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Wednesday December 8, 8:02 am Eastern Time - Company
Press Release - SOURCE: shockwave.com, Inc.
Trey Parker & Matt Stone Join Shockwave.com to Produce
Original Online Animation
Deal Represents Benchmark in Online Content
and Programming
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- shockwave.com, together with Trey
Parker and Matt Stone, today announced an unprecedented agreement to develop
a series of original animated shorts for the Internet for shockwave.com.
As part of the deal, Parker and Stone retain total artistic control. The
new programming is scheduled to debut in March 2000 at www.shockwave.com
to an audience of tens of millions.
The William Morris Agency's Corporate Advisory/New Media Department and
the law firm of Barnes, Morris & Yorn initiated the deal with Michael
Yanover at Shockwave. (Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990921/MACRLOGO
) With this deal, Trey and Matt return to short-form animation -- the
medium that spawned overnight success for the South Park prototype ``The
Spirit of Christmas.''
Trey & Matt will create 39 original animated shorts for the Internet
in Flash format, each with an average running time of 2-5 minutes. Fans
of the duo's immensely popular animation work will have a ball at shockwave.com
with brand new programming that Trey & Matt are currently developing.
Since its debut on Comedy Central in 1997, South Park has become a runaway
hit and has garnered a CableACE for Best Animated Series.
Trey & Matt's new programming for the Internet will complement the South
Park pieces already found on shockwave.com. The new short features can
be viewed for free with Macromedia's Flash Player which boasts an installed
consumer audience of more than 180 million worldwide. After the anticipated
March 2000 debut of the new programming, viewers will be able to tune
in regularly to experience newly updated animation pieces. Matt Stone
said, ``Because of Macromedia Flash technology, the ability to deliver
animated comedy over the Web is light years ahead of live action, and
that excites the hell out of us.'' ``We think this is a watershed deal
and we're thrilled to be breaking ground with Trey and Matt,'' said Rob
Burgess, chairman and CEO of Macromedia. Trey Parker added, ``Yeah, we
think this Internet thing could be pretty big.''
``Trey & Matt not only get it, they are it -- real trendsetters in today's
popular culture,'' said Mike Simpson, executive vice-president and co-worldwide
motion picture head of William Morris. ``The fit is right, and we believe
shockwave.com has the reach, depth and real value that high level creators
need in today's dot com world. Our intent is that some of the stories
and characters debuting as shorts on shockwave.com will move into episodic
television and feature film formats and this relationship gives Trey &
Matt an unprecedented ability to move between various platforms and to
cross promote.'' Kevin Morris of the law firm Barnes, Morris & Yorn, said:
``It seems like everyone from Silicon Valley to Wall Street and back to
Hollywood has long predicted that entertainment content on the Internet
would be the next growth industry. Well, that day is here, the model for
an actual visual media content deal has been created and no one should
be surprised by the players.'' Lewis Henderson, William Morris VP, Head
of New Media, added: ``This is the most comprehensive and, arguably, the
most significant content deal on the Internet. We're delighted to have
played such an integral role in bringing Trey, Matt and shockwave.com
together.''
Michael Yanover, business development executive at shockwave.com, said:
``We believe that, with this deal, Trey and Matt have pioneered what will
be a steady migration of star talent to the Internet and to shockwave.com.''
In addition to debuting the new programming in March, shockwave.com will
feature the new characters and the new shorts in other popular shockwave.com
games, greetings, puzzles and creative content tools.
Can the Internet Save Comics?
By Scott Hillis LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
Step aside, Superman. Move over, Wonder Woman. The Streak and Imitatia
are some of the new names in town. And they're not just any old superheroes
-- they're wired, too. Faced with falling sales and waning interest, the
industry that gave the world the superhero is struggling to hold its ground
against the encroachment of television, computers and video games. But
rather than waiting for a muscle-bound hero in colorful tights to leap
to the rescue, the creators and sellers of comics are fighting back themselves,
using the Internet to reassert their relevance and win over new legions
of fans.
Take Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.
Lee, also honorary chairman of Marvel Comics, is behind StanLee.Net, a
comics Web site that will marry original stories and characters with Web
animation tricks to draw the latest battleground for good and evil to
duke it out. Set to launch in January, the site's showcase will be ``The
Seventh Portal'', in which seven heroes from different countries (The
Streak hails from Japan, Imitatia from India) combat seven villains in
another dimension accessible through the Internet. Superhero Mini-Movies
``When we launch, we will establish at that moment that the Internet is
a viable, stand-alone entertainment medium,'' Lee told Reuters in an interview.
