Apr
17
Apr
17
NEWS: Sarofsky debuts titles for FITC this Sunday (4.19.20) with TWO virtual events.
Posted in: Animation
Apr
16
After quitting Viacom18, Sudhanshu Vats has joined Essel Propack as the MD and CEO effective from today, 16 April. The board has also appointed him as the additional director of the company. He has also been designated as key managerial personnel pursuant to the Companies Act 2013.
Headquartered in Mumbai, Essel Propack is a specialty packaging manufacturer of laminated plastic tubes for the FMCG and Pharma space.
Vats has more than 28 years of industry experience across FMCG and media sectors. Before Essel Propack, Vats spent eight years in Viacom18 as the MD and Group CEO, where he expanded the network from six to 54 channels across 80 countries. He added three more lines of business and grew revenue by over 4x by building a strong portfolio of direct to consumer digital offerings under the VOOT brand and strengthening data science and analytics capability.
Sudhanshu Vats
Prior to joining Viacom18, Vats spent more than 20 years at Unilever in various sales and marketing and general management roles. He left Unilever as the head of Unilever’s laundry business in South Asia and head of the Radiant brand globally. He made Radiant the fastest growing laundry brand in the world with over Euro 500 mm turnover. During his long tenure at Unilever, he shaped many popular household brands, most notably Lipton, Vim, Wheel, Surf, Rin, Lifebuoy and Lux.
Vats is also the chairman of the National Media and Entertainment Committee of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), vice president of IBF (Indian Broadcasting Foundation) and director at BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council). He is also on the advisory board of a number of NGOs.
Vats holds an M.B.A. from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.
The post Sudhanshu Vats named as Essel Propack MD and CEO appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
Disney is all ready to bring back cheer and joy to kids in this dull time. The company’s kids channels in India are bringing in freshly curated content to entertain kids this summer. The line-up promises 100 hours of fresh content introducing kids to new stories in addition to their existing favourites across all the channels, including Disney Channel and Hungama TV.
In keeping with the current scenario, where kids are looking for a friend who engages and interacts with them in a manner that they understand, Disney Channel is launching a campaign #Homebuddy with a thought that they can spend plenty of time with their favourite characters. And Hungama, in line with the channel philosophy, will encourage kids to have lots of fun with #Gharpemachao as they stay safe at home.
“Summer is a fun-time for children and with the lockdown in place, they are especially looking to us to be their constant companion; someone who understands their entertainment needs and is there for them through the day. We have curated special campaigns for Disney Channel and Hungama in line with this thought and notwithstanding the unprecedented situation, bringing them a range of new and differentiated stories and memorable characters,” said Star India head – infotainment, English and kids Anuradha Aggarwal.
The kids’ channels will entertain kids and families with adventure and comedy. The network recently launched the adventures of Mira, Royal Detective which has been loved by kids and families across. The summer specials across Disney Channel and Hungama TV includes local and home-grown series like Bapu, a pure and positive story of a wise old leader from Bharat Nagar who is sure to win the hearts of kids and families along with an all-animal story of a lion and his joyful circus troupe friends in Guddu.
The new offerings will also have a story of a soft toy – Gadget Guru Ganesha, who with his innovative gadgets will charm his way into the lives of young audiences across the country. The Hagemaru Show which narrates the tale of the mischievous Hagemaru and his high spirited parents as they find ground breaking & hilarious methods to save money, will also be available for all.
Alongwith the new lineup, kids can enjoy the fresh episodes of Selfie with Bajrangi and go on new adventures with Doreamon in a new season. New episodes of Chacha Chaudhary and Miraculous will also be available.
The post Disney India curates 100 hours of fresh content for kids appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
The coronavirus pandemic has shut down live-action production, but much of the animation industry can be seen operating through remote working. Looking at the disparity, the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) union, is encouraging its members to seek coverage on animation projects — and reignite employment tensions in the process.
On Tuesday, the union’s board of directors issued a message to its 10,000 members, the vast majority of whom work primarily in live action. “We have heard from members that studios and producers are increasingly interested in developing animated projects,” it says. “This is an important moment to remind you that the WGA can and does cover writing for animation.”
In 1998, it signed an unprecedented deal with Fox to cover prime-time shows The Simpsons, Futurama, and King of the Hill. It now has contracts for animated projects with the likes of Paramount, Netflix, Apple TV+, and HBO Max.
“Many prominent animated television shows — on broadcast (Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, The Simpsons) cable (American Dad) and streaming (BoJack Horseman, Big Mouth, Disenchantment, F is for Family) — are covered by WGA contracts,” the board’s statement continued. “In fact, our Contracts Department recently negotiated deals to cover new animated series for Netflix (Q-Force, Hoops), Amazon (Undone), Apple TV+ (Central Park) and HBO Max (The Prince). The WGA also covers animated feature projects, including soon to be released Wendall & Wild for Netflix and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run for Paramount.”
