The UK poster is more action oriented than the previous posters (which only showed the back of Norman’s head), as it now shows the entire gang in the middle a car chase, complete with zombies of the dismembered and non-dismembered kind. It is also worth noting that while everyone has a look of terror on their face, the hero of the movie, Norman, is calm and collected. The poster also contains the pun-tastic tagline “Full Scream Ahead”.

Paranorman is scheduled to make its debut on 14 September, 2012.

Via: TotalFilm.com

Toronto-based game developer Game Pill is currently developing a new side scrolling adventure game based on 9 Story Entertainment’s hit 2D animated series Almost Naked Animals. The game will give players a chance to be part of the crazy world of Almost Naked Animals, by playing one of the quirky characters and running their very own tropical hotel, with the aim of eventually becoming the best hotel on the strip.

Named as one of the top children’s shows to watch by People Magazine, Almost Naked Animals focuses on the daily misadventures of a group of free-spirited animals, who are always wearing nothing but their underwear. Running the best beachfront hotel in the strip under the leadership of lead dog and hotel manager Howie, the dysfunctional ensemble cast tries their best to make each day more fun than the last.

“We’re really excited to be bringing 9 Story’s hugely popular Almost Naked Animals brand to the interactive game world. The supergame will be a robust adventure, fully tied into the mayhem and fun of the tv series, adding a new level of enjoyment for its loyal fans,” said Michael Sorrenti, President (mad scientist), Game Pill Inc.

“We are delighted to be working with the talented team at Game Pill on this perfectly targeted expansion of the Almost Naked Animals brand engagement,” said Vince Commisso, President & CEO of 9 Story Entertainment.

Adult Swim’s official list of projects in development:

Untitled Animated Harold & Kumar Project (In Development) – An animated version of the popular blockbuster stoner comedy series, written by original scribes Jon Hurtitz and Hayden Schlossberg. John Cho and Kal Penn will voice the lead characters and also produce this Lionsgate production.

Rick & Morty – A genius inventor grandfather and his not-very-smart grandson, and the journeys in life they share. From Dan Harmon (Community) and Justin Roiland. (30-minute animated)

Colonel Wallace (Working Title) – An eccentric southern fried chicken magnate and his adventures with his family. Created by Greg Cohen (Conan O’Brien, King of the Hill, TV Funhouse). (15-minute animated)

Coffin Dodgers – A group of misfit grumps get into Animal House-style trouble at a cozy suburban retirement home. From Dave Silverstein and Matt Jeser (Drawn Together). (30-minute animated)

Green Bench: The American Day Dream – A group of friends have pooled their money to buy a large office space for their business. The only problem is they haven’t quite figured out what that business is. In the meantime, it’s an awesome headquarters where their petty, self-centered, and mischievous minds can wander. From the internet sketch comedy sensation Green Bench and produced by Dakota Pictures. (30-minute live-action)

Freestyle Love Supreme – These I.T. guys work on their freestyle rapping at the office, much to the annoyance of their co-workers. From Ars Nova (Black Dynamite, In the Heights). (30-minute live-action)

King Star King – King Star King is a modern day he-man who’s half-warrior, half-idiot. From artist JJ Villard (Monsters Vs. Aliens) and Eric Kaplan (Big Bang Theory). (15-minute animated)

Rolling With Dad – A brilliant, but disabled man deals with his much less intelligent family. From Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows; The Hard Times of RJ Berger) and David Katzenberg (The Hard Times of RJ Berger). (30-minute animated)

Endemol’s hit preschool series Bananas in Pyjamas has recently secured three new licensing partners from UK, courtesy of Turner CN Enterprises (TCNE). TCNE is currently Master Toy partner for the property across EMEA, but the three new partners include Aykroyd & TDP Licensing, which will handle party goods and accessories, Gemma International for kids’ greeting cards, and Amscan International for party goods and accessories.

Golden Bear, on the other hand, is currently Master Toy licensee and will be rolling out a Bananas in Pyjamas licensing program in the UK this fall 2012. The licensing program will include toy products (plushies and plastic figures) as the first wave.

