Game Change
If there was one overarching piece of advice to emerge from our recent TV Kids Summer Festival, it was that standing still—doing things the way you always used to do them— is not an option.
CONTENTS
BOUTIQUE BENEFITS
Amid game-changing transformations in the business of selling children’s IP today, we hear from several leading independents about making sense of the new landscape.
Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher
Mansha Daswani Editor-in-Chief
Jamie Stalcup Managing Editor
Kloudia Sakowski
Associate Editor
David Diehl Production & Design Director
Simon Weaver Online Director
Dana Mattison Sales & Marketing Director
Genovick Acevedo Sales & Marketing Manager
Ute Schwemmer Bookkeeper
Whether you’re a producer trying to complete the financing of a show, a distributor looking to maintain revenues from a challenged market or a trusted channel finding ways to make sense of being on YouTube, pivoting and adapting are paramount. And you have to be on YouTube, in one way or another.
Indeed, with kids spending so much time on YouTube and other digital platforms, the landscape of “traditional” freeto-air linear channels is being entirely reshaped. The latest to announce a closure was WildBrain, which is exiting the broadcast channels segment.
LITTLE HEROES
Ricardo Seguin Guise President
Mansha Daswani
Associate Publisher & VP, Strategic Development
TV Kids
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Meanwhile, outside of Europe’s public-broadcasting ecosystem, commissions have taken a hit. Dealing a blow to the U.K. kids’ sector, Sky Kids says it is no longer commissioning. So, what’s an indie producer-distributor to do? We surveyed several for our main feature in this edition of TV Kids. The key takeaway: it’s rough out there, but the need to deliver high-quality, enriching content for kids is as present as ever, and it’s going to take some ingenuity and creative solutions to make sure young audiences are getting the media diet they both need and want. Mansha Daswani
Harrison Wilcox and Sean Coyle, executive producers of Iron Man and his Awesome Friends , discuss aging down beloved Marvel heroes for a preschool audience.
TOONING INTO TOULOUSE
CARTOON’s Annick Maes showcases some of the highlights of this year’s Cartoon Forum.
producers to jointly raise co-production funding. Let’s convert a presale into a part-MG and part-contribution to the budget and see where we can assume risk and where we would rather that money go directly to the production, and then we are taking an EP fee, as it were. Rather than having a straight distribution deal or a co-production deal, we try to go out together to investigate the market before we decide how to split those revenues and how they can be used best for the production.”
PRODUCTION INNOVATION
The industry needs producer creativity, notes Helga Árnadóttir, CEO and co-founder of Tulipop Studios, which was founded to scale the Tulipop IP. The Tulipop team has been working on “finding investors that believe in our long-term strategy and are willing to invest in the company and in the IP, both angel investors and VC funds. Then it’s setting up productions in other countries as well. We are in Iceland, where we have a tax rebate system. We’ve also established a production company in the U.K.; we’re doing part of our productions in Scotland, benefiting from the U.K. environment and tax rebates as well. It’s a challenging puzzle.”
“We have to consider things on a longer term,” adds Emmanuèle Pétry, producer and partner at Dandelooo. “Some distributors think it’s a hit and run, grabbing over one year all the big fees and going to the next IP and making another big hit. We’ve never done that, but even more now, it’s looking under each stone and getting some revenue. Usually broadcasters have spent for this year and the next year and even the next year, so it’s being patient and persevering. It’s being careful about how you make things in a beautiful way and believing in your property for the generations to come.”
Engaging audiences between seasons is also crucial, says Hanna Mouchez, founder and CEO of MIAM! animation.
“We’re using real time to reuse our premium assets that we’ve produced and budgeted in one season and trying to produce additional content,” including podcasts and video games. “You’re reducing the global carbon footprint of your IP, and at the same time, you’re boosting it. With all this additional content, we are also able to sell internationally to make the link between season one and season two.”
Dexter agrees with Mouchez’s point about the importance of content between seasons, highlighting Serious Kids’ experience on The Unreal, part of a growing live-action slate at the company, given the saturation of the animation market.
“We’re going to wait and sell season one and season two at the same time. With live action, it’s much faster, so that’s much easier to achieve.”
Árnadóttir points to the benefits of “being boutique—we can be more agile in this rapidly changing, challenging industry. Being independent and being able to adapt to what’s going on can help. Being small makes it possible for you to be a bit more patient. You don’t have a huge army of animators that you need to keep working. That’s a benefit to the boutique model in the industry as it stands.”
TREND WATCHING
Given animation’s long timelines and the rapid change taking place across the industry, staying on top of market developments and determining what your next step should be to stay ahead of trends can be a challenge. At Serious Kids, investing in dubs has been a priority.