The latest intervention by WGA has elicited mixed reactions from the animation community on social media.
The post Writers Guild tells members to switch live-action coverage to animation appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
Homegrown OTT platform, ALTBalaji completes three years in the business today, 16 April. The platform and ALTBalaji and Balaji Telefilms’ boss Ekta Kapoor has thanked audience for the support.
With an extensive, diverse content library that spans across multiple genres, ALTBalaji has created a niche for itself in the original content space and inculcating binge-watching habit amongst Indian audiences.
ALTBalaji has also emerged as one of the fastest-growing homegrown platforms with more than 60 originals to its name and continue its record in the coming future.
Nachiket Pantvaidya
Speaking on ALTBalaji’s third anniversary, ALTBalaji CEO and Balaji Telefilms Group COO Nachiket Pantvaidya said, “Since its inception, ALTBalaji has served as one of the flag bearers for good original content and shall continue to do so. Being from the house of Balaji Telefilms, who have been catering to the audiences’ ever-changing preferences for over 25 years now, ALTBalaji has an advantage like no other of having a deeper understanding and familiarity with the viewer’s consumption preferences. By constantly working on an effective content strategy to cater to individuals, we aim to ramp up our original offerings at an exciting pace. Our core focus right now is to capture the Hindi speaking market through our innovative content offerings along with expanding our regional language content library in the coming years. As we set sights towards breaking even in this new year, we shall continue to keep our viewer as the focal point, build our strategies around them and cement our position as a market leader in the industry.”
ALTBalaji has today become a major player in the Indian OTT industry and gains further encouragement by the massive spike in subscribers. The VOD platform has consistently been ranked No.3 in the list of Top Grossing Video Streaming Apps in the country across the app store, according to App Annie.
Adopting a completely different strategy in terms of content creation, partnerships or marketing, ALTBalaji has seen profitability. Witnessing their costs getting controlled in the first half of fiscal 2020 and the loss margin further reducing at the end of the current fiscal, the platform aims to break even in 2020-21.
The platform has reached out to all kinds of audiences across the length and breadth of the country through a healthy mix of thriller, drama, romance, teenage drama, horror, comedy among others. Laying impetus towards growing its regional subscriber base, it has a host of its Hindi offerings dubbed in Indian and International languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bahasa, Arabic and more.
In their endeavour to further engage the audience and offer them an immersive viewing experience, ALTBalaji is also working towards strengthening its UI/UX by focusing on aspects like language interface, voice search, targeted retention strategies, tailored recommendations, quick onboarding, and convenient payment gateways.
ALTBalaji has also started the trend of original soundtracks in the web-series space. In addition, it has launched some interesting and innovative initiatives and campaigns like – ‘Breast Buffer’ campaign which was initiated to create awareness against Breast Cancer.
Recently, it partnered with Impact Guru for a fundraising effort ‘One Meal at a Time’ for the distribution of food to the underprivileged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further enhancing the user experience, the OTT platform brought its series Apharan to Alexa enabling its users to now listen to dialogues, the trailer and other exclusive content from this successful show. Fans can enjoy the immersive experience provided by the suspense thriller, with just a simple voice command.
This year also saw a number of ALTBalaji shows garner good reviews from audiences and critics alike. Mentalhood, the recently-launched drama on parenthood, earned a 8.9 rating on IMDb. On the other hand, Mission Over Mars (M-O-M), received a rating of 8.6, the thriller-suspense and courtroom drama Code M and The Verdict – State Vs. Nanavati received a rating of 8.3 and 8.6 respectively.
In this COVID lockdown period, ALTBalaji has launched shows like Who’s Your Daddy? and XXX Uncensored Season 2. ALTBalaji will continue to do so with plans to launch almost 25 to 30 shows this year including Kehne Ko Humsafar Hai 3, Baarish 2, Bebaakee, Mumbhai, Apharan 2 and many more.
We wish ALTBalaji a happy birthday! #ALTturns3
The post ALTBalaji completes three years with 60+ original shows across genres appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
WildBrain and Alpha Group, developers of animation and toys, announced that their original CGI-animated preschool series Rev & Roll has been picked up by over 40 broadcasters and streaming platforms in more than 25 territories around the world. A global toy program from Alpha has rolled out in China and is planned for additional territories. WildBrain Spark is set to amplify the brand even further with brand new stop-motion and toy-play original content videos.
Rev & Roll follows the adventures of a group of high-energy friends led by eight-year-old Rev and his best friend, Rumble—a rambunctious, powerful truck with a puppy personality—in the town of Fender Bend, where everyone has a four-wheeled buddy at their side.