Bananas in Pyjamas is currently airing on Turner Broadcasting’s preschool channel, Cartoonito, and is available in as many as 125 million homes across EMA and Channel 5 (UK).

Bananas in Pyjamas is a joint production of Southern Star Entertainment and Southern Star Singapore Production, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The distribution for the series for all territories outside of Australia and the Central/South Asian territories is handled by Endemol Worldwide Distribution.

Home entertainment distributor NCircle Entertainment has recently acquired the DVD distribution rights to Magic Light Pictures’ The Gruffallo’s Child. NCircle is planning to release the DVD for the animated special on August 14, 2012.

The Gruffalo’s Child is Magic Light Pictures’ follow up to the Oscar-nominated short The Gruffalo, and is based on a book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffer. The story focuses on the Gruffalo monster’s little daughter, who ignores her father’s warning to never go into the woods alone, out of fear of the Big Bad Mouse. The Gruffalo’s daughter, on the other hand, wants to find the legendary creature.

The half hour special debuted on BBC1 last Christmas, and features the voices of Helena Bonham Carter, Rob Brydon, James Cordon, Robbie Coltrane, and newcomer Shirley Henderson as the Gruffalo’s Child. NCircle will be promoting the DVD release through TV, radio, and social media in the coming months.

This is good news for fans of Ben 10 who are also gamers, regardless of preferred console: D3Publisher (the same guys who will bring us the Adventure Time DS game!) and Cartoon Network Enterprises have partnered in order to give fans a game experience based on the highly anticipated Ben 10: Omniverse series.

The upcoming Ben 10: Omniverse game will be an action-oriented brawler that offers all new character designs aiming to pay homage to Ben’s past forms, all of which will be pitted against a fresh batch of battle ready aliens. Omniverse will also introduce a new sidekick for Ben – Rook. As expected of any Ben 10 game, Omniverse will let players switch between any of Ben Tennyson’s different alien forms (with the game offering as many as 13 forms, including some never before seen ones), and will offer both single player and co op modes.

Ben 10: Omniverse is being developed by Vicious Cycle Studios for the Nintendo Wii U and Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Sony’s Playstation 3. Development for the Nintendo DS and 3DS ports will be handled by 1st Playable Productions. For more details, you can visit D3Publisher’s site at www.d3publisher.us

Today’s Free Flash Game is called “Try to Survive”, and that basically sums up what the game wants you to do. Try to Survive an onslaught of various post-apocalyptic critters, using only a medium sized gun turret, with additional help from other tools and upgrades that you can earn over time.

The graphics are decent in this game, with the orange texture of the ground perfectly contrasting with the gun turret’s green. The frames of animation seem to be enough to make animation smooth, which helps make the controls fluid and responsive.

As for the gameplay, Try to Survive seems to be an odd hybrid of Tower Defense and Overhead Shooters, in which you are given a single stationary gun turret that you can rotate in order to shoot critters that are coming from all directions. You earn money for every critter you shoot, and the money in turn can be used to purchase additional tools such as mini turrets, guard walls, and various auxiliary defense systems that you can install in the surroundings, in order to help you deal with the ever increasing waves of enemies.

HoHo Entertainment’s new series CloudBabies is slated to make its UK debut on CBeebies this Monday, May 14, 2012. Created by art director Bridget Appleby (of Fifi and the Flowertots, Noddy, and Enjie Benjie), the 52×10 CG animated series will air during weekdays at 11:25a.

CloudBabies tells the story of four caring childlike characters named Baba Blue, Baba Pink, Baba Yelow, and Baba Green. The four are tasked with taking care of the sky and their Sky Friends, and together with a mischievous imp named Bobo White, they try to go through their daily adventures in a house on a fluffy cloud.

CloudBabies is animated at Manchester-based Studio Lidell, who are also co-production partners of the series.

“We are so pleased to be working with Hoho Entertainment on their first pre-school series. Cloudbabies™ is a beautiful show with a great team behind it, and I’m sure it will become a favourite with the CBeebies audience.” says CBeebies Production, Animation and Acquisitions Head Alison Stewart.