Apart from ``The Seventh Portal'', several other characters are being
developed for stories that will be updated weekly, Lee said.
``What we're attempting to do is to see to it that every day on the Web
site there will be some superhero strip, some fantasy strip, so that every
day people will have good reason to tune into our site,'' he said. Based
in a former bank in Encino, Calif., the company has recruited more than
50 employees -- from writing and drawing talent to programmers proficient
with computer animation tools that will breathe life into Lee's creations.
Macromedia Inc. (NasdaqNM:MACR - news), the company that develops Flash
animation software, is an investor. ``These are all going to involve a
tremendous amount of animation. These are not going to be still pictures.
They're animated superhero mini-movies, really,'' Lee said.
Unknown artists are also using the Internet to display their works, demonstrating
that -- like garage musicians gaining exposure via MP3 music downloads
and armchair stock analysts holding forth on message boards -- you don't
have to be a professional to get your name out there. Stephen Rice, an
accountant in San Francisco, produces an online graphic novel called ``The
Gifted'', at http://www.thegifted.com. Other sites, like B-Radical.com
of Ottawa, Ontario, and WebComix.com, run ongoing stories or daily comic
strips that may never have seen the light of day given the way the industry
works.
THE AMAZON.COM OF COMICS?
Once upon a time, North America boasted 8,000 comic book stores. Falling
readership and tight margins have slashed that to about 4,000. Some 40
percent of a brick-and-mortar comic store's floor space is unprofitable.
Titles that are not sold cannot be returned, so owners are unlikely to
gamble on an unknown title or artist. Dave Scott, founder of NextPlanetOver.com,
the biggest online comics retailer, hopes the Internet can skirt the tough
economics of the industry. ``You're seeing an undersaturation of comic
books and products,'' Scott said in a recent interview. Scott's original
plan was to open a national chain of comic stores capable of reaching
millions of customers. But then the World Wide Web took off, with Amazon.com
leading the way for retailers. ``Offline, the category is very fragmented.
There are no national chains. Online allows a single merchant to reach
the entire nation, including geographies not well served, so there's an
opportunity to grow the market as a whole,'' said Mike May, a digital
commerce analyst with Jupiter Communications. Moreover, comics fans also
tend to be Internet fans. ``What we found was that the particular customer
that consumes comic books was twice as likely to be online than other
consumers. They also tend to be high-technology early adopters,'' Scott
said. NextPlanetOver stocks some 8,000 products, including nearly 5,000
comics titles, as well as toys, clothing, videos, art and trading cards.
It is the e-commerce partner for Stan Lee's Web site, too. By weaving
goodies such as chats and interviews with artists and writers into the
site, Scott says NextPlanetOver visitors linger about four times longer
than they do at other online retailers. ``Consumers are coming back every
single day to take advantage of the content,'' Scott said.
The Story's The Thing
Lee, however, reads more into the decline of comics than just poor business
practices. ``What happened with the comics industry is they began to make
the stories too inaccessible,'' Lee said. Apart from reaching out to the
world's youth through the Internet, Lee aims to resurrect the lost art
of basic story-telling. ``The stories have lost a certain simplicity and
ease of access, and for that reason they have lost many younger readers,''
Lee said. Others seem to be placing their faith in Lee, too. DC Comics,
now owned by Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner Inc., wants him to
write stories for its Superman and Batman comics -- business world rivals
of Lee's Marvel characters. And Viacom Inc. may be interested in having
Lee revamp its Mighty Mouse cartoon character with a new Web-based look
and persona. ``We will join with other brands to revive elements of their
franchises on the Internet, with Stan giving new meaning to the franchise,''
said Peter Paul, chief executive of Stan Lee Media. But few expect the
demise of the old-fashioned comic book, despite the migration of the industry
to cyberspace. Lee envisions leading his army of Internet characters out
of the world of bits and bytes and into that of television cartoons, screen
adaptations, and yes, old fashioned pulp and ink. ``There will always
be a place for a story printed on paper,'' Lee said.
NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1999
Show Business Embraces Web, But Cautiously
By ANDREW POLLACK LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8
Regis and Kathie Lee, watch out. The hosts of a new talk show are none
other than the Lord and Satan themselves. In "The God & Devil
Show," they
interview guests like John Wayne- one needn't be alive to be a guest on
this show-and viewers then vote whether to send the guest to heaven or
hell. The show, which features cartoon characters with
realistic voices,
is coming soon to a screen near you-a computer screen. It is scheduled
to appear on Entertaindom.com, a Web site that the Warner
Brothers studio
is expected to start this month as the entertainment industry begins a
bold attempt to turn the Internet into its next big medium.
