Cartoon Forum 2024: 5 Promising Series Pitches
Attending from all over Europe, producers, investors, distributors and broadcasters gathered in Toulouse, France, last month for the 35th edition of Cartoon Forum.
Cartoon Forum is the leading animated tv series pitching event for Europeans, and this year, 485 companies were represented, with 256 buyers (26% of them attending Cartoon for the first time), and nearly one thousand overall participants coming from 42 countries.
Finding hidden gems is both an art and a sport for buyers, broadcasters, and investors alike – and getting through to the right partners is key for producers if they ever want to see their projects come to fruition. We previously profiled five pitches from French producers and today we’re looking at five more noteworthy pitches from other countries.
Occupation: Witch
Country: Moldova
Studios: Studio Metrafilms Moldova
Audience: Young Adults/Adults
Episodes: 12 x 22’
Technique: 2d computer
An adaptation of Eastern European author Olga Gromyko’s eponymous YA book series, Occupation: Witch unveiled itself as an action-packed and witty female-driven series.
The first ever Moldovan production to be pitched at the Forum, the series is brought to the screen by dynamic screenwriting duo Valentina Kozyreva and Kristina Dukhnich, who filled the room with their energy as they presented this ambitious project along with Metrafilms producer Artem Vasyliev.
Occupation: Witch follows Volha, a battle-mage apprentice, and her adventures between the magical realm of Beloria and the medieval vampire-ruled Kingdom of Dogheva. The series features a complex narrative and subplots that may not be to the project’s benefit. But the visuals and animation shown in the teaser had both audacity and a raw communicative energy that left the viewer wanting more. Metrafilms is still developing the project, and they are looking for co-producers, investors, and artists to bring their visually rich universe to the screen.
Bobby and the Bottle Brigade
Country: France, Ireland
Studios: Something Big, Magic C, Kavaleer
Audience: Upper Pre-school 5-6
Format: 52 x 11’
Technique: 2d computer
Producer Frederic Puech (Dragon Princess, Mutafukaz) is back in the animation business after a three-year hiatus with a brand-new tv series and IP, Bobby and the Bottle Brigade. A risky endeavor in the super competitive landscape of upper pre-school productions, Puech has pulled together a strong team that includes Magic C, the French production company founded by former Canal+ executive Chrystel Poncet, and Irish development and service studio Kavaleer.
A show blending comedy and adventure within the search-and-rescue genre, Bobby and his friend help young sea creatures overwhelmed by their crazy problems, from Carl the Cardboard fish who’s afraid of going out of his box to Larry Lanternfish who cannot sleep because his lanternfish older brother won’t turn off his own light during the night.
It’s worth pointing out that the character of Bobby has a disability, but isn’t defined by it in any way, which the producers stressed was for kids to be able to identify with him and his heroic kindness, regardless of his condition. And to top it all, Bobby and the Bottle Brigade has a very, very catchy opening song.
Esther
Country: Belgium, France, Argentina
Studio: Take Five, Sacrebleu Productions, Rudo Company
Audience: Young Adults/Adults
Episodes: 11 x 22’
Technique: 2d computer
Esther arrived at Cartoon Forum after a great run in the industry pitching circuit, including a 2022 pitch at Annecy’s MIFA, which is where producers Ron Dyens (Sacrebleu) and Gregory Zalcman (Take Five) decided to come aboard the project.
An action-packed series drawing on ancient Argentinian culture and mythology, Esther is written and directed by animator and artist Ezequiel Torres, whose music video “The Wolf” for Siamés recently topped 200 million views on Youtube.
Mixing grand action scenes with a strong story of merciless gods embodied within colorful and hypnotizing characters, the series showcases breathtaking 2d animation. “It’s a universal story,” the team explained during their pitch. “Our planet is suffering, and through these gods and their wrath, we tell a tale of Earth as a hurt and angry living being.”
One hopes that this unique project, the type of which we rarely see at this event, gets picked up quickly.
Alphabet Heroes
Country: Armenia
Studio: ReAct Production
Audience: Children 4-9
Episodes: 12 x 11’
Technique: 2d computer & drawing
Representing their country at Cartoon Forum for the very first time, Armenia’s ReAct unveiled Alphabet Heroes, a project that – should they find the right partners – could become the first Armenian animated series of all time. An adventurous educational tv series aimed at children from four to nine years old, it tells the tale of three regular kids turned into superheroes by magical gems of wisdom, infusing them with the power of Alphabet Letters. Meanwhile, King Ignorant tries to steal this source of wisdom to his own malevolent designs, feeding on humanity’s negativity and ignorance. A figure that could easily be related to several very real public figures.
To vanquish this ridiculous yet dangerous foe and his sneaky minions, the Alphabet Heroes use the power of spelling to create new objects from the very letters they can manipulate. And that may be what’s the most interesting part of this otherwise classic kids-turned-into-superheroes project.
Director Vrej Kassouny, who also founded ReAct Productions 23 years ago as a boutique service studio and has been developing original projects since 2018, explained that their very specific production pipeline will allow the show to be easily translated into several languages, with the help of a specific text-layer in every letter summoning sequence. In doing so, adaptation to each language, be it Armenian, French, or English, will be fluid and allow the show to reach a global audience with a very small budget, which the production estimated at 1.2 million euro for the first 12-episode season.
Matita HB
Country: Italy
Studios: Studio Ibrido
Audience: Family
Episodes : 26 x 11’
Technique: 2d computer
With a focus on Italian studios, Cartoon Forum 2024 allowed its thousand-plus participants to discover the vast landscape of the Italian animation industry. Among those is the young Studio Ibrido, who presented Matita HB, an adaptation of the eponymous Italian graphic novel by writer Susanna Mattiangeli and graphic author Rita Petruccioli. Matita tells the story of a 10-year-old girl who writers in her diary her version of daily reality thanks to her compulsive imagination.
It’s a colorful setting that turns into a great playground for animators and directors Victoria Musci and Francesco Forti, who both graduated from the animation department of Turin’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the early 2010s. With its abundant imagery and vivid palette, Matita HB has excellent visual potential, turning words and doodles into adventures of piracy and dragon fighting.
But the series also has deeper goals, tackling Matita’s insecurities, like growing up and turning into her unimaginative and always-busy mother, an intergenerational topic of holding on to your inner child. And who could relate more to that than the Forum’s audience?
