Mediawan Kids & Family, the youth content arm of the European powerhouse that owns Plan B, See-Saw Films and Chapter 2, has struck a deal with Claynosaurz Inc., the company behind the viral NFT brand. Together, they’ll co-produce an animated series based on the digital-native franchise.
The series, running 39 episodes of seven minutes each, underscores the strategy deployed by Mediawan Kids & Family to partner up with up-and-coming talent from the creator economy and develop original transmedia projects.
Aimed at children aged 6 to 12, the comedy-filled series will follow the adventures of four dinosaur friends on a mysterious island. Jesse Cleverly, the award-winning co-founder and creative director of Mediawan-owned, Bristol-based banner Wildseed Studios, is on board as showrunner.
Claynosaurz, created in 2021 by Nicholas Cabana, Dan Cabral and Daniel Jervis (former VFX artists at Sony Pictures, Animal Logic and Framestore) has already garnered over 450 million views and 200 million impressions across digital platforms, as well as an online community of over 530,000 subscribers with its humorous short videos. The brand has won 11 Collision Award, as well as a Webby Award.
Julien Borde, Mediawan Kids & Family president, told Variety that the series will likely be the first of its kind and addresses a demand from buyers for content that “comes with a pre-existing engagement and data.”
“I think it’s the very first time a digital collectible brand is expanded into a TV series so it’s a milestone, not just for Mediawan Kids & Family but for the industry,” Borde said. The project also allows the company to keep up with its mantra to “empower talents all around the world,” the veteran youth content exec said, adding that the Claynosaurz team “are really into animation, have done fantastic shows in the past and are trying to do things a different way.” Borde also said the show is part of Mediawan Kids & Family’s ambition to diversify and build a new line-up of premium content coming from different platforms.
Cabana said he created Claynosaurz with a “group of artists from all sorts of studios, including Illumination, Dreamworks, Sony, Disney and Ubisoft.” Having entered the market through collectibles and NFTs gave them the opportunity to monetize early in their development cycle and focus on building the characters rather than building long-form content, he said. The way they “flipped the traditional model” and “built the IP directly with fans” felt right because they could “prepackage the brand within the audience” at a time when it’s “tough for large studios to take a risk on nascent brands if they’re not proven or battle-tested,” Cabana said.
When Mediawan approached them, they “immediately understood the tone, warmth and irreverent humour that define Claynosaurz, and share our belief that great franchises can emerge from unexpected places,” Cabana said. He noted that “this type of community-driven development isn’t just different, it’s necessary.”
The series will aim at getting the digital franchise to an even wider audience with “hyper relatable” content, while keeping the comedy-driven, quirky DNA of the hit IP, Cabana said. He also explained how the banner will test creative ideas on social media and “treat it as our test kitchen” to “find out what’s sticking and what’s not sticking,” he said.
The show will launch on Youtube and will be available for licensing by traditional TV channels and platforms. Nicolas Fisch, who is producing the series for Mediawan Kids & Family, said Claynosaurz’s creative teams and Mediawan’s will come together in a writers room.
Katell France (“Vic the Vicking”) at Method Animation (“The Little Prince”), a Mediawan label, is producing the show with Cabana at Claynosaurz.
Mediawan was at the Cannes Film Festival this year with the animated feature “Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol” directed by Sylvain Chomet (“The Triplets of Belleville”).
Source: https://variety.com/