“Increasingly, the barrier to getting sales is not having enough language dubs,” Dexter says. “The broadcasters are increasingly unwilling to pay for that. We’ve been working with the dubbing companies to assist us in cash-flowing those dubs, because otherwise, if you don’t have something ready, it’s not going to sell to quite a lot of the platforms. It’s only the public broadcasters who are prepared to fund the dubs and then give you access for 50 percent. That model is changing.”
Árnadóttir said Tulipop Studios is building an L&M plan for the brand.
“There’s a lot of risk aversion. An interesting angle is that we are seeing production companies bring their own products to markets. That’s something we have done. It’s an example of how producers can prove the concept of their IPs in some way and even find financing at the same time.”
Mouchez agrees, pointing to MIAM!’s production of video games for some of its shows. “It’s a way to seek a new audience and at the same time give tools to our broadcasting partners to engage even more with the audience.”
Dandelooo is producing Max & Bunny , a 2D series, for CANAL+ in France.
It’s been a similar experience with podcasts, she says. “Our broadcasting partners are trying to keep the audience. That’s a way to face the situation. Being proactive is super important today and to have that agility in terms of creativity, but also in terms of financing.”
As for determining how many of those extensions you can pull off, it’s also a question of resources, Árnadóttir notes. “You can do everything from the beginning, but very few companies have the resources to do that. We have tried to figure out for our IP what the most important thing is at each point in time, where our audience is and where we want to connect with them, and take it from there.”
Tulipop Studios is scaling the Tulipop brand in part with venture capital funding.
Dexter is looking outside of the kids’ industry “in order to fire up new ideas and meet new people. We’ve got to be looking for equity finance. When you’re building a budget for a show, you’ve got to have a marketing budget because you can’t rely on the fragmented audience of your commissioning broadcaster to market your show. Then, you’ve got to have the budget for all of these other elements that we’re talking about. Private equity has got to be the way forward to allow you to build a business in an SPV around a property.”
POSITIVE MOMENTUM
Pétry at Dandelooo highlights the importance of staying upbeat about the business, despite the onslaught of troubling headlines. “I want to be excited and enthusiastic about life in general and meeting people. Enthusiasm brings enthusiasm. I’m trying to not listen to the sad stories, the catastrophes, companies going under—that’s also contagious, and I don’t want that to happen, so I’m trying to keep the bad news away and just keep this little fire inside.”
Árnadóttir adds, “There’s an increased discussion that it matters that people are creating quality content for kids. We want kids to be watching quality content with positive messages. There’s an opportunity to get more people investing in this industry and in quality kids’ entertainment because people want to invest in things that have a positive impact on the world and future generations.”
Little Heroes
Harrison Wilcox and Sean Coyle, executive producers of Iron Man and his Awesome Friends , discuss aging down Marvel heroes for a preschool audience.
By Jamie Stalcup
Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends has logged almost 900 million hours viewed globally for Disney Branded Television, so it’s no wonder Disney Jr. is betting on aging down beloved superheroes for young audiences. Iron Man and his Awesome Friends landed on Disney’s platforms this summer, while The Avengers franchise is getting a dedicated preschool take in 2027.
“As a parent with preschoolers, it was important for me to introduce my kids to a character that was known for picking himself up,” says Harrison Wilcox, who executive produces Iron Man and his Awesome Friends as well as Spidey and his Amazing Friends. “Everyone loves the gadgets of Iron Man. Everyone loves to see him suit up in those sequences. But the key for this series was figuring out how to use your mind to solve problems.”
Even though the three main characters frequently put on special Iron suits, “our goal was to make the civilian versions of these kids as relatable as possible,” adds executive producer Sean Coyle. “We want
Iron Man and his Awesome Friends.
[preschoolers] saying not just, I want to be Iron Man, Iron Hulk or Ironheart, but, I want to be Tony, I want to be like Riri, I want to be like Amadeus.”
Throughout the series, the characters will often lift up their masks even while wearing their Iron suits to talk out the problem they are encountering in order to remind the audience that they are kids just like them, Wilcox explains.
“Our goal was to make the civilian versions of these kids as relatable as possible.” —Sean Coyle
Though it was important to remind kids of the characters’ relatability, the design of the Iron suits was still integral to the series. Wilcox, Coyle and the rest of the creative team worked with Marvel to design versions of the suits that “looked cool, were functional and didn’t feel too threatening,” Coyle says.
Ironheart has a heartbeat bubble that is a glowing shield that forms around her to protect the people inside. Iron Hulk can perform an “Iron Boom” and “Iron Stomp.” Iron Man has traditional propulsors, as well as nano packs that can help solve problems on the fly. They combine their powers to demonstrate the importance of working together.
