KIDS_0619_STRAFFI_ALT5.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 5/21/19 12:16 PM Page 2
30 TV KIDS
Rainbow has been ramping up its roster of live-action series, which includes Club 57.
because they are not the classic, super-simple-to-sing songs for kids. They are a bit more complicated, faster, with rhymes, with funny meanings. The more the kids listen to them, the more they want to learn to sing them. You need to be successful in the first run but even more in the reruns—the thematic channels do a lot of reruns. So, what we believe is working well in 44 Cats is the combination of comedy, values, the excellent quality of the animation, good stories and the songs. The first time you hear the song you like it but maybe don’t love it, the second time you start to like it more and the third time you really enjoy it and it gets into you and you want to learn it. That’s how the reruns work well. TV KIDS: Winx Club was the show that put Rainbow on the map globally. How has the franchise been able to evolve to remain so popular over the last 15 years? STRAFFI: We always try to reinvent the story every time we write a new season. We never want to repeat the same thing over and over, so we’re always adding a lot of strong elements, secrets for the audience to discover. That was what kept it very entertaining for kids for 15 years. The other point I think is important is that, while the first three or four seasons of Winx Club were written and targeted to 8- to 12year-olds, the last couple of seasons—especially season eight—were restyled visually and the stories [adapted to] a younger audience. In the last ten years, the animation audience has skewed younger. Nowadays, it’s very difficult to get a 10-year-old to watch cartoons. They all go for the live action, like Club 57, Maggie & Bianca and the Disney and Nickelodeon live-action shows. When your target is 4-to-8, your story cannot have the same level of complexity as the beginning seasons of Winx, where we had a lot of layers of different stories that came together at a certain point: love stories, school stories, the big adventures, the big threat.
Now everything is toned down, but we still have a lot of original elements, beautiful visuals and nice songs. TV KIDS: And will the live-action version for Netflix skew older? STRAFFI: Much older. The fans of the previous Winx Club say on social media that the new seasons are childish, but they don’t know that we had to do that. At Rai YoYo in Italy, the target is kids up to 8 years old, so we can’t do the kinds of stories we did on Rai 2 15 years ago. So for those fans, the 20-year-olds who still like to watch Winx, they will hopefully find their sweet spot in the Netflix original live-action version. It is edgier and darker than what they can imagine after being used to the colorful world of Winx. The target is clearly young adults. The things we had to tone down in the animation have been emphasized in the live action—the relationships, the fights, the love stories. I hope the Netflix series will please all the loyal Winx Club fans around the world who have grown into young adults. TV KIDS: What are some of your other priorities for the year ahead? STRAFFI: We are developing some new animated shows, and at the same time, we have successfully launched some family comedies in Italy. We have When Mom Is Away, the highest-grossing Italian movie of the current year. We will continue to do these kinds of family comedies. At the same time, we will continue the thrillers based on books by the writer Donato Carrisi. We have produced The Girl in the Fog and now, Into the Labyrinth, a new movie we are shooting in Rome with an international cast that includes Dustin Hoffman. We are doing The Lost Girls of Rome, a series with Sky based on his books. We have a lot of exciting things coming up!