Atlantyca Entertainment’s Geronimo Stilton, being showcased this week at the Brand Licensing Europe event by brand manager BRB Internacional – has reached a milestone in Spain as three different channels in the country will be airing the animated series at the same time.
Geronimo Stilton has recently premiered on TVE’s Clan, which began its daily broadcast of seasons one and two on September 13. The channel has also prebought the rights for the third season, The New Adventures of Geronimo Stilton, which is currently in production. And, both Super3 and Canal Panda in Spain are currently airing the second season of the adventure-comedy series.
On the merchandising side, Geronimo Stilton items stand out in the Iberian market, according to BRB. Carrefour has recently launched a clothing line designed by Ditexmed in Spain, and publishing house Planeta has presented a new diary in Spain and Portugal for the back-to-school season, available in Spanish, Catalonian and Portuguese.
Side Effects Software and Pixar have announced RenderMan for Houdini (RfH), a production-quality plug-in that will serve as a workflow integration bridge between RenderMan and Houdini. Developed for Pixar’s own feature film pipeline in technical collaboration with Side Effects, RfH will ship out-of-box with Houdini 15 and upcoming versions. Key benefits include support for the advanced features of RenderMan, including the RIS framework, geometric area lights, interactive rendering and a sophisticated shader suite.
RfH features:
Seamless Houdini integration – Full translation of Cameras, Lights & Geometry
Support for the latest RenderMan features
Unlimited multi-threaded rendering – Utilize the masimum amount of available threads with a single license
Support for multiple classes of light transport – Choose between Path Tracing or VCM with ease
Advanced Denoising technology – Denoiser offers speed increases for global illumination up to 10x
Image checkpointing
Image-based lighting – Full support for 32 bit HDR images along with a physical sky
Ray traced subsurface scattering – Create highly realistic skin etc. with no pre-pass or bake
Open VDB Support – Render volumes with a GUI dedicated to this open standard
Secondary Passes – Create AOVs and Light Path Expressions with support for Deep Textures
RIB archives – Including animated sequences, for efficient rendering and referencing assets
RiProcudural plug-ins – Procedural geometry, feathers and custom shaders.
An upcoming release will also include interactive shading and lighting. Additionally, RfH supports Pixar’s “It” RenderMan framebuffer and Pixar’s Tractor job dispatcher Artist Tools, available separately.
Coverage Ink Films, producers of the award-winning short Liberator, have signed on Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning screen legend William Shatner for its upcoming animated horror feature Malevolent. Shatner will voice The Overseer, the film’s narrator and “voice of unreason.” Captain Kirk joins previously signed stars Morena Baccarin (Gotham), Ray Wise (Twin Peaks), Dani Lennon (Bite Me) and Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects).
The 2D animated project is being described as Saw meets Groundhog Day. Directed by Jason Axinn (Starpocalypse), Malevolent follows a young woman named Miriam (Lennon) whose work for a non-profit global peace group is a reaction to her estranged, sociopath US war profiteer father Cyrus DeKalb (Wise). When he learns he is dying, Cyrus calls Miriam and her siblings together – ostensibly to discuss his will, but really to pronounce his judgment on what he sees as his traitorous offspring.
The twist in Cyrus’ plan to off his progeny with elaborate death traps is a race of intergalactic gamblers who wager on human conflicts. The entire situation is being manipulated by the Gamemaster (Baccarin) who has the power to call fouls, reverse time and reconfigure events, so the playing field is constantly shifting under Miriam’s feet.
The first trailer for the animated feature adaptation of popular PlayStation videogame franchise Ratchet & Clank has debuted exclusively on Apple iTunes. The film will be released nationwide by Gramercy Pictures on April 29, 2016.
From Kevin Munroe and co-director Jericca Cleland, animated by Canadian studio Rainmaker Entertainment, Ratchet & Clank follows two unlikely heroes as they struggle to stop a vile alien named Chairman Drek from destroying every planet in the Solana Galaxy. Ratchet is the last of his kind, a foolhardy “lombax” who has grown up alone on a backwater planet with no family of his own. Clank is a pint-sized robot with more brains than brawn. When the two stumble upon a dangerous weapon capable of destroying entire planets, they must join forces with a team of colorful heroes called The Galactic Rangers in order to save the galaxy. Along the way, they will learn about heroism, friendship, and the importance of discovering one’s own identity.
