Warner Bros. Pictures Animation has burrowed into Animal Planet’s wildlife documentary library for its next family feature film.

The studio is adapting popular doc series Meerkat Manor (53 x half hours, pictured), which aired on Animal Planet from 2005 to 2008. Produced by British prodco Oxford Scientific Films, the show centered around a real-world family of meerkats—known as the Whiskers—and their journey to survive in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert. 

WB Pictures Animation is planning to use photoreal animation to produce the film, and studio president Bill Damaschke notes that it will evoke the spirit of 2006’s CG-animated musical Happy Feet, which drew inspiration from nature documentaries like BBC’s Life in the Freezer.

Actor/filmmaker Seth Green and producer Tracy Falco have been tapped to produce under their LA-based banner The Green Room. Also on board as EPs are Oxford’s creative director Caroline Hawkins and CEO Clare Birks (who created the series).

Meerkat Manor earned three Emmy nominations and attracted an audience of four million viewers in the US during its original four-season run, becoming Animal Planet’s top-performing series by October 2007. (It also went on to air in more than 160 countries.) BBC America later commissioned a 13-episode follow-up series in 2021 called Meerkat Manor: The Rise of the Dynasty. 

Image courtesy of Oxford Scientific Films