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Hollywood has gone pixel crazy.

The computer-generated Ice Age: The Meltdown sucked up $68 million during its debut weekend, setting a box-office record for March. It earned $34 million its second week out before dropping to second place last weekend.

Friday the animated The Wild hit the nation’s movie screens.

And there’s more on the way. Tinseltown will unleash a record 13 CGI films this year, ranging from the already-opened Doogal and Hoodwinked to this summer’s Cars (from Pixar), the 3-D Monster House and the holiday season’s Penguin-fest, Happy Feet.

Computer animation seems to be a sure-fire moneymaker. Pixar’s Finding Nemo and DreamWorks’ Shrek franchise have ruled the box office in recent years, and the genre shows no sign of losing dominance.

But still, we’ve got to ask: Can Hollywood have too much of a good thing?

It’s not hard to see why the movie industry is in love with animation:

Huge turnouts at the box office. Computer-animated films are almost exclusively G or PG-rated family fare. Unlike any other movie genre, CGI movies bring in the entire household — Mom, Dad and the kids.

That helps explain why Pixar and DreamWorks have routinely earned a minimum of $360 million worldwide from animated fare.

Even less successful examples of the genre — like Robots and Chicken Little — still made more than $250 million.

A bonus: Audiences for family films spend more at the concession stand.

International appeal

While many live action films play well only in their country of origin, computer-animated movies are invariably fantasies that easily cross oceans and national boundaries. Much of their humour is visual. And foreign versions of these films can be cheaply dubbed in the local language by no-name actors.

There’s also the staggering video sales. It’s not unusual for an animated movie to make as much or more in home video sales than it did at the box office. Once children fall in love with Nemo or Woody or Donkey, they can continue to enjoy them on the small screen.

And merchandising. Far more so than live action films, animated movies have lovable characters that can be spun off into sales of T-shirts, pajamas, plush toys, key chains, bed sheets and hamburgers down at the local franchise. And while a live star may demand his or her cut of the proceeds, computer-animated characters make no demands at all. Sounds pretty rosy. But computer-animated films may face a thorny future. Variety, the show-business trade paper, recently warned: “As with all successful trends in Hollywood, there’s a four-letter word that brings chills to execs: glut.”

With so many CGI films set to debut this year, “marketers are wondering if the business has the capacity to absorb all of them,” Variety reported.[[In-content Ad]]

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