Canada’s Disney XD, which is part of Astral Media, is scheduled to debut the new animated series Motorcity on Canadian screens on Saturday, May 26 at 6:30p. The series will debut as part of the channel’s Drift, Draft, and Drive Marathon, which features automobile and racing themed episodes of their cartoons during the 2pm to 7pm programming blocks.

Motorcity is a car-centric animated series from Chris Prynoski and Titmouse, which focuses on a fictional, futuristic version of Detroit called Detroit Deluxe, in which a new technologically advanced Metropolis has been built over the old city. The entirety of Detroit Deluxe is owned by evil billionaire Abraham Kane, who rules over the city with an iron fist, banning many personal freedoms including the use of automobile transportation. Opposing him is a group of hot-rod riding rebels called the Burners, who are led by young upstart Mike Chilton.

All episodes from the Drift, Draft and Drive marathon will eventually be made available on Disney XD OnDemand, starting on Wednesday, May 29.

NY based indie studio GKids is planning to release an English version of the Oscar-nominated film A Cat in Paris in select cities on Jun 1, 2012. The English-translated film will feature the voices of Angelica Huston, Matthew Modine, Steve Blum, and Marcia Gay Harden.

The Oscar-nominated A Cat in Paris is a 2D animated movie that tells the story of a Parisian cat named Dino, who is living a double life. By day, he is the pet of a little girl named Zoe, whose mother is a detective in the Parisian police force, but when night comes, Dino sneaks out the window in order to work with Nico – a cat burglar with a big heart. The cat’s two separate lives collide when young Zoe decides to follow Dino on his nighttime jaunts, only to fall into the hands of a gangster named Victor Costa, who is planning to steal a very rare statue. Now, Nico and Dino must team up in order to save Zeo from Costa and his gang of bumbling thieves.

A Cat in Paris will open on June 1 at New York’s Angelika Film Center and AMC Empire 25, at Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles, and at Landmark theaters in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Diego. The film will have a national roll out throughout June and July, with dates set for Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, St. Louis and other major and secondary markets. For more details, you can visit the official site at www.catinparis.com

Comedy Central has recently revealed additional details about the upcoming 7th season of the Emmy Award-winning sci fi comedy series Futurama. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s hit animated series will kick off on Comedy Central with two new back-to-back episodes on Wednesday, June 20, at 10 PM ET/PT. The total number of episodes that fans can expect will be 13 new half hour episodes, all chock full of awesome guest stars and hilarious story arcs.

One of the episodes to be shown on June 20 is entitled “The Bots and the Bees”, in which Bender (John DiMaggio) fathers a child with the office vending machine (voiced by guest star Wanda Sykes). The episode will be followed by “A Farewell to Arms”, which pokes fun at the 2012 apocalypse theories as the Futurama gang tries to cope with an ancient prophecy that predicts the end of the world in 3012.

For more details, exclusive episode previews and interviews, you can visit comedycentral.com

The free kids online portal Toon Goggles has recently inked a deal with Malaysia-based Animasia Studios in which several of Animasia’s properties will be made available to Toon Goggles’ users. The deal was recently announced by Toon Goggles’ exec vp of new media, Stephen Hodge, and Animasia’s managing director, Edmund Chan. The recent acquisitions are made up of ABC Monsters, Bola Kampung, Chuck Chicken, and Harry & Bunny Show.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Animasia and applaud the studio for joining the hundreds of content producers from around the globe who are currently supplying animated features, programs, series, clips and trailers to Toon Goggles’ rich library that children can enjoy and parents can feel good about,” said Hodge.

““We are pleased to be able to work with Toon Goggles to explore new opportunities to provide quality animated content to viewers in the US and Canada,” noted Chan.