Munroe wrote the film with original Insomniac Games scribe T.J. Fixman and Gerry Swallow. The voice cast features Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, Jim Ward, James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Armin Shimerman and Sylvester Stallone.
Triggerfish Animation Studios have narrowed down the whopping great response to its all for submissions for the inaugural Triggerfish Story Lab to produce a short list of 23 features and 12 TV series from the 1,378 pan-African entries it received. The studio had planned to announce just 10 of each, but the quality of the projects has seen them expand the race. The shortlisted entries will be part of a series of workshops in Cape Town in November with Hollywood Script Consultant Pilar Alessandra and Orion Ross, Disney Channel EMEA VP of Content – Animation, Digital and Acquisitions.
Alongside a wealth of emerging talent, the shortlist includes top African creatives like Nnedi Okorafor, a World Fantasy Award winning novelist; Charlie Human, whose debut novel Apocalypse Now Now is currently being adapted by District 9’s Terri Tanchel; award-winning picture book author Alex Latimer; and multi-award-winning directors Donovan Marsh, Hanneke Schutte, Jenna Bass and Wanuri Kahui.
The shortlisted feature film entries are:
The Big Wild (Ian Pugh)
Born Flea (Andrew Phillips)
Bru and Boegie (Mike Scott)
The Camel Racer (Wanuri Kahui and Nnedi Okorafor)
The Crash (Julia Smuts Louw)
Dropped (Ian Tucker)
Elliot’s Journey (Judy Kibinge)
Fish Out of Water (Matthys Boshoff and Carina Stander)
The Legend of the Rain Queen (Hanneke Schutte)
The Life Factory (Howard James Fyvie)
Lights (Kay Carmichael)
The Little Five (Alex Latimer)
The Loneliest Satellite (Charlie Human)
Make Believe Maya (Nimrod Geva)
The Makers (Sheldon Bengston)
Molly and the Quarks (Donovan Marsh)
Mumbo Jumbo Bambinos (Mbuso Thulani Shiburi)
Paris in Africa (Yolanda Makalaza)
Paradox City (Greig Cameron)
True Colours(Bernard Bruwer)
The Wild Waste (Naseem Hoosen)
Witches Way (Jenna Bass and Chinelo Unwualo)
Zahrah the Windseeker (Wanuri Kahui and Nnedi Okorafor)
The shortlisted TV series are:
Chicken Core (Shina Ajulo)
Folklore (Andile Ngcizela)
Gullivan’s Loft (Jenny Verwoerd and Stephen van Wyk)
Herbert Smelly Pants (Denzil Lewis) KC’s Super 4 (Malenga Mulendema)
PBS KIDS will be offering up fun, festive holiday specials as well as a brand new series premiere this October and November.
Halloween specials will be airing October 25 through 31 and will feature the favorite Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest along with popular fall episodes from hit toons like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Wild Kratts, Peg + Cat and Dinosaur Train throughout the week. Full listings available here.
On November 25, the day before Thanksgiving in the U.S., PBS will premiere the first hour-long Wild Kratts holiday special, “Creature Christmas.” In this seasonal adventure, the Kratts take a break from their intrepid questing for creatures to celebrate Christmas. But when they receive an alert that their favorite critters are disappearing around the globe, their holiday part quickly turns into a rescue mission.
Finally, following the debut of “Creature Christmas,” viewers will be introduced to a brand-new action-adventure series Nature Cat in its premiere episode. The show stars an ordinary housecat named Fred (voiced by Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam), who becomes his alter-ego “Nature Cat” – backyard nature explorer extraordinaire – when his family leaves for the day.
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios co-founder Matthew Senreich along with Robot Chicken scribes Tom Sheppard and Zeb Wells has signed on to write the screenplay for a hybrid live-action/stop-motion animated Rabbids feature for Ubisoft Motion Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film is based on the wacky Rabbids characters of TV and videogame fame, and will be overseen by Columbia Pictures SVP of Production Jonathan Kadin.
Additionally, Stoopid Buddy has signed on as a producing partner on the film along with Ubisoft and Sony. The companies recently collaborated on a first-of-its-kind concept game trailer for tower defense actioner Toy Soldiers: War Chest, which debuted at this year’s SD Comic-Con. Sony and Stoopid Buddy are also developing a stop-motion/live-action feature titled Superbago to be directed by Stoopid Buddy principals John Harvatine IV and Eric Towner.
