The Passage of Time

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. A Happy Ending for Coyote vs Acme? - Warner Bros. engendered intense criticism in 2023 for their controversial decision to shelve the completed film for tax savings purposes. We took it personally as it was written by alum Samy Burch, and its director, Dave Green, is also a multi-time S/W alum plus a finalist in our very first film competition. Now though, Deadline reports that a deal is imminent allowing the feature to be released theatrically sometime in 2026!

2. First Details On New DANIELS Film - Speaking of alums working on big projects, Moviemaker combed through public listings to uncover details on the latest from the Everything Everywhere All At Once filmmakers. The $100M+ film from NBCUniversal is expected in theaters next year and will utilize over $20M in California tax credits. Kudos to the team staying in Los Angeles in the wake of the strike and fires. We might need to update our lengthy DANIELS retrospective soon…

3. The Challenging Economics of Creative Producing - Speaking of DANIELS, Jonathan Wang, the producer on their projects, was interviewed alongside several of his peers for a piece in the LA Times highlighting the challenges producers face. Wang reported earning $35k a year for the seven years of development on Everything Everywhere All At Once, and familiar issues of health care, uncompensated “sweat equity”, and credit dilution are raised.

4. Inside the Unlikely Return of the Animated Short Film - Drew Taylor for The Wrap has an interesting piece on the evolving shorts strategy of big animation studios, noting the phenomenal success of Illumination’s Sing: Thriller short, which ranked in the top ten on Netflix’s most recently released engagement report.

5. Spike Jonze Teams up with Pedro Pascal on Apple Promo Short - Jonze has one of the most fascinating short film filmographies of any established director, so we had high hopes for this. It’s compiled over 10M views this week, but the story of Pascal getting over a breakup with the help of his Airpods is not in the same category as his work for Absolut. Still, it’s a visually splendid piece and I did not regret my 5 minutes.

6. Historic Animated Shorts from the Zagreb School of Animation - Animation Obsessive has turned us on to the expanding treasure trove of restored animation classics being released for free on the school’s official YouTube channel. A deep dive is warranted.

7. Recommend: Delightful “ANIMANIMALS” Shorts - YouTube just announced an initiative to improve the woeful quality of its kids’ programming. Color me skeptical. But, having just finished attending NYICFF, I was reminded that there is a lovely collection of shorts for tots on the YouTube channel of indie German animation studio, Film Bilder. Check them out, specifically those from Julia Ocker, whose films are on Shortverse now too.

8. Review of Short Film Screenwriting - Writing for Filmmaker Mag, Holly Willis has an enthusiastic review of Austin Bunn’s recent book, which has quickly become the definitive screenwriting resource for short filmmakers. A disclaimer though, I provided some quotes for Bunn, a Cornell professor nominated just last month in our Short Awards for his short film, Campfire.

9. NoFilmSchool Updates its Newsletter - Congrats to Ryan Koo and our friends at NoFilmSchool on their redesigned newsletter. The publication joins us, Director’s Library, and others in hopping over to the Beehiiv platform. We look forward to getting our indie filmmaking tips in this new, more personal way.

10. Weekend Watch: O’Dessa and The Heirloom - We often like to leave you with projects from S/W alums that are hitting theaters or streaming, and this week we have two. First up is The Heirloom from Canadian talent, Ben Petrie. Selected for his cringe two-hander Her Friend Adam in 2016 and recently in the news for co-writing his co-star Grace Glowicki’s Sundance 2025 feature Dead Lover, the film follows a neurotic couple whose relationship is brought to the edge by the arrival of a traumatized rescue dog. Released by specialty distributor Factory 25, the film opens in New York today.
    
    Second up is O’Dessa from Geremy Jasper. Fresh off its world premiere at SXSW, this post-apocalyptic rock opera from Searchlight Pictures is now streaming on Hulu.

🤖 Catching Up on AI

You don’t need us to tell you that developments in AI are arriving at a ferocious pace. If so inclined we could probably fill up our “10 Things…” section with AI news each week (and if we were more shameless we would start an AI newsletter). So, rather than a steady drip, we’ll try to batch news you should know in periodic updates.

• Hundreds of celebrities warn against letting OpenAI and Google ‘freely exploit’ Hollywood. (The Verge)

• Staircase Studios AI, a new maker of films, TV series and video games, is promising to deliver “near-major-studio” levels of quality at budgets under $500,000. (Deadline)

• At Least 65 Different AI Studios Have Launched Globally Since 2022 (Indiewire)

• Paddington in Peru writers reteam for newly-announced AI animated feature Critterz, based on a 2023 short. (Variety)

• Oscar-Winning VFX Supervisor Robert Legato Joins Stability AI (VP Land)

• Elon Musk’s xAI Purchases Video AI Foundation Model Compay (X.com)

• Asteria And Moonvalley Introduce Marey, An Ethically Sourced AI Video Model (Forbes)

• The Deadline for Runway’s 3rd Annual AI Film Fests is April 6th (Runway)

🪐 Into the Shortverse

From Short Film to Series: Shorts That Evolved Into TV

Adolescence is the surprise hit of the year in TV and the show’s intricate one-shot style was first honed in a short by its director, Philip Barantini. That got the gears in our programming brains turning, and in a TV mood after last week’s Severance-themed collection, we came up with a new collection of shorts that were subsequently adapted to TV. Check out the collection on Shortverse, with an introduction and programming notes from Rob on Short of the Week.

***

Annecy Competition Shorts: 2025

Annecy is not until June, but the premiere animation festival in the world just dropped its shorts lineup. We’ve added the 35 films in competition to Shortverse in a collection.

I look forward to Annecy’s selections every year, but this is the most excited I’ve been in a while. We’ve got a long-awaited new film from the Madame Tutli-Putli team, fresh work from director Péter Vácz (I adore Rabbit and Deer), a stunning new entry from the Japanese-themed Star Wars: Visions anthology, and even a new work from Estonia’s grandmasters, Priit and Olga Pärn. Should I fly to France this year? Maybe I’ll fly to France…

📅 This Week on Short of the Week