Status Report

Following up from our previous post, the video submissions for Michael Grant & K.A Applegate’s presentation for the Scholastic meeting are now over. Michael Grant contacted me back to confirm this. Unfortunately, only some of the fan videos were able to make it to them in time for the final edit. However, Mr. Grant said that the overall meeting at Scholastic still went “very well”.

He is currently preoccupied with a million things on his schedule at the moment, but he did say that he wishes to thank everyone who took the time and effort to make sure they submitted something to them.

We’ll keep you all updated on any further news regarding the re-release as they come. Thanks to everyone who participated. 🙂

About 2 days ago Michael Grant updated his Facebook with a new status regarding a promotional Animorphs video that he was making for the Scholastic sales people:

And not too long after, he sent a direct message to fans via Richard (owner of RAF). It seems that they are going the same route as they did for the Gone video submissions from a little while back. Here is the full letter from Michael and K.A to the fans:

Katherine and I have some information we’d like to share, and a favor we’d like to ask.

Not sure if you’ve heard this yet but ANIMORPHS will be re-issued in spring/summer 2011. That is definite and official.

An editor at Scholastic is combing the first two books for outdated references, sending suggested fixes, and asking us to approve. Which we’ve now done.

Scholastic will re-cover the books using something called a lenticular cover. So far as we know it’s just the first 2 books, then I guess they’ll wait and see how sales go before issuing more.

Scholastic has asked us to prepare a small video to show at the sales meeting in early August. We realized that the sales people probably don’t really know what ANIMORPHS has meant to so many people. So we wondered whether RAF participants might be interested in sending us some brief video clips just saying what ANIMORPHS has meant to them. They could be extemporaneous, or they could read from some of the lovely letters they’ve sent over the years. The only real guidance we have to offer is to make sure the audio is audible. Use as high definition as you have available, but don’t sweat it if it doesn’t quite look like Avatar. Sincerity is more important than technique.

If you’d post this letter that would be very helpful.

Please ask any who wish to participate to forward their video to jake-at-jakemates.com.

Thanks,

Michael and Katherine

So to sum up, here are the new things we now know:

Regarding the Re-Release:

• The first spring/summer 2011 re-release is now said to be covering only the first 2 books: #1 The Invasion, and #2 The Visitor. Not as volumes for multiple books, but as an individual release of those two books only, with the new covers.

• The books are now going to be updated with outdated references. An editor has gone through the first 2 books, and Michael & K.A have just recently approved the changes to them.

Regarding the Animorphs Video Submissions:

• The video is being submitted to sales people who apparently have no previous knowledge on the kind of impact the series had in its original run. According to Michael & K.A’s letter, the meeting is sometime early August, so time is crucial if fans want to get their videos in. The sooner fans can get their videos submitted, the more time Jake (their son) will have to edit and piece it together for Scholastic.

• Submissions should be sent to jake@jakemates.com. (Anything on Youtube might not be taken, so send the files directly to him!)

• RAF has already begun a discussion thread on how they should go about with their videos. To participate, please go here.

• Please remember that this is for all Animorphs fans. Michael & K.A sent this letter to RAF because they are, without a doubt, the largest Animorphs community online at the moment. However the message is openly directed to every Animorphs fan online as well. There are plenty of smaller Animorphs communities out there. Youtube, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, Facebook, etc, wherever they may be, please pass this message onto them (or individually onto your friends) if you’re in touch! It would be a great help to make sure that K.A & Michael have enough material to work with, and that they have a lasting impact on the sales force that is in charge of reviving the series for next year.

• UPDATE: Thanks to a poster named Kalamu at the Animorphs LiveJournal Community, I was reminded of how many Animorph fans we have in different countries. Kalamu said that she couldn’t make a video because she was not very fluent in English. This is not a problem at all! In fact, it’s a bit of a plus!

  If we have fans in foriegn countries telling Scholastic how much they love Animorphs (in their first language), then it’ll be the most direct way of letting Scholastic know of how much of a worldwide appeal the series still has! And who knows? It may even give your country a better chance at having the Animorphs be re-released in your own language! (The original run of Animorphs was published in over 20 different languages. So yes, it’s very possible to have that again!).

  However, please just remember to add in English subtitles to your video before submitting it in, so that the Scholastic staff can fully understand what you’re saying. (It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Any basic program like Windows Movie Maker can easily do this. OR, if you’re really not that good with computers, then simply film the entire thing using Flash Cards, as another LJ poster suggested!)

That about covers it for now. I will keep you guys updated as I hear more. NOW GO SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO!

Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator) of Animorphs contacted me yesterday with a quick update regarding the Animorphs Classic re-release:

It’s official: Animorphs books will be re-released with the first 2 coming in summer of 2011. They will have lenticular covers. (Look it up: we had to.)

