Well after it’s initial announcement a year ago at NAB 2007 and a subsequent delay that was supposed to have it shipping in August of 2007. Apple is finally shipping Final Cut Server. They make no mention in their press release of what the hold up was. Although we do find it curious that they would announce this only a week before NAB 2008, apple is notorious for making a big splash of new products at the convention. 

Our best guess is that they have something else up their sleeve and they don’t want to take the spotlight away from that with a product that was supposed to ship 6 months ago. 

While we are by no means a rumor site I will note that DVD Studio Pro hasn’t been updated in 3 years and currently has no blue ray support. They also announced two years ago that they were going to stop developing shake to work on their “Next Generation” Compositing system and it would be out in a couple of years…. well it’s a couple of years. But I guess we’ll all find out in a week.

AWN reports that Lionsgate and LeapFrog Enterprises have formed an agreement in which they will develop, produce, and distribute direct-to-DVD features. Lionsgate will have worldwide rights to the features except in China. They have also acquired the rights to LeapFrog’s home entertainment catalog, which were produced by the rights holder, Chis D’Angelo, and sold over 4 million units in 5 DVD releases.

The announcement comes on the heels of Lionsgate’s announcement in March that it has signed a multiyear agreement with family entertainment leader HIT Entertainment to distribute HIT’s valuable catalog of children’s non-theatrical product throughout North America.
With the LeapFrog and HIT agreements in place, Lionsgate expects its family home entertainment market share of non-theatrical product to grow to approximately 15 percent, positioning the company as one of the three industry leaders in that space.

Currently, Lionsgate is the industry’s fourth largest distributor of kids’ non-theatrical titles and second largest for kids’ non-theatrical features with hits like Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Care Bears, The Doodlebops, and Bratz among others. In the agreement with HIT Ent., Lionsgate now has rights to North American distribution for Bob the Builder, Speed Racer, Marvel Animated Features, and Barney among others.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that George Lucas presented his animated series Clone Wars last Thursday at Cartoon Network’s upfront presentation.

“It’s ‘Star Wars’ starring an 11-year-old girl,” Lucas said after advertisers viewed a short clip of the “Clone Wars” series, premiering in the fall. He said partnering with Cartoon and sister network TNT allowed the show, which he described as appealing to audiences “8-80″ to “cover all the bases very well and have an extra wide reach.” The show will also air on TNT after it premieres on Cartoon.

Cartoon Network COO Stuart Snyder describved the lavish advertisement of Clone Wars as “once in a lifetime opportunities” for their brands. They intend to have Clone Wars advertised heavily on every platform, and expect that it will bring in families all over the country.

Another note in the presentation was the mention of a brand new development project in Cartoon Network called the “Cartoonstitute”. They intend to create up to 150 pieces of original programming in the next 20 months. It will be headed by exec producer Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti as supervising producer.

According to Variety, Fox picked up ‘King of the Hill’ for its 13th season, making it primetime’s second longest running animated series, as well as second longest running sitcom ever, just behind ‘The Simpsons’.

Pickup hinged on a deal with exec producer and star Mike Judge (who provides the voice of “King” patriarch Hank Hill). With Judge reupped, many of the show’s long-running scribes went back to work last week.

“King” wasn’t hit hard by the recent writers strike, thanks to the unusual schedule for animated series: The show’s most recent season had already been written by the fall work stoppage.

Fox has ordered only 13 episodes this go-round since so many were already written before the writer’s strike; however, they’ve left the door open to order more at a later date.

The Hollywood Reporter stated that Nickelodeon will announce today its development of virtual worlds based on their hit “Spongebob Squarepants”. The worlds will have games, avatars, and act as a social network related to the show.

Two other projects are also being developed along with Spongebob. Nick is planning on increasing their Neopets virtual experience by developing a “World of Neopia” which will connect to their overall virtual world called Nicktropolis. They are also developing a new experience called “Monkey World” which is a completely original concept unrelated to their other franchises. Monkey World involves social networking, and is a massive multiplayer game. All three of these new projects will have paid tiers.

Nicktropolis currently averages about 1.5 million visitors per month, and execs said the paid tier will preserve that traffic by only charging for additional features like personalization. The company declined to disclose pricing details for the new tier or say what it might charge for various virtual words, though it’s likely that pay tiers could be a key part of its revenue strategy.

Nick is attempting to establish its virtual business not only as a marketing platform, but as its own separate business, generating revenue from subscriptions and advertising. They are in direct competition with Disney which has subscription based Club Penguin and Toontown Online which target the same young audience.

Reuters reports that comic book guru Stan Lee is developing three separate projects at Disney where his POW! Entertainment has set up camp.

The projects are based on stories and ideas from the 85-year-old man behind Spider-Man and the Hulk, who will executive produce with his POW! partner Gill Champion.

The three projects are currently titled, “Nick Ratchet” about a private eye, an action-adventure series called “Blaze”, and the last is tentatively-titled “Tigress” about a woman who gets tiger-like instincts.

Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures is getting into the videogame business. Recently expanding its interactive department, Paramount has yet to announce any titles but has put together a slate of games that it will either partially or fully finance. The games will either be based on new film titles or part of their library of films.

Studio is looking to invest in all types of videogames but is particularly interested in casual, handheld and mobile games, as they can be made for only a few million dollars, compared with the $20 million or more it costs to produce a title for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Paramount will continue to license some of its titles to other videogame publishers for now, but this definitely marks a new era for the studio. Warner Bros. is the only other studio with a videogame publishing department; all others have focused on licensing agreements. Paramount says some of the their titles under the new publishing dept. will be released later this year.