Can Shaun the Sheep take on Kung Fu Panda? With EU’s help, maybe
With US animated films dominating – not one European animation made the box office top 30 in Europe in five years – Brussels wants to help level the playing field to ‘promote European values’
Europe’s mostly low-key animated film industry needs a helping hand in taking on US goliaths like Pixar and DreamWorks – and EU regulators say they are ready to join the battle.
“We would like to concentrate on the European animation sector,” EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger tells journalists on the sidelines of the world’s oldest film festival in Venice.
“We will launch a dialogue with the major European animation studios to identify specific challenges and opportunities and agree on a joint action plan by the middle of 2017,” he says.
While animated films are the audiovisual category with the largest European circulation, European animations, such as Britain’s 2015 Shaun the Sheep , struggle to compete with US productions.