Primetime Emmy Award winner Matthew Senreich is widely known for bringing Robot Chicken, Robot Chicken: Star Wars specials, and the upcoming SuperMansion to life (for more information on SuperMansion, visit http://www.crackle.com/supermansion). Zeb Wells is a Primetime Emmy-winning writer best known for Robot Chicken, the Robot Chicken DC Comics specials, Sony Crackle’s SuperMansion, and popular comic book titles Venom: Dark Origin, Dark Reign: Elektra and Avenging Spider-Man. Tom Sheppard is a three-time Daytime Emmy-winning writer whose writing credits include Robot Chicken, The Zeta Project, My Gym Partner’s a Monkey and Annoying Orange, which he also co-created.
The International Short Film Festival Berlin, also known as Interfilm, will be showcasing competition themes of confrontations, animation, asylum and migration at this year’s 31st edition, which runs November 10-15.
Among the moving animated pieces on offer is a U.K. entry in the “Point of No Return – Refugee Stories” program. From A to B and Back Again – Rachel’s Story by Andy Glynne highlights the weighty questions faced by refugees: Where do I belong? Who is responsible? What are the prospects?
The plight of refugees landing amidst the decadence of the West is addressed in the over-the-top animated short Villa Antropoff by Kaspar Jancis and Vladimir Leschiov (Lithuania/Estonia) in the “Focus On: Baltic States” program.
And crowdfunded project Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island by Lukas Schrank in Australia explores the gruesome reality of everyday life at the notorious Manus Island detention center off the coast of Papua New Guinea, where Australia holds asylum seekers.
Attendees can also take in the German premiere of the latest short from Oscar winner Adam Elliot, Ernie Biscuit, about an aging man on the run from his memories. And the “Focus On: Canada” programming section will celebrate the legendary Norman McLaren with tributes and a screening of his Academy Award-winning short Neighbours. And yet another Oscar winning animator will be on hand with Chris Landreth presenting a masterclass on the science and secrets of convincing facial expressions in animation.
DHX Media has inked broadcast deals for two of its flagship preschool properties – the new Teletubbies and Twirlywoos – with the Australian Broadcasting Company to air on ABC Kids. According to Head of ABC Children’s Television Deirdre Brennan, the channel will begin broadcasting the series in 2016.
The pre-k phenom Teletubbies are back with 60 new episodes for 2015. The new episodes, set to premiere on CBeebies later this year, take advantage of CGI enhancements to the Teletubby world to ramp up the creative imagination of their stories. Meanwhile, Ragdoll Productions’ Twirlywoos (50 x 11) combines innovative, nurturing stories with laugh-out-loud humor to help young audiences gain confidence in their perceptions of the world.
As announced at the MIPCOM market in Cannes, leading Asian animation producer Cosmos-Maya has secured multiple sales in several territories for its flagship series, Eena Meena Deeka (117 x 7). The slapstick action-comedy is written by Nathan Heinze, Aaron Barnett and Richard Dinnick, and airs on Disney’s Hungama TV channel in India.
Rights to Eena Meena Deeka have been sold to Imira Entertainment for Latin America, Spanish-speaking U.S. and Africa (excluding Sub-Sahara); Hub Media Group has nabbed the show for distribution in Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand. The series is centered on a cunning fox and the three titular chicks he is always trying to gobble up, relying on ever more elaborate plans that the hatchlings always foil.
The show had already been sold to Your Family Entertainment, which is distribution and co-production partner on the series for European territories (exc. U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Ireland) and MENA & Sub-Saharan Africa. DE Media Group holds the rights for China and Taiwan, Luk Internacional covers France, Italy, Spain, Ireland and U.K., and Kelen Content holds rights for Canada and North America.
Announced at MIPCOM, Studio 100 Media has signed a deal with Al Jazeera Media Network which will bring the CG updates of classic brands Vic the Viking and Heidi and CG preschool series Trains to its pan-Arab broadcast outlets.
Al Jazeera, which owns the kid-targeted Jeem TV and preschool network Baraem TV, has acquired exclusive Arabic TV rights for the MENA region for 60 x 12 of Vic the Viking, 39 half-hours of Heidi and 44 x 5 of Trains. The roll out will commence at the end of the years. The channels are already home to Studio 100’s Maya the Bee.