Lenticular covers basically means that they will be 3D and/or animated. You may have seen examples of this already on various products or DVD releases throughout the years. I’m guessing that Scholastic will most likely use the current covers we have and add a morphing animation to them (much similar to the morphing cards that we got with the Invasion Board Game). But this is entirely speculation on my part, so we’ll have to see where they go from here.

Anyways, that’s it for now! I’ll post more details regarding those 2 summer book releases as they come.

With all the Q&As that we’ve been having, I thought it was time to update on some of the information that we’ve gotten from K.A. & Michael so far.

RE-RELEASE DETAILS:

From AFF:

Well, we’ve been told that Scholastic will release some books from ANIMORPHS classic in Spring 2011. How many books? Don’t know.

We have briefly discussed the possibility of a 55th book. Or a second series, an ANI reboot. But nothing has been decided and as weird as it is, it’s not our call. It’s up to Scholastic. And bear in mind that thanks to the turnover in the industry there is no one at Scholastic who was around for the first run.

From RAF:

We’re happy about a re-release. With some caveats.

Our preference would be for a book re-release of a limited number of books — there’s no way they can redo all the books in paper — accompanied by an e-book re-release of all the books. In an ideal world we’d see e-books going out for $3.99 or so.

From RAF, about the editing changes:

We don’t know how much updating there will be. We hope there will be some but honestly Scholastic doesn’t talk to us much. The decision is entirely theirs. Yes, this sounds a little odd, but right now that’s where it stands. None of the people who were at Scholastic during ANIMORPHS are there now — our editor Tonya Martin is long gone, and the boss of bosses, the series queen herself, Jean Feiwel, (Goosebumps, Babysitters Club, Animorphs) now runs an imprint at Macmillan.

The editors there now are not very familiar with ANIMORPHS. Although we think they’re familiarizing themselves with the series.

The biggest updating problem by the way isn’t Offspring (which admittedly did not hold up over time) but the ubiquity of cell phones and especially smart phones. They’d screw up many a plot point.

ANIMORPHS 2.0, IF IT WERE TO HAPPEN.

From AFF:

The monthly series idea is kind of dead now because of the economics involved. So if there is an ANIMORPHS 2.0 it won’t be the killer grind of 14 books per year, it would probably be 2 per year, maybe a bit longer. So most likely we’d do the work ourselves. Of the original series we wrote the first 24, the last 2, and all the MEGAS and CHRONICLES. Plus probably 15% of the ghosted books. Plus of course the outlines for ghosted books. While we were writing ANI we became parents for the first time — the real-life Jake — and that kind of knocked us on our butts in terms of keeping up.

TV / MOVIE UPDATE:

The TV/movie situation looks fairly hopeless for Animorphs at the moment. GONE might have higher chances of this happening, however neither series has made much progress so far.

From RAF

We’d love to see a movie. We’d be working to that end but Scholastic has essentially shut us out of any discussion or consideration of such a thing. We are not updated, we are not consulted or involved.

Michael has a great deal more involvement in and control over movie prospects for GONE than we have over ANIMORPHS.

From AFF:

As for TV or movie again, we’re all for it. But Scholastic literally does not talk to us about this. If you get the idea we’re frustrated by this situation you’d be correct.

So there you have it. However, the one last thing I do want to add to this update is the question that was raised by K.A & Michael in the previous post, about the possible re-release of Animorphs in an e-book format. I have set up a discussion topic for this on our forum, so feel free to use it and discuss it there. I know that both authors are very much looking to hear the opinions of their fans on this.

That about covers it for now, I believe. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything, or provided an incorrect source. I’ll be sure to update on this as I hear more. Until next time! 🙂

An update from our previous post, K.A & Michael have now also joined AFF (The Animorphs Fan Forum), along with RAF, to answer questions from the fans.

The same rules apply on AFF as they do on RAF. Members have to send their questions to the staff before they are approved to be submitted to K.A & Michael. This is done to avoid any repeated questions from previous Q&As. Here are the updated links and details for both forums:

• See AFF Q&A Thread.
• Post your K.A & Michael questions here.

• See the RAF Q&A Thread.
• Send your K.A & Michael questions to Richard here.

There’s also still the Facebook Group set up specially for Michael Grant’s Gone series, for those who are fans of that. Michael Grant is still regularly answering questions there.

• Go to Gone Group Q&A

Lastly, as a way to keep all of these Q&As organized and documented (this is still an archive site, remember?), I updated the Articles section with the original RAF Classic Q&A that was held back in 2008 (It’s the one that holds that infamous response to that Animorphs movie we’ll never ever see, sadly).

• See the full RAF Classic Q&A.

As for the current Q&As, I won’t document or archive them until they are fully finished. In the mean while though, do check them out if you haven’t already. There are some great answers posted on both forums. In RAF, K.A. & Michael are even asking fans on their thoughts of a possible re-release for Animorphs in a monthly ebook form. So definitely share your opinions on this. You can bet that both K.A & Michael are reading, and that they are very interested in their fans responses.