“The response to Rev & Roll from broadcasters and streamers across the globe has been outstanding,” said WildBrain president Josh Scherba. “This is a fantastic series for kids, filled with adventure, friendship and fun, and we’re thrilled it’s rolling out in so many territories. Bolstered by its strong performance on our WildBrain Spark YouTube network, we think Rev & Roll has excellent potential as a global brand, and we’re equally excited about the toy program rolling out from Alpha Group.”
Key deals for season one of Rev & Roll (52×11’) have been struck with SUPER RTL (Germany), TF1 (France), Turner’s Cartoonito (Italy), Karusel (Russia), TV Azteca (Mexico) and Channel 9 (Australia), among other top broadcasters. In China, Rev & Roll has launched on mainstream children’s channels, including CCTV-14, JiaJia Cartoon, Youman Cartoon, Golden Eagle Cartoon, Haxuan Cartoon, and on SVOD platforms including Tencent, IQIYI, YOUKU and Mango TV.
Alpha Group president Robert He said, “Rev & Roll is a wonderful show with expressive characters, dynamic story-telling and strong curriculum goals. We believe kids and parents will love it.”
Rev & Roll is also popular on AVOD platforms such as YouTube, YouTube Kids, Tubi, Pluto TV, XUMO, Ketchup TV, Crackle and The Roku Channel, where the property has been watched by kids and families in diverse territories such as the US, Brazil, the UK, Australia and Canada. Season one of Rev and Roll is now also available on Prime Video in the US, Canada and the UK via Prime Video Direct, Amazon’s self-distribution service for content providers.
The post ‘Rev & Roll’ zooms around more than 25 territories around the world appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
Paytm First Games crosses 11,000 gamers registration for ‘Clash Royale’ esports tournament
Posted in: AnimationPaytm First Games has announced that it’s recently concluded esports tournament Clash Royale and have witnessed participation from more than 11,000 gamers from across India. Kirit Kumar Anantroa Ramchadrani, popularly known as ‘Sandrin’ from Gujarat has won this championship and received the prize money of Rs. 1,40,000.
The second position has been secured by Karan Pal Singh, known as ‘ABR’ from Gurugram, who won the prize money of Rs. 70,000. Other winners have been given prize money in the range of Rs. 5,000 to 40,000, along with Paytm First Games vouchers. The esports tournament was held from 10 April to 13 April and participants from different corners of India competed to win a prize pool of Rs. 4 lakhs.
Paytm First Games COO Sudhanshu Gupta said, “We’re off to a flying start in esports with the Clash Royale tournament as the participation we received has been nothing short of staggering. We had planned to host the tournament with only 500 players but owing to the overwhelming response we extended the registrations and eventually received over 11,000 participants. The final event was streamed live in Paytm Inbox and our apps and garnered over 70,000 viewers. We are thrilled with these new milestones and will continue to innovate and bring bigger and better experiences for our gamers. ”
The finals of the tournament were streamed live on Paytm First Games’ youtube channel and were watched by over 70,000 users. The total viewing time of the finals by all the viewers equaled more than 1800 hours of viewing time. Developed & published by Supercell, Clash Royale is an extremely popular game across the world and can be played live by two or four players (1v1 or 2v2 format). The tournament was organised in an online, single-elimination format and featured all the top Clash Royale players in India.
The post Paytm First Games crosses 11,000 gamers registration for ‘Clash Royale’ esports tournament appeared first on AnimationXpress.
Apr
16
The Coronavirus has badly impacted even the big players of the media and entertainment industry in India. Disney owned Star India, the Indian broadcasting and streaming giant has decided to go for voluntary cost reductions with the IPL being suspended indefinitely, and TV originals productions being stopped.
Speaking at an UpGrad webinar, The Walt Disney Company APAC chairman and Star and Disney India president Uday Shankar said, “We have voluntarily rolled out a programme for senior executives to take salary cuts. We don’t need to, to be honest. We decided to do that as an investment for the future. We want to be prepared. And I am happy to say that it has been hugely received. Everybody has very positively reacted to that.”
Uday Shankar
Sources reveal that the salary cuts in place would be around 15 to 20 per cent.
Shankar acknowledges that it is important to accept the grim realities of what lies ahead of this pandemic. He expects that the next few quarters will be crucial for everyone to buck up and create a new game plan.
Talking about the near future, Shankar said that it will be ‘fluid and bad’. While the top executives are taking salary cuts, Shankar has a message for his company employees. “We had a town hall meeting and I said that this is the time we start investing in the next cycle and work towards that. In one or two years’ time, can we be twice as stronger as we were when the crisis hit us? We will face second-order challenges such as a reduction in salaries. Some may, unfortunately, lose jobs while businesses may struggle with liquidity,” he said.
He also warned people to not have high hopes as everybody needs to be realistically prepared for it to get worse. “Do not expect the short term to get better. You may even have to take a reduced income,” he added.
The post Star India senior executives to take salary cuts amid COVID disruption appeared first on AnimationXpress.
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