The recent merger of Activision with Vivendi Games has announced that some of the titles previously in development will no longer be published by the new company. While they have retained certain games such as “Ice Age” and Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games, certain games have fallen by the wayside. One of these was the crowd favorite “Ghostbusters” which was just recently shown at Comic-Con. Developer SPE is already searching for a new publisher.

Another franchise dropped was the Jason Bourne franchise, since they were deemed too similar to the games that Activision was already developing for the James Bond franchise. The Ludlum Estate that owns the rights is still considering it’s options.

Fans were also shocked to see that “Brutal Legend”, an upcoming action game starring Jack Black and made by the development team behind the 2005 cult favorite “Psychonauts”, had been dropped. The developer however, has stated that it is close to announcing a new publishing deal for the game, though it may push it back to 2009.

Source: Variety

FirstShowing.net say that according to a reliable source, Fox should soon be announcing a “Cowboy Bebop” live action film starring Keanu Reeves. The source claims the film will be fast tracked and could have a release date in 2010.

Whether or not you believe it, the new trend in Hollywood is Asian culture. The first three big films that will open the door for more to come are Dragonball, Street Fighter, and Tekken. And we already announced live-action adaptations of Akira and Ghost in the Shell as well, so why not throw Cowboy Bebop into the mix as well? By 2012 we’ll probably see all kinds of anime and manga adapted from Berserk to Hellsing and more.

Disney has released the teaser for it’s first new animated film since the disastrous “Home on the Range”. This film entitled “The Princess and the Frog” and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) tells the tale of Princess Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) who has begun kissing amphibians in search of her prince. This film, like most other Disney films, will be a musical.

The teaser can be found here

Source: EmpireOnline

Variety is reporting that the WB has decided to develop a feature film around one of Chuck Jones’ classic characters– Marvin the Martian. The development is happening at Alcon Entertainment with Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove as the principals, and Steve Crystal producing.

Crystal, a former Warner exec with a first-look deal at Alcon through his Charlie Co. banner, developed the pitch as a Christmas story, with Marvin coming to Earth to destroy Christmas but being prevented from doing so when he’s trapped in a gift box. Alcon’s out to writers and directors.

Johnson and Kosove told Daily Variety that “Marvin” will be aimed at the family demo along the same lines as Alcon’s “Racing Stripes”and “My Dog Skip.”

The film will be live action with a CGI blend.

At this year’s Comic-Con, the International Animated Film Scoiety announced it’s winners for the prestigious 2008 Winsor Mc Cay Award. Named in honor of the artist and animation pioneer, the award stands as one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a person in recognition of career contributions to the field of animation. This years winners are Mike Judge, John Lasseter and Nick Park.

Mike Judge is the creator of “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill”. He also has a new animated show that will be released next year on ABC entitled “The Goode Family”.

John Lasseter is a pioneer in the computer animation industry who was hired by the experimental unit at Lucasfilm that would eventually become Pixar. While there, he created the Academy Award winning “Tin Toy” as well as directed “Toy Story”, “A Bug’s Life” and “Cars.” He is currently the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation.

NIck Park is a British clay animator best known for his “Wallace and Gromitt” shorts along with the Academy Award winning “Creature Comforts”. He has also directed two feature films “Chicken Run” and the Academy Award winning “Wallace and Gromitt: Curse of the Were-Rabbit”. He is currently working on another Wallace and Gromitt short entitled “A Matter of Loaf or Death”.

Congratulations to all three of these very talented individuals.

Source: AWN

Variety reports that ex-Walt Disney Company head Michael Eisner isn’t giving up the cartoon biz. Eisner’s investment firm recently formed Tornante Animation, which created a stop motion animated comedy series called “Glenn Martin DDS”. Eisner partnered with Eric Fogel, creator of “Celebrity Deathmatch” to create the designs for “Glenn”. Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite have ordered 20 episodes of the new show about a road-tripping dentist and his family.

Eisner brought “Glenn Martin” to Nick at Nite after reading how Nickelodeon was readjusting the evening programming service to target young families (Daily Variety, May 6). For an exec so identified with Disney, Eisner’s decision to take “Glenn Martin” to Nick may be unusual, but Eisner said the channel was a better fit.

“It’s not a Disney Channel show,” Eisner said. “This show is not a fit with ‘Hannah Montana,’ it’s not a tween show. I always thought that animation should be made for adults, and then you get the kids automatically.It’s not to say this couldn’t have worked on some Disney properties, but I read that article, about how they’re moving more older-appeal shows earlier in the evening on Nickelodeon, and knew there would be a great flow of kids coming in to this as well.”

As the September 7th release date for EA’s heavily anticipated game “Spore” gets closer, the creators of the game Maxis have been offering playable demos so players can get their hands on the various parts of the game. The first was the “Spore Creature Creator” which has been downloaded thousands of times, and now comes BIOME.

BIOME, which can be downloaded here, is a programmable cellular automata simulator that allows players to develop simple “SIMCITY-like” grid simulations. Inspired by John Conway’s GAME OF LIFE program, BIOME uses a language based on chemical stoichiometry and simulates how cells change their state the same way that chemicals change when exposed to other chemicals. BIOME supports both rectangular and spiral cellular automata configurations.

Like most of their games, Maxis begins by creating a series of playable prototypes in order to figure out how the game will play. Generally these are only played by internal staff but this time they have been made available to the public.

The full version of Spore will offer a universe in the box, allowing players to evolve and control a creature as it grows from single cell organisms through to civilizations and eventually to the stars, all the while being able to customize every aspect of the game from creatures to UFO’s. Story from: AWN

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Tim Burton has finally found his Alice. Burton’s been working on a big-budget live action w/ mo-cap version of “Alice in Wonderland”. After a long search for their star, they finally found her in Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (seen in HBO’s “In Treatment”, and will star opposite Daniel Craig in the upcoming film “Defiance”).

The film, based on a script by Linda Woolverton (”The Lion King”), will be produced by longtime Burton collaborator Richard Zanuck, former Disney chairman Joe Roth and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd. It will be shot with live-action and performance-capture footage and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. Disney creative executive Jason Reed will oversee the project, set to begin principal photography in November.

KIDS FIRST!, a non-profit media observance group that provides news and information on childrens entertainment released it’s list of Top 100 Kids Films today. This list which was chosen by a panel of jurors as well as online voters over the past few months. Of the films in the final list, over 45 of them are animated. The animated films chosen range from Disney classics such as “Peter Pan” or “Alice in Wonderland” to more contemporary classics such as Pixar’s “Toy Story” and Blue Sky’s “Ice Age”. Other memorable entries are Aardman Animation’s “Wallace and Gromitt in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit” and “Iron Giant”. 

The list of the animated films included on the list can be found here while the full list of the 100 films can be found at the company’s website.

Source: Animation Insider

Well it’s finally here, the long awaited stereoscopic pipeline from Autodesk. While others have been rolling out stereo tools here and there Autodesk has been mum. The only thing anyone from the company would say about the subject is that they were working on a solution and that theirs, of course, would be better than the rest. There is supposed to be presentations from both the software group and the systems group. Which would mean tool for every thing from Maya and Max all the way through to Flame and Luster. This is poised to be a very good User group meeting so get there early, they are only handing out 3D glasses to the first 3000 people to show up.

You can see the details of the meeting and how to register here