The Gotham Group and Toonstar are teaming up to produce up to 12 new original animated series for kids, Variety reports. The partnership aims to create quality animation and family entertainment that will launch on direct-to-audience platforms, cutting out traditional gatekeepers.
The Gotham Group and Toonstar partner on new animated series (Credits: Variety)
Gotham Group and Toonstar animated series partnership targets family audiences
The deal pairs two very different players in Hollywood. The Gotham Group is a Los Angeles-based global entertainment company whose credits span the multi-Emmy-nominated Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the billion-dollar Maze Runner film franchise, The Search for WondLa on Apple TV+, Wendell & Wild with Jordan Peele and Henry Selick, and The Spiderwick Chronicles. It recently signed a strategic deal with VIZ Media to develop the VIZ Originals graphic novels and the RWBY franchise for film and television.
Toonstar, meanwhile, is a tech-powered animation studio founded by Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks veterans — CEO John Attanasio and Luisa Huang. The studio produces and distributes digital-first, creator-led series using its AI-powered Ink & Pixel production technology, which it says enables fast, high-quality production at scale. The L.A.-based studio is repped by WME and counts Founders Fund, Greycroft, Snap and GFR among its investors. Toonstar has already partnered with HarperCollins to adapt popular children’s books into animated series.
Direct-to-audience animation on the rise
The strategy behind the partnership is clear: skip the traditional network pitch process and build entertainment franchises directly with audiences online. Toonstar has cultivated some of the largest and most engaged communities on the internet through its direct-audience building, and its AI-assisted pipeline promises to produce series quickly enough to keep up with how fast kids’ content moves today.
No titles or release dates have been announced yet, but with up to a dozen original series planned, this could become one of the biggest swings yet in direct-to-audience children’s animation. Gotham brings the franchise-building muscle; Toonstar brings the speed and the tech. If the model works, expect other studios to follow.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