Until now, Hollywood has used the Internet mainly to promote films and
television programs, rather than to transmit them. But a growing number
of players, from big studios to small entrepreneurs, are
starting to provide
entertainment on the Web, either by delivering existing
movies and television
shows or by creating programs specifically for online
viewing. The efforts
could allow for development of new types of interactive entertainment
not possible on television and in movie theaters and could give voice
to artists not seen or heard through those traditional media.
"It's as different from television as television is from radio," said
Jim Banister, executive vice president of Warner Brothers Online. There
are, however, formidable technical and business challenges.
With standard
modems, it can take hours to download a feature-length film
onto a personal
computer, and video usually appear in a small box on the
screen with blurry
images that often suddenly freeze. These problems will diminish as more
people gain high-speed access to the Internet, though it is not clear
even then whether people will want to watch shows at their desks rather
than from the sofa. And as happened when home video recording appeared
on the scene, much of Hollywood is wary of the new technology, seeing
it as much as a threat as an opportunity. Jack Valenti, the industry's
chief lobbyist, said in Congressional testimony recently that piracy of
movies over the Internet could "dwarf" the existing problem.
Another concern is that program creators can communicate directly with
audiences, bypassing the studios. Hollywood got a taste of
that when "The
Blair Witch Project," a low-budget movie by unknown filmmakers, became
a huge hit after an Internet publicity campaign. "You're basically your
own TV station," said Joseph Shields, 38, of Grand Rapids, Mich., who
failed as a comic strip creator but who has gained a cult following on
the Web with his offbeat interactive cartoons, like the one in which a
foul-mouthed frog in a blender taunts the viewer into grinding him up.
Mr. Shields's cartoons, or word of them, have spread like
wildfire through
e-mail, and his Web site, www.joecartoon.com, gets as many as 500,000
hits a day.
Bit players like Mr. Shields have led the way; a dozen or
more Web sites,
for instance, already show movies by independent filmmakers
who have trouble
getting their work into theaters. But now, heavyweights are jumping in.
America Online announced a $30 million investment last week in the Web
site of Blockbuster Inc., the video rental unit of Viacom.
The investment
is aimed in part at developing video for Internet delivery.
And the Seagram
Company, owner of Universal Studios, recently held a meeting of 100 top
executives to draw up plans for Internet businesses. Dreamworks SKG the
studio started by Steven Spielberg, said last month that it would form
a Web entertainment venture with Imagine Entertainment, the production
company started by Ron Howard. The new company, Pop.com, is
being initially
financed with $50 million from Paul G. Allen, the Microsoft cofounder.
Microsoft and Dell Computer have invested in Digital
Entertainment Network,
a start-up in Los Angeles that creates original Web programs. WireBreak
Entertainment, another start-up, counts Michael Jordan, the
former chief
executive of CBS, among its backers. And Frank J. Biondi Jr.,
the former
chief executive of Universal Studios, has invested in such companies as
Atomfilms and SightSound.com, both of which offer movies on
the Internet.
Warner Brothers' Entertaindom, the biggest effort by a major
studio, will
offer the studio's own Looney Tunes cartoons as well as shows licensed
from others, like "The God & Devil Show" from Mondo Media of
San Francisco.
It will also draw on the magazines and record company of its
parent, Time
Warner, to provide entertainment information and to sell
concert tickets.
Jim Moloshok, the president of Warner Brothers Online, said
studios need
to become more active on the Web or lose out to Internet
start-ups.
"Hollywood has been hibernating in its cave for years," he said. "The
Real Networks, the Yahoos have been sneaking into our cave and stealing
our food." Record companies were caught flat-footed by the
speed at which
the Internet began to be used to distribute music, legally
and illegally.
Studios are owned by the same companies as the record labels and should
be preparing. But are they?
Except for Warner Brothers and 2Oth Century Fox, a unit of
the News Corporation,
none of the Hollywood studios would talk about Internet entertainment-a
sign, some industry executives say, that the studios have not figured
out what to do. "All the studios are taking the path of least
resistance-what
can we do that's not competitive with our existing business?"
said David
Wertheimer, chief executive of Wirebreak and former head of the online
activities of Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom.
