyo Anime Award (Tokyo Metropolitan Governor Prize-Short Film, Grand Prize-Short Film Competition). Quote: “It’s something like self-therapy.

Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time

Project Game of Thrones, “Mother’s Mercy,” Wounded Drogon — Florian Friedmann, Jonathan Symmonds, Sven Skoczylas, Sebastian Lauer Game of Thrones, “Dance of Dragons,” Drogon Arena Rescue — James Kinnings, Michael Holzl, Joseph Hoback, Matt Derksen SSE, “Pier,” Orangutan — Jorge Montiel, Sauce Vilas, Philippe Moine, Sam Driscoll Sainsbury’s, “Mog” — Sebastian Nino, Chris Hurtt, Joseph Henson, Gez Wright

Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time

Project Game of Thrones, City of Volantis — Dominic Piche, Christine Leclerc, Patrice Poissant, Thomas Montminy-Brodeur Vikings, Paris — Paul Wishart, Karol Wlodarczyk, Tom Morrison, Matt Ralph,

Drogon Arena — Rajeev B R., Loganathan Perumal, Ramesh Shankers, Anders Ericson Black Sails, Charles Town Harbor — Aladino Debert, Matt Dougan, Greg Teegarden, Ken Jones Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a

Photoreal Project Ant-Man, Macro Action — James Baker, Alex Kahn, Thomas Luff, Rebecca Baehler Underwater Torus Chamber — Vincent Aupetit, Margaux Durand-Rival, Christopher Anciaume, Robert Elswit

Falcon Chase / Graveyard — Paul Kavanagh, Colin Benoit, Susumu Yukuhiro, Greg Salter The Walk, Towers Walk — Shawn Hull, Suzanne Cipolletti, Laurent Taillefer, Dariusz Wolski SSE, “Pier” — Matthew Fuller

“The Hunt Begins” —

Vladislav Tushevskiy, Tomas Zaveckas, Sho Hasegawa, Sergey Kosareff Lipton, “The Revolution in Tea” — Jonathan “Wes” Westley, Tom Raynor, Christos Parliaros Game of Thrones, “Hardhome” — David Ramos, Antonio Lado, Piotr Weiss, Félix Bergés Outstanding Compositing in

a Photoreal Feature San Andreas, Los Angeles Destruction — Sandro Blattner, Hamish Schumacher, Nicholas Kim, Mario Rokicki Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Jay Cooper, Marian Mavrovic, Jean Lapointe, Alex Prichard Tomorrowland — Francois Lambert, Jean Lapointe, Peter Demarest, Conny Fauser Mad Max: Fury Road — Lindsay Adams, Matthew Wynne, Chris Davies, Phil Outen The Revenant, Bear Attack — Donny Rausch, Alan Travis, Charles Lai, TC Harrison Outstanding Models in a Photoreal or Animated

Project Star Wars: The Force Awakens, BB-8 — Joshua Lee, Matthew Denton, Landis Fields, Cyrus Jam

Hulkbuster — Howie Weed, Robert Marinic, Daniel Gonzalez, Myriam Catrin Everest, Mount Everest — Matthias Bjarnasson, Olafur Haraldsson, Kjartan Hardarson, Petur Arnorsson Jurassic World, Indominus Rex — Steve Jubinville, Martin Murphy, Aaron Grey, Kevin Reuter

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal

Feature Mad Max: Fury Road, Toxic Storm — Dan Bethell, Clinton Downs, Chris Young

Hulk versus Hulkbuster — Michael Balog, Jim Van Allen, Florent Andorra, Georg Kaltenbrunner

Hoover Dam / San Fran- cisco Tsunami — Joe Scarr, Lukas Lepicovsky, Yves D-Incau, Marcel Kern San Andreas, L.A. Destruction — Remy Torre, Marc Horsfield, Niall Flinn, Victor Grant

Starkiller Base — Rick Hankins, Dan Bornstein, John Doublestein, Gary Wu Outstanding Compositing in

a Photoreal Episode Vikings, “To the Gates” — Ovidiu Cinazan, Olivia Yapp, Greg Lamar, Meng Angel Li Game of Thrones, “Hardhome” — Eduardo Díaz, Guillermo Orbe, Oscar Perea, Inmaculada Nadela

“Drogon Arena” — Michael Crane, Travis Nelson, Joe Salazar, Beverly Bernacki Game of Thrones, “Drogon Lair” — Travis Nobles, Mark Spindler, Max Riess, Nadja Ding

Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated

Feature Inside Out — Amit Baadkar, Dave Hale, Vincent Serritella, Paul Mendoza The Peanuts Movie — Alen Lai, Ilan Gabai, Chris Chapman, Douglas Seiden The Good Dinosaur — Stephen Marshall, Magnus Wrenninge, Michael Hall, Hemagiri Arumugam Home — Greg Gladstone, Michael Losure, Chris De St Jeor, Alex Timchenko Outstanding Compositing in

a Photoreal Commercial SSE, “Pier” — Gary Driver, Greg Spencer, Grant Connor Game of War, “Rooftop Alliance” — Becky Porter, Jeannie Huynh, Patrick Heinen, Don Kim Halo 5, “The Hunt Begins” — Ian Holland, Brian Delmonico, Brandon Nelson, Nicholas Kim Under Armour, “Rule Yourself” — Gavin Wellsman, Nathan Kane, Michael Smith, Ilia Mokhtareizadeh Outstanding Visual Effects in

a Student Project Skål — Marco Hakenjos, Christian Zehetmeier, Timm Wagener, Manuel Seifert Jagon — Julian Weiss, Vincent Ullmann, Fabian Fricke, Yafes Sahin Citipati — Andreas Feix, Francesco Faranna Korser — Guillaume Menard, Vincent Desgrippes, Jessie Hereng, Tangi Vaillant [

working on the likes of Pete’s Dragon before moving up to assistant director on The Fox and the Hound. Associate producer on the groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Hahn went on to produce the Roger Rabbit shorts.

Hahn’s first feature as producer was Beauty and the Beast, which became the first animated feature to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. He also produced The Lion King, which remains one of the most iconic and successful Disney animated features to date.

He is a founder and executive producer of Disneynature Films and was executive producer of Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie.

Hahn directed three documentary films, including Waking Sleeping Beauty, a chronicle of the revival of Disney animation in the 1980s and early 1990s; and Christmas with Walt Disney.

He also has written many books on animation, art and creativity, including Drawn to Life and Before Ever After: The Lost Lectures of Walt Disney’s Animation Studio. [