Nelvana, Sony Team Up For ‘Hotel Transylvania’ TV Series

Director Genndy Tartakovsky helped save Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transyslvania franchise from development hell. Now it’s got a shiny new feature film sequel, and after today, a television program to show for it.

Sony is working with Canada’s Nelvana to create a Hotel Transylvania animated series for television. Scheduled for an early 2017 launch and focusing on the teen years of Mavis, the TV spinoff will be produced by the 44-year-old studio Nelvana, whose diverse animation offerings from throughout the years have ranged from the preschool charmer Maggie and the Ferocious Beast to Care Bears, and Rolie Polie Olie to Star Wars spinoffs like Droids and Ewoks.

Whether or not Tartakovksy is involved with Hotel Transylvania’s animated television series has not yet been announced, nor has the show’s voiceover cast. Sony will handle U.S. distribution, while Nelvana’s parent corporation Corus Entertainment will distribute the show internationally. Rick Mischel of Sony Pictures Animation (SPA) and Colin Bohm and Irene Weibel from Nelvana will exec produce the series.

“We’re excited to be entering into a new relationship with Sony Pictures Animation to extend the world of Hotel Transylvania into a new TV series,” said Corus Kids v-p Colin Bohm. “The hilarious characters and clever premise of Hotel Transylvania set the stage for endless story possibilities.”

Hotel Transylvania 2 arrives in theaters on September 25. Tartakovsky’s first Hotel Transylvania feature managed to rewardingly fuse cartoon physics and the well-known comedy of the Saturday Night Live cast that inhabited its roster of spooky, kooky characters, resulting in perhaps surprising critical acclaim and box-office success for what had previously been a question mark for the studio.

If Tartakovksy and SPA can manage to make sure Hotel Transylvania 2 doesn’t run out of gags or stories, there’s no good reason that Nelvana can’t do the same on television.