Will Canadians’ innate politeness be a disadvantage in the toons with tude game?

Judging by the product screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, animation is where the creativity is at. It’s also a very fluid market. Not only does it have a rejuvenating effect upon its audience, animation tends to frequently reincarnate itself. Beyond the latest accomplishments in syn thespians (the acting is getting there, check out Jan Pinkava’s Geri’s Game, a 3D short from Pixar), more of the dark side seems to be sliding into the mainstream tv market, both in terms of more gothic styles and mature tones.

The edgy humor on upcoming primetime animated action in America skews more towards South Park than Due South. In one of the new u.s. series, The p.j.s, Eddie Murphy is the voice of a super in the projects.

Sure Canadians are sitting pretty on the kid cartoon series front, with u.s. and European sked penetration and partners, and licensing efforts (beyond heavy Franklin action, Nelvana’s success at the Licensing Show with From the Files of the Flying Rhinoceros spawned a new Baskin Robbins ice cream flavor). But, when it comes to primetime, Nelvana’s Bob and Margaret is the lone new toon title debuting on a screen near you.

With all this expertise, surely there’s a base for growing more Captain Star-ilk primetime toons to join the Dilbert (upn) and Baby Blues (wb) sitoons queue. Perhaps the burgeoning adult animation palate being developed by tv is a way to economically bypass the u.s. studio lock on the toon feature side.

On the kiddie flick front, beside the sleeper strategy, competition with the big studios seems doomed to the margins, and as to more feature film producer wannabes’ mass reliance on the home video market, that’s a finite resource. In the u.k., the kids’ video market is as hard as theatrical.

Skewing older could be the indie key.

It worked in Germany with Trickompany’s The Little Asshole (eighth at the German box office) and Werner (Berlin’s Hahn Film is now in production on the third Werner film for a ’99 release), a crazy adult feature that broke domestic records. Based on a popular German comic character and not deemed exportable, it nevertheless indicates that the right property could ride the indie/cult flick road to box-office breakthrough.

Beyond a killer premise, strategy is key. Nick Park is now in the enviable position of being deemed bankable by a feature distributor. Most of the companies endlessly developing animated features are not.

At a panel at the Annecy market, Allan Rudoff, managing director of London-based Index Entertainment, described the reception of animated films at Cannes as cool. ‘Outside of Disney, Fox, DreamWorks and Warners, no one is interested,’ he says, adding that his survey of the 1,200 films for sale revealed only 20 were animated. He describes it as two worlds that keep missing each other, ‘the animation producers aren’t at Cannes or the afm, and the distributors, outside of Germany, aren’t here [at the mifa].’

Point being, more producers should think about selling at the pre-pre-pre-pro stage, ensnaring distributors at the script level. Words of wisdom from the mifa panel: spend more money on scripts and presentation brochures. Beyond that, stars, literary property, national or local cult, nostalgia power, hip scripts, sequel, classic characters, ancillary value in other markets, merchandising and tv exposure were on the distribs-most-wanted list.

In Europe, 70 animated features were produced in the last seven years, and often the only distribution was in the country of origin, so the Cartoon Forum folks are pondering a feature film version of the popular event, which has helped producers hook up with buyers on the tv side.

Bottom line, the killer indie toon flick is needed to inspire confidence – a border-crossing toon Crying Game or Full Monty – so that film festivals and distribs take note of the genre. Odds are that Barbarella may have more of a shot at this than Babar.