Vic the Viking is produced by Studio 100 Animation in association with TF1 and ZDF. Heidi is a production of Studio 100 Animation and Flying Bark Productions. Trains is created by Mikhail Pogosov and produced by AA Studio.
Aardman has teamed up with SAWA Global Cinema Advertising Association, Richard Curtis’ Project Everyone and BBH to create the first ever global ad, “#WeHaveAPlan Tell Everyone,” for the United Nations “global goals” initiative to tackle poverty and climate change.
The CG animated ad is directed by Darren Dubicki and features the voices of Liam Neeson and Michelle Rodriguez. The spot debuted last month in New York as part of the Global Goals campaign before rolling out to cinemas in over 34 countries.
Animated by Aardman under the creative leadership of Sir John Hegarty, the ad also boasts a soundtrack written and produced by Peter Gabriel. Viewers can also interact with the ad through the Global Goals app created by CINIME International, which allows audiences to unlock cinema-specific content.
Channel 5’s Milkshake has commissioned a new CG-animated comedy from London-based studio Absolutely Cuckoo — the preschool-targeted Dave’s Dinosaurs. Absolutely Cuckoo is the shop behind the globally successful Waybuloo and the soon-to-launch Wissper.
Dave’s Dinosaurs centers on young Dave, whose life changes forever when he puts his last coin in the “Pre-historic Picker” at the penny arcade and comes away with six odd eggs. When the eggs hatch, Dave finds himself the proud papa of six baby dinosaurs. His new responsibilities lead to plenty of hilarious mishaps as he tries to keep his Jurassic juniors safe.
“Dinosaurs are an extremely popular topic and an endless source of fascination for children everywhere,” says Absolutely Cuckoo co-founder Dan Good. “It’s every child’s dream of finding a real life dinosaur so we wanted to play on the comical aspect of the realities of a child bringing up a gang of baby dinosaurs in the 21st Century.”
Ubisoft and Disney Interactive will be launching a new action-adventure platformer Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets exclusively for Nintendo 3DS handheld systems on October 20 (SRP $29.99).
Based on the No. 1 Disney XD series, the game was created in collaboration with the show’s creator and EP Alex Hirsch. The game’s objective is to help Jeff the Gnome retrieve the ancient Gnome Gemulets to restore magic to the Gnome forest. Players act as both Dipper and Mabel Pines in dual character gameplay, switching between characters at any time to use their unique abilities — Dipper has Gnome Battle Cuffs to deliver powerful punches and his trusty flashlight, while Mabel wields the Fleece of Bezazzlement which lets her whip monsters with her sweater sleeves, and her grappling hook is always on hand.
Legend of the Gnome Gemulets is powered by the UbiArt Framework game engine and features key locales from Gravity Falls, including the Mystery Shack and Gnome Forest, all with lush backgrounds and graphics.
Wizart’s The Snow Queen franchise is continuing to roll out worldwide, with 17 international premieres coming throughout the end of 2015. Key home entertainment releases are also planned for the first two films.
Snow Queen is coming to South Africa in an Afrikaans dub through Indigenous Film Distribution (Oct. 30), with a local cast including Heidi Mollentze and localized soundtrack; and to Brazil with a dub starring 15-year-old starlet Larissa Manoela (Nov. 11). Other notable releases include the Benelux region, through Just4Kids (Oct. 1).
In November, The Snow Queen 2 will be released on DVD in the U.S. and Canada by Entertainment One. The sequel has also been secured for home entertainment releases in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland by Universal through a partnership with KLB; with DVDs also arriving in November in the U.K., ex-Yugoslavia and Poland, which all saw successful theatrical releases last year.
The animated epic of The Lion King will continue with the premiere of primetime TV movie The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar on Sunday, November 22 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on Disney Channel in the U.S. and same-day debut on Disney Channel in Canada. The new feature adventure will then bow on the WATCH Disney Channel and WATCH Disney Junior apps, Disney Channel On Demand and Disney Junior On Demand the following day. Return of the Roar is set to whet appetites for The Lion Guard animated series coming early next year.
