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Discover the art of Jorge R. Gutierrez, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

In a case of corporate intrigue, Reel FX claims its co-founder Dale Carman stole confidential information from the studio to boost his new company.

Pixar will finally answer the question, What if a Mexican boy named Miguel could meet his long-dead Mexican family members?

"Book of Life" director Jorge Gutierrez has some inspiring advice for young filmmakers.

"Mexico is way more complicated than anybody thinks." Jorge Gutierrez talks like a man on a mission. For the past decade-and-a-half, he has sought to bring a more authentic portrayal of Mexico and its people to Hollywood.

The Golden Globes, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, have announced that 17 animated features are eligible for consideration this year.

Laika's "The Boxtrolls" topped the noms with a total of thirteen; the awards will be handed out January 31, 2015, in Los Angeles, California.

Disney's "Big Hero 6," directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, topped the United States box office with a first weekend gross of $56.2 million.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced yesterday afternoon that 20 animated features have been submitted for Oscar consideration in the 2014 animated feature category.

"The Book of Life" scored $10 million in its second weekend, which was good for 5th place at the U.S. box office, while "Big Hero 6" opened strong in Russia.

Though the weather outside has been dreary, some of this diversity news has been anything but!

This week, the We Need Diverse Books campaign announced that they’re naming an award in honor of the late, great Walter Dean Myers! They are currently raising money through their IndieGoGo campaign and the hashtag #SupportWNDB.

School Library Journal and #WNDB also announced their collaboration. The collaboration will include a diversity-themed event at the 2016 ALA Midwinter conference and support for the diversity-themed festival to be held in the Washington, D.C. area in 2016.

We’re also excited to see all of the diverse movies being released: 

The Book of Life, the Mexican-themed fantasy-adventure was released last week! Manolo, an adventurer, travels through magical worlds to rescue his one true love and defend his village from death!

Dear White People, the comedy-satire that started as a Youtube concept trailer premieres today. Dear White People was the winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. This comedy is a clever satire of race relations in the age of Obama.

Disney’s next heroine will be Moana. The eponymous film will be about a teenaged explorer from Oceania who travels the ocean with a demigod named Maui in search of an island.  It’s set to be released in 2016!

Have you seen any great news about diversity this week?

This weekend the $50 million Fox/Reel FX film "The Book of Life," opened in the United States with an estimated $17 million.

Today, Reel FX's film "The Book of Life" opens in the United States, and the story of its 39-year-old director, Jorge Gutierrez, is also one worth telling.

Chester Cheetah enters the world of the new animated feature "The Book of Life."

With eight months of the year nearly passed, we're beginning to get a clearer sense of who the major contenders will be in the upcoming award season.

The latest trailer for Fox's "The Book of Life" opens up the festive-looking world of the film with new plot points like a love triangle and the introduction of new characters like the Candle Maker portrayed by Ice Cube.

The first trailer is out today for "The Book of Life" directed by Jorge Gutierrez ("El Tigre") and produced by Reel FX.

Last week after word got out that Disney was seeking to trademark “Día de los Muertos” in preparation for its 2015 release of a Pixar animated feature inspired by the traditional Mexican holiday, several online communities were outraged. The backlash kicked into high gear when cartoonist and illustrator Lalo Alcaraz shared a poster of a Godzilla-like Mickey Mouse under the words, “It’s coming to trademark your cultura.” [image above]

Social media has always kept Disney in check, and this time is no different. Latino Rebels, an online community that has done a terrific job of tracking Disney’s depiction of Latino culture, helped handle and report on the groundswell of public outcry over the last few weeks. After several petitions and pressure, Disney announced last Tuesday that they would withdraw the trademark filing, claiming that it was no longer necessary since they had changed the title of the fim.

In an interview with Cartoon Brew, William Nericcio, a scholar specializing in the representation of Latinos in American pop culture and author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America, said, “[Hollywood's] attitude towards culture is like a pelt hunter from the 19th century. They need the skin that people recognize and value in order to sell a project that will yield predictable profits.”

Nericcio acknowledges that Pixar and Disney face an uphill battle in producing their Day of the Dead feature, which is to be directed by Toy Story 3 helmer Lee Unkrich: ”I think it’s wonderful that Pixar is working on a Mexico, cultural-based project. But it’s a public relations nightmare. They’re not really equipped to talk about other cultures in a way that shows even the slightest sensitivity.”

While Nericcio supports the critical eye cast by social media, he does express concerns over extreme backlash. “The downside of it is, companies like Disney could get scared off of projects that might be focused on Latin American culture, just because they got burned,” he explains. Ultimately, the appeal of a Dia de Los Muertos film is undeniable; the imagery connected to the celebration is so lush, providing a palette that would inspire any moviegoer. “It’s good business to green light a project on la cultura Mexicana. Everybody’s loving the wrestlers, the icons, the color, the exoticness,” Nericcio says. “But when you have the patent lawyers involved, they come off looking terrible.”

Nericcio, a self-admitted Pixar fan would love to see a Dia de los Muertos animated film, as would so many others. Fortunately, there’s another film on the horizon—Guillermo del Toro and Jorge Gutierrez are currently producing and directing (respectively) their own Day of the Dead-themed feature at Reel FX called The Book of Life, to be released through Fox in October of 2014, more than a year before the Disney-Pixar feature. There’s no word yet whether Mexico-born del Toro and Gutierrez will seek trademarks of their own.