"I think they'll be surprised at how big it becomes how
quickly." Others
say that caution is justified. There have been several
failures in online
entertainment, including early efforts by Microsoft and America Online.
Big studios say they can wait because they have access to major talent.
"I think it's a big sinkhole," said Jake Winebaum, who once
ran the Internet
operations of Walt Disney. "I think there's going to be a lot of money
spent before the consumer is ready for it." Disney offers
some entertainment
for children on the Internet but has pursued a broader Web
strategy with
a general portal . and search engine. Studios also seem to think they
can wait because they have access to the best talent.
Few if any of the thousands of garage bands that distribute
their music
over the Internet have become stars, posing little competition for the
major labels. And homegrown Web video shows might become no more of a
threat than the amateur programs on public access cable television. "As
far as tapping a mass audience, it's going to be difficult because it's
pretty grungy stuff right now," said James Murdoch, who is in, charge
of Internet operations for the . News Corporation and its Fox studio.:
He and some other executives said. that if good programs did arise on-
line, studios could buy them or their production companies
and even turn
them into television programs.
Disney's ABC uses the Web to provide statistics to go with
"Monday Night
Football." Fox is looking at creating virtual communities tied to shows
like "Ally McBeal." Sony Pictures is allowing users of Web TV, a device
that brings Web pages onto television sets, to play along
with "Jeopardy"
and "Wheel of Fortune," two game shows it produces. It also
offers video
games online. But executives at Sony, one of the few major studios not
affiliated with a television network, have indicated that
they are interested
in the Internet for program distribution in the future. In that it is
used for chatting, games and idle surfing, the Web is already
a big entertainment
venue, though not for traditional video and movies.
Some analysts say the Web is best suited for such
interactive activities,
rather than for transmitting shows that are best seen on television or
in the theater. Many Web entertainment sites try to provide some sense
of community by letting viewers comment on the show, chat
with other viewers
or even influence the plot, however minimally. But it remains
to be seen
whether such active viewing can be as engrossing as
traditional entertainment,
in which viewers suspend their disbelief. So far, there has been no big
hit Internet show that defines the medium, in the way that
Milton Berle's
show did in television's infancy. Most of the
made-for-the-Web shows now
online are in short "Webisodes," only a few minutes long, and many are
cartoons. Shorter programs are more tolerable with existing technology,
and animation can be transmitted with higher quality than
video. But the
brevity also reflects the way Web programs are being viewed -as a quick
break for people working on their computers. People describe
Web entertainment
as a "lean-forward experience" rather than the "lean-back experience"
of watching television or a movie.
"Nobody's going to watch a half-hour of 'Seinfeld' or an
hour and a half
movie on the PC in the office," said Johan Liedgren, chief executive of
Honkworm International, a Seattle company whose Internet shows feature
animated fish talking in a bar. Many of the shows are
sophomoric, if not
downright demented, in part because the Web has been a refuge for shows
unsuitable for a general television audience and because such fare is
intended to appeal to teenage boys and young men. In addition
to Mr. Shields's
frog cartoon, for example, there is "The Peeper," a cartoon
about a peeping
tom, created by the comedian and actor Adam Sandler.
One big question is whether any Web entertainment efforts
can make money.
Some sites are offering or planning to offer pay-per-view
movies or charge
subscription fees. Program developers hope they can syndicate
their shows
to other Web sites, such as portals and e-commerce sites that
might provide
entertainment to draw customers. Most shows, including "God & Devil,"
are being offered free and their providers depend on advertising, but
it is not clear whether online shows can draw big enough audiences.
Honkworm gets 500,000 viewers each month for all its shows combined,
while a television program can draw millions in a night. The average film
shown on Ifilm.com, a Web site offering free independent films, draws
5,000 viewers, though some films can get up to 50,000. SightSound.com,
which charges a few dollars to Web users to download movies, says its
most popular title is "rented" 60 times a month, less than a single video
store can do. Digital Entertainment Network known as DEN, said it expected
$7.5 million in revenue from its charter sponsors-Ford Motor, Microsoft
and Pepsico. But most will be in the form of services, like promotion
of DEN by Pepsi, not in cash. Though most Web programming is now made
"for people who live in SoHo or Silicon Valley," the audience will broaden,
Mr. Moloshok of Entertaindom said. "Mainstreamers are coming online,"
he said. "I don't want to create the niche show. I want to create the
'Seinfeld.' "
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