You can download the Toon Goggles iOS App from iTunes or directly from the App Store, or you can visit their official sites for more details:

Animasia-studios.com
Toongoggles.com

If you were a big fan of The Justice Friends segments from Dexter’s Laboratory back in the day, you’ll probably like Junaid Chundrigar’s animated short entitled “Disassembled”, in which he shows a whole bunch of Marvel characters, and how they also have lousy days:

The short employs a caricatured art style that will remind you of Ren and Stimpy or Genndy Tartakovsky’s aforementioned The Justice Friends, and consists of short sketches all featuring your favorite Marvel heroes, such as the Fantastic Four (minus Sue) having a lazy afternoon in front of the TV, Venom having problems with an Ice Cream cone, The Silver Surfer being thrown into the sun by Cyclops’ errant optic blast, Bruce Banner accidentally turning into the Hulk and leveling an entire town on the night he was supposed to propose marriage, and even Nick Fury being surprised by Snakes….on his mfen Plane.

You can watch more shorts at Junaid’s official site: www.imajunation.com

In “Hug Wolf,” while searching for the deadly Blight Tree, Finn and Jake are ambushed by an alpha hug wolf that gets its heart-shaped paws around Finn. Jake manages to burn down the Blight tree. He asks Finn if he is alright. Finn’s suddenly filled with affection, and he can’t stop hugging people. He does this this to Beemo after they return to the tree fort, and Jake is playing video games.

After this hug, Finn remembers that the hug wolf “didn’t even tell me it’s name,” and Jake thinks he better sleep this one off. As the nights wears on, Finn looks like he has a bad sickness, or bad dreams.

Cinnamon Bun tells Finn he came into CB's room at Midnight

While picking up candy litter, Finn is confronted by Cinnamon Bun for the aggressive hugs he gave the night before, but he has no recollection of the events. He doesn’t believe it happened, but Jake points out that Finn was huggy the night before, and takes him to the library where they look up some information on hug wolves.

Finn became a hug wolf after being hugged by an alpha on a full moon, and Jake tries to purge the craving out of his best friend’s system. Weighed down with bags of frozen peas, Finn still can’t resist the force of nature that is the hug wolf, and he undergoes the full transformation into a beta hug wolf.

Finn turns into a beta hug wolf

The entire Finn beta wolf sequence is quick and funny, beginning with his “hugs for buddies!” howl, then the attack on Mr. Cupcake, and the final scene where Finn sneaks into a gum drop’s room but is fought off by her father who tries to shoot Finn with a candy cane shotgun.

The Candy People are mad at Finn for hugging everyone

Jakes finds Finn in a small stream the next morning, and he tells Finn that in his hug lust, he hugged everyone in the Candy Kingdom.

Finn asks Jake, What happened last night?

Unable to deny who he has become, Finn demands to be locked in the candy dungeon, and the candy people decide to leave Cinnamon Bun as the prison guard. After getting a taste of Finn’s hugs, Cinnamon Bun wants more. CB releases Finn so he can feel his hug once more.

Cinnamon Bun opens the dungeon door to let Finn Wolf hug him

Jake is tracking down the alpha hug wolf to put an end to its reign of gentle terror. As the hug wolf prepares to attack, Finn, as the beta hug wolf, leaps into the fray and the two hug wolves hug it out, shooting little heart sparks as they battle. Then, they cause a nuclear heart explosion, and they both turn back into who they were before. Finn no longer wants to hug anyone. Jake suddenly wants a hug from the lady that the alpha wolf turns into, because she is very pretty, but then she turns into the Blight Tree and attacks him.

Disney/Marvel’s Superhero movie juggernaut The Avengers has just brought in an estimated $100.4 million on its second week stateside, making its total box office take $373.2 million. In comparison, the previous second week highest earner, James Cameron’s Avatar, only made $75 million in its 2nd week at the box office.

The Avengers is also expected to cross the $1 billion threshold at the global box office on May 13, its 19th day in release, making it the first ever Marvel Studios film (and fifth Walt Disney Studios release) to ever reach said important milestone. Currently, there are only 12 films in history to ever gross $1 billion, with four of them coming from Disney (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Alice in Wonderland, Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides).

Of course, being the savvy studios that they are, Marvel and Disney will not let all of this success and momentum go to waste, as it is announced last week that a sequel is already in development.