That’s all for now. Until next time! 🙂

Richard, site owner of RAF, recently posted an update to let fans know that K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant are coming back to answer questions from fans on the forums! The Q&A is going to be working a little differently this time though. Instead of everyone rushing in and overwhelming the duo, Richard is asking posters to send in questions directly to him instead. This will get rid of any well known FAQs, or duplicates that the fans asked last time.

• See the RAF Q&A Thread
• Send your questions to Richard (to pass along to K.A. & Michael)

Also, for any Gone fans out there, there is a separate group on Facebook where Michael Grant has begun answering questions on a weekly basis.

• Go to Gone Group Q&A

Lastly, you can now also follow us on Twitter! Our Twitter account is @hiracdelestnews. Follow us to get the latest updates, like this one, tweeted directly to you! You can also join our Facebook Fan Page to get the same benefit. Everything has been updated on the right side of the blog!

That’s all for now, until next time! 🙂

Looks like after we posted our previous bit of news, fans from both the Animorphs LiveJournal and RAF communities asked Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) if the rumor of the re-release was true.

The answer, is YES. The re-release is definitely happening! Michael Grant confirmed this via his Twitter account. I’ve compiled all of his responses so far in the image below:

So to sum up and update upon our previous post:

1. Yes, the re-release is happening. It is no longer a rumor.

2. There WILL be new covers. Our Scholastic source told us that they are going to be “lenticular”. We’re assuming this means that they will be 3D covers that morph from one image to another when they are tilted.

You may have already seen examples of this in a variety of products, everything from trading cards to dvd covers. (Those that have the Animorphs Invasion Board Game will have a better example, as they came with a deck of morphing holographic lenticular cards for all the Animorphs. We’re guessing that the new covers could be similar to that).

3. The release date is now no longer 2012, but is estimated to be 1 year from now, so somewhere around late 2010 to 2011.

4. The re-release is still being used by Scholastic as a way to test out the market, and see if a brand new ‘Animorphs 2.0’ series will be profitable enough to invest into. They will be looking at both the sales and fan reception once the books are re-released.

5. Editorial changes to KASUs and continuity errors are still unconfirmed, and so are the packaging details (whether the books will be sold in volumes, or individually as they originally were).

More updates to come as we hear them here at Hirac Delest. 😀

Edit: Thanks to wildweathel for correcting us on the proper term for the covers. I’ve made the appropriate changes to that above.

Following up from our previous post, our good source is back to let us know that Scholastic is indeed planning on going ahead with the re-release of Animorphs! However, to clear up any confusion, our source tells us that the re-release will only be for ‘Animorphs Classic‘ (the current series), and that it is estimated to be released (with new covers) around Spring 2012. Official Date TBA.

Now the bad news: It seems that Animorphs 2.0 is currently on hold, pending review. Apparently Scholastic will also be using the re-release of Animorphs Classic as a way to determine whether to go ahead with Animorphs 2.0. This means that they’ll be looking at both the fan reception and the sales of this release to see if a new series will be profitable enough to pursue.

No further news on how the Classic re-release will be handled, aside from the fact that they’re supposed to have new covers. It’s far too early to tell whether the series will have new artwork, be bundled into volumes, or have any editorial changes be made to them (as some of you have suggested). Rest assured though that we here at Hirac Delest will let you know as soon as we hear about it ourselves!

That about sums it up for that bit of news. As a side note, I also want to let you guys know that I’ve updated the side link for our Facebook page (on the right). If you haven’t done so already, then ‘Become a Fan’ of Hirac Delest on Facebook. All of our updates, like this, will now be posted directly on to your news feed to let you know that we’ve updated!

Until Next Time! 🙂

Some new info on a rumor we posted a few months back, our source (who still wishes to remain unnamed) says that Scholastic seems to be on board with making an Animorphs 2.0 happen. They supposedly had a recent discussion on how to handle the continuity from 1.0, which is the series we left off at.

Please note that we, at Hirac Delest, don’t post every rumor (or any rumor, for that matter) that is given to us (and there are a LOT), unless we feel that the source is legitimate in some way. Saying that, we’re not posting this as an official announcement either, as no official news has been released by Scholastic to confirm this. More updates from our source on this matter will be posted on Hirac Delest as they come.

I got a very interesting email today. According to a source (that wishes to remain unnamed), there may be a slight chance of Scholastic planning to relaunch Animorphs.

So what does this mean exactly? Absolutely nothing at the moment. Consider it as a rumor for now. Rumors, especially those revolving around to the relaunch of the Animorphs series, are nothing new. They can date all the way back from the day the series ended. Most of them are just topics of wishful discussions amongst fans. However, you never know how these things can go, so I am posting about this just in case.

No official announcements of any kind have been made by Scholastic yet either. I will keep you all updated if there are any further details to add on this matter.