TOTAL LICENSING
Pukeko Pictures On a recent visit to Wellington, New Zealand, Total Licensing caught up with Clive Spink, Chief Executive and Alison Heath, Chief Brands Officer at Pukeko Pictures to find out more about the company, and how they are forging new partnerships in China.
Taking New Zealand into China! Pukeko was founded in 2008 as a partnership between Weta Workshop’s founder Sir Richard Taylor together with Tania Rodger and well-known author Martin Baynton specifically as a company concentrating on the children’s marketplace. Based on Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula, Pukeko is part of the World-famous Weta network of creative companies and home to some of the world’s finest filmmaking tal-
Clive Spin, CEO and Alison Heath, Chief Brands Officer, Pukeko Pictures
ent and technology. Weta Workshop, of course, is the company responsible for Lord of the Rings,The Hobbit, Avatar and countless other major success stories. Pukeko’s first project was the television series Jane and the Dragon, a CGI animated series about a medieval girl and her pet dragon, swiftly followed by The WotWots, an early preschool series featuring extra terrestrial characters who arrive in the middle of a zoo. The WotWot characters were designed by Weta Workshop with live action sequences shot on location at Wellington Zoo as well as Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney zoos. The WotWots has aired in more than 100 territories around the world including The Hub, Netflix, Hulu and Comcast in the US as well as on ABC Kids in Australia and TVNZ in New Zealand. The WotWots gave Pukeko a strong basis in terms of consumer products with a broad range of publishing and other product lines. And this is where Alison Heath comes in. “Everybody knows that broadcasting sales alone are never sufficient to generate the income needed on a
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property,” explained Heath. “The income needs to be supplemented with clothing, toys, books and games. If the property is popular, consumers will demand products based on their favourite characters.” But the company did not just limit themselves to preschool and animation, as Clive Spink explained. “We have 199 Little Heroes which are five minute programs featuring children’s journeys to school around the world,” he said. “This helps to introduce children to the concept of documentaries.” Cleverman is a further Pukeko production that combines live action with animated creatures created by Weta Workshop. The series, aimed at an older market, is an original drama that sees a group of non-humans battling for survival in a world where humans feel increasingly inferior to them. Comprising two series of 6 x one hour episodes, Cleverman tells the story of two indigenous half-brothers who join forces to battle these forces. Pukeko also co-produced the recent remake of Thunderbirds with ITV Studios using a mix of CGI animation and live-action model sets which show-