EXCLUSIVE: The spin-off of the Anardman nominated animation at the Oscars Robin Robin is in preparation for the BBC, with the boss of the children of the BBC, Patricia Hidalgo, looking for Co-Pro partners during the cartoon this week.
With Richard E. Grant and Gillian Anderson, Netflix Robin Robin Was nominated to the Oscars in 2021 for the best animated short film and followed a young Robin who seeks to prove his value to his family of adoptive mouse by stealing a brilliant star in a human house. The directors Dan Ojari and Mikey have already talked about their desire to make a spin-off and the BBC will introduce The adventures of Robin Robin At the Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, France, where he is looking for co-local partners while spiral costs in the world of children’s animation. The spin-off CGI is a series of episode of 52 x 7 minutes and is targeted to children from three to five years old with their parents.
The BBC and Aardman were in the race recently. Shaun sheep continues to draw a large number for the national broadcaster and the last Wallace and Gromit: revenge most birds was the second most watched television show in the United Kingdom last year, only behind Gavin and Stacey. “If we can take off this, it would be the madness not to make the show,” said Hidalgo.
At the Cartoon Forum, which starts today, Hidalgo and his team are also looking for funding for Amelia Fang, who follows a young vampire with a big heart and a preschool series Let’s play Tiger BayMade in association with the Welsh diffuser S4C.
The two shows more The adventures of Robin Robin Require funding for co -production to go to the screen and Hidalgo told us that animation projects are just as dependent on outside investment as gender in large budgets such as theater and documentaries. She said her team can only finance 25% to 40% of each premium animated series.
“When I arrived, my strategy was to increase the production values of what we were doing, but the BBC has had no increase in license costs in recent years and that means that with inflation, our purchasing power is reduced,” she added. “We must still offer so many hours, so we must determine how to offer these hours and support the industry with less purchasing power while public expectations have increased.”
The solution, for Hidalgo, is co-production, which means that markets like Cartoon Forum are crucial, but Hidalgo stressed that the content of the BBC is not diluted by having co-production partners from the outside of the United Kingdom. “The heart of our strategy is to make content that will travel so that we can bring British narrations to the world,” she added. “We can do it while creating culturally relevant content for our audience.”
In this spirit, Hidalgo has unveiled a second season of the BBC and the Italian broadcaster Rai’s Super magic happy forestand spoke the Foreign thingsesque Point of disappearance, Co-Cro with BBC Studios and France Télévisions which follows a group of four adolescents whose world is upset when their city is invaded by objects with unpredictable powers. The latter comes from the Winner writer-director-director of Bafta, Tom Gran and Martin Woolley.
“These programs are British IPs, British creatives and British voices,” said Hidalgo. She won statistics to assert her file, including four of the first five animations most watched by the Prescol network Hey Duggee, Bing, Numberblocks And Supertato only exceeded by Bluey.
Hidalgo is a big fan of animation and one of his first movements after joining the BBC of Turner Kids was triple investment in animation in the United Kingdom for 7-12 year olds, while launching an ignite £ 800,000 initiative ($ 1.08 million) to discover the next British big animation. This came when the number of animated children’s series orders on American streaming platforms dropped from 123 in 2019 to 35 this year, according to Luminate Intelligence’s research.
The three pilots who emerged from the first round, Underlighting, the Floating Academy of Captain Onion for Wayward Youth And Duck and frogThe latter are made with Mediawan Kids & Family, were taken as standard. Captain onion And Duck and frog Will launch next year. Another who started life with ignite is Rafi the wishes assistant, which is the first British animation to portray the city in the north of Manchester and just Bluey EP Tom Cousins. Hidalgo said that the next ignite cycle “goes very well” and is at the last six projects after initially received 1,600 entries.
Hidalgo stressed that the BBC is still happy to fully finance the projects in which it really believes, but that has an impact on other parts of the slate. That was the case with Nikhil & Jay, A show on a British family from a mixed heritage environment which “was a wonderful and charming idea, but we could not find a partner”. “This does not mean that we will say no, but it actually cancels a slit elsewhere because I have to invest twice as much money than normally,” said Hidalgo.
Where are our “British Simpsons”?
Simpsons
Disney
When Hidalgo launched Ignite, she said she wanted to find a British equivalent of SimpsonsWith “roast beef instead of turkey” eaten around the family table.
But almost four years later, Hidalgo, who spent 15 years working for Disney, said that she still hadn’t found what she was looking for.
“I see land every year but it’s just not there,” she added. “It’s really difficult to crack because you don’t just want to make a copy, you want to do something original. I want us to have something but unfortunately I have nothing. ”
It remains optimistic, however, and said that the quality of the locations it receives on a daily basis is fantastic, “things that, in your opinion, are for Netflix or Disney +”.
She is also enthusiastic by being able to spend the week at the Cartoon Forum. British animation was practically excluded from the event after Brexit due to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the Creative Europe Media program, but a special initiative of the United Kingdom Meets Europe, which is sponsored by the BBC, was launched in 2023 for projects in search of co-CO funding as The adventures of Robin Robin. Hidalgo said that she was almost solo this year, however, with competitors like Sky not participating in “they do not invest as much and therefore have nothing to bring”.
