New Series Roundup: Netflix, Comedy Central, Disney
Here’s a roundup of some animated series projects that are currently in development or production.
Netflix
Hoping to recreate the success of Bojack Horseman, Netflix is turning again to Michael Eisner’s The Tornante Company for the new series Tuca & Bertie.
The comedy follows the friendship between two 30-year-old bird women who live in the same apartment building: Tuca, a cocky, care-free toucan, and Bertie, an anxious, daydreaming songbird.
Bojack production designer Lisa Hanawalt created the series. She executive produces alongside Bojack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Noel Bright (Bojack Horseman, Friends), Steven A. Cohen (Bojack Horseman, Jack & Bobby), and Tiffany Haddish, who will voice Tuca.
The show has a 10-episode order, to be produced at Shadowmachine, which also makes Bojack.
Comedy Central
Comedy Central has a script commitment to develop an animated series based on the popular Instagram meme account Betches. Production companies Bunim/Murray and Access Entertainment’s All Screen Productions are overseeing the development of the project.
Rachel Koller is writing the script, and will executive produce with actress Emma Roberts, set to voice a character. Other executive producers are Betches co-founders Jordana Abraham, Aleen Kuperman, and Samantha Fishbein, Bunim/Murray’s Gil Goldschein and Kesila Childers, and All Screen’s John Cheng. Carli Haney will produce.
The series is described by Hollywood Reporter, as an “irreverent show about three millennial women navigating their 20s in New York, calling shit out as they see it and daring to say out loud what everyone is already thinking.”
Disney EMEA/Channel 9 Australia
U.K.-based children’s producer Cake, Mexican animation producer Ánima, and Australian animation producer Studio Moshi are starting production on a new children’s series Space Chickens in Space. The commissioning broadcasters are Disney EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) and Channel 9 in Australia.
The “2d tradigital” co-pro will also involve the newly-formed Dublin-based Gingerbread Animation.
Fifty-two 11-minute episodes have been ordered. Cake is handling all international distribution except for Latin America, which is being handled by Ánima, and Australia, where Studio Moshi has inked deals with Channel 9 and Disney Australia.
Aimed at 6-11 year olds, Space Chickens in Space tells the story of a trio of chicken siblings – Finley, Chuck and Starley – who are mistakenly taken from their homes and enrolled in an elite intergalactic former military academy, where they must survive a world of aliens and tricky homework challenges.
Show creators are José C. García de Letona and Rita Street . The series is directed by twin brothers Tommy and Markus Vad Flaaten (aka Twin Trash), with Jordan Gaucher serving as showrunner, and Alan Keane (Gumball) and Shane Perez (Oddbots) as story editors.
Disney Channel
Disney’s Marvel TV is developing a series based on its recent comic Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which follows the adventures of a nine-year-old mega-genius, Lunella Lafayette, and her dinosaur, the latter of which is an older character in the Marvel universe originally created by Jack Kirby in the late-1970s.
The series will be produced by Marvel Animation and Laurence Fishburne and Helen Sugland’s Cinema Gypsy Productions. Visual and animation development is being handled by Titmouse. The series is being developed for Disney Channels Worldwide.