“Our stories highlight the importance of teamwork,” Coyle says. “We stress the importance of problem-solving in unique ways and make sure that we’re tapping into each hero’s individual personalities and the way that they see the world. That also branches into a celebration of friendship with our characters. They are best friends. They would do anything for each other, which is important to celebrate.”
“It’s all about making the world a better place in the way that you can… whether it’s on a global scale of saving the world or just making things better for someone who’s having a bad day or needs a little help,” Wilcox adds. “That’s what Tony Stark has always been about.”
Toulouse into Tooning
CARTOON’s
Annick
Toulouse, France
Maes showcases the highlights of this year’s Cartoon Forum.
By Mansha Daswani
Cartoon Forum is returning to Toulouse, France, from September 15 to 18, with an agenda firmly focused on providing new solutions for producers, distributors and buyers.
More than 850 delegates have committed to attending this year’s edition, says Annick Maes, general director of CARTOON, which organizes the an nual event, including 230 buyers.
“We’re once again seeing a vibrant mix of returning professionals and newcomers, which reinforces Cartoon Forum’s unique role as a key meeting point for the European animation community,” Maes says. “The level of buyer participation, in particular, highlights the continued demand for fresh, innovative content and the value of face-to-face networking. With such a dynamic and diverse group of attendees, we’re confident this year’s edition will spark exciting new partnerships and creative collaborations.”
Showcasing new content is a key element of Cartoon Forum’s remit, with 75 projects selected from 108 submitted. France is at the forefront with 30 projects, followed by 11 from Central and Eastern Europe, seven from
Ireland, six each from Belgium and Spain, and three each from Germany and Italy. Projects were also selected from Greece, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Portugal and Sweden.
Among the key themes to emerge from this year’s submissions was an uptick in female perspectives and heroines, Maes says. Projects from female directors and producers also rose. Environmental issues are explored in 15 percent of the selections and 17 percent tackle inclusion and representation.
“CARTOON has introduced several new measures aimed at providing practical, resultsdriven support.” —Annick Maes
In addition to an increase in preschool projects, Maes also points to a rise in short-form content—73 percent of projects are under 13 minutes, compared with 63 percent last year. Furthermore, co-productions have also increased; they accounted for just 15 percent of selections in 2019 but rose to a substantial 31 percent this year. Budgets are down, with average spend slipping to around €4.4 million per project.
With the high number of submissions, Cartoon Forum’s selection committee “prioritized the emergence of new intellectual properties,” Maes says. “This approach reflects our strong commitment to nurturing original content, especially in light of the current economic challenges affecting the industry.”
However, Maes does refer to today as the “era of adaptations,” with 27 percent of selections based on existing IP. “Moreover, the production teams tend to increasingly consider developing for other platforms from the start of the project,” Maes says. “Whether through esports and video games, music, podcasts, social media campaigns or comics, adopting a transmedia approach offers the opportunity to reach a broader audience.”
Cartoon Forum also features a conference program, designed to help animation producers navigate the evolving realities of the business.
“Financing has become increasingly difficult, and fewer projects are being greenlit, creating serious obstacles for producers,” Maes says. “Many are now urgently seeking new leads, partners and funding sources to close budget gaps and push their projects forward. To respond to these evolving challenges and better support the industry, CARTOON has introduced several new measures aimed at providing practical, results-driven support.”
These include the return of a matchmaking-based networking afternoon on September 18 and the Fill the Gap initiative to help producers complete financing on projects. Maes also highlights Animated UK Meets Europe, led by Animation UK in collaboration with CARTOON and supported by BBC Children’s and Education and taking place on September 17.
“This curated session will showcase three exciting new U.K. animation projects seeking European co-producers and distribution partners. The event complements the official pitch program and is designed to foster new creative alliances and highlight emerging talent.”
In addition, the BBC, France Télévisions and Yle will discuss the power of co-production in a Cartoon Talks session.
Also in line with boosting cross-border partnerships, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is returning to see 15 PSBs select at least one project to support.
“Now in its third year, the EBU, in partnership with France Télévisions and CARTOON, continues to support the co-development of animated content through collective financing. This collaborative model allows EBU member broadcasters to select a standout project from the Cartoon Forum pitch lineup to receive development funding. In 2024, the chosen project was My Life is a Manga , produced by Brain Comet and Blue Spirit. The early stages of the project will be unveiled at Cartoon Forum 2025.”
CAKE’s Amelia Fang is among the projects being pitched at Animated UK Meets Europe.