Set in the African savanna, The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar” introduces Kion, the second-born cub of Simba and Nala, who is destined to become leader of the Lion Guard, a team of animals comprised of the Pride Lands’ fiercest, bravest, fastest, strongest and keenest of sight. As Kion looks to assemble the members of the new Lion Guard, he does not call upon a group of lions to serve with him as tradition dictates, but instead chooses some of his friends whom he believes best exemplify these heroic qualities – Bunga, a fearless honey badger; Fuli, a confident cheetah; Beshte, a friendly and good-spirited hippo; and Ono, an intellectual egret.
Beloved characters from the original Lion King will appear in the new movie, including Mufasa and Pumbaa who will be voiced again by James Earl Jones and Ernie Sabella. The cast also features Rob Lowe as Simba, Gabrielle Union as Nala, Max Charles as Kion, Joshua Rush as Bunga, Atticus Shaffer as Ono, Diamond White as Fuli and Dusan Brown as Besthe. Education and Science experts at Disney’s Animal Kingdom serve as consultants on the African species included, and author and Swahili expert Sarah Mirza is language and cultural advisor.
TheLionGuard.com launches today. The first of five games will launch on WATCH Disney Junior and DisneyJunior.com on Nov. 23. An illustrated book for Return of the Roar from Disney Publishing arrives Nov. 3, and the movie’s soundtrack will be released by Walt Disney Records in January.
Sesame Workshop has entered into collaborations with three major digital platforms in China which over the next two years will bring the international version of its iconic preschool series Sesame Street — along with spin-offs — dubbed into Mandarin Chinese to Baidu’s iQIYI, Tencent Video and Alibaba’s Tmall Box. The company recently signed its first streaming deal in the territory with BesTV, the largest IPTV platform in China.
A Sesame Street branded block will be created on iQIYI and Alibaba, where audiences can access the programs as well as the history, mission, character bios and latest news for the 46-year-old brand. iQIYI, as the host of Sesame’s streaming launch in China, will work with the Workshop to create unique brand experiences for the market both online and offline.
Tencent Video, the online platform run by Tencent Holdings, will be the first video site in the country to release Elmo the Musical and The Furchester Hotel, a co-production with CBeebies. Other titles set to stream on Tencent Video include Sesame Street Seasons, Elmo’s World, Play with Me and Let’s Celebrate Chinese New Year, which is a special co-produced with China Central Television.
This same content will be available for Alibaba’s VOD service available through the Tmall Box set-top device.
Genius Brands International has launched the Kid Genius children’s entertainment channel on Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand platform, making it available to roughly 21 million households across the U.S. and Canada.
The free service rolls out with original animated series from GBI including Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab, Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 and Secret Millionaires Club alongside its award-winning Baby Genius content and classic series like Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego and Dennis the Menace. More info can be found at kidgeniustv.com.
Corus Entertainment and Bento Box Entertainment announce the creation of Bento Box Canada, an animation production company based in Toronto aimed at developing and producing toons targeting the 18-34 demographic, which will air on Corus networks and be distributed internationally by Bento Box Ent. The new venture is part of the multi-year co-development deal between the two companies announced last year.
Bento Box Canada will operate from Corus Quay, the state-of-the-art technical facility that is home to Corus and Nelvana, and will utilize creative, technical and back-office services from both companies. This fall, production will begin on the studio’s first series: The Pandas. Created by Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler, The Pandas is an irreverent family comedy full of “hard jokes, whimsical wonder, biting satire and just the right amount of heart.”
Bento Box Canada’s board of directors will include Scott Greenberg, CEO of Bento Box Ent.; Colin Bohm, EVP, Head of Corus Kids; and Scotty Dyer, President of Nelvana.
Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana is partnering with Oktobor Animation and Playmates Toys to develop and produce a CG animated action-comedy series Mech Mice. The producers plan to premiere the series, aimed at kids 6-11, in 2017. Playmates will also act as global master toy partner for the property.
Mech Mice is created by Oktobor Animation’s Dan Wang and Chris Waters, from an original idea by Lance Priebe (Disney’s Club Penguin). Priebe is the founder of digital gaming studio Hyper Hippo, and will oversee development of web and mobile games based on the series.
In Mech Mice, incorrigible young mouse Scratch Whitepaw and his ragtag team of heroic, mini, mech-powered mice. Their mission: to protect the weak and defend the mouse way of life. Whether it’s facing down the hordes of natural predators terrorising mousedom or saving the world from the Dark Union’s evil army of cybernetically enhance mutant bugs, these furry fighters always find a way to get the job done.
