- Moana co-director Don Hall has signed a deal to create, develop and produce an original feature film with Skydance Animation. No project details are available yet, but Hall’s track record as a writer, story artist and director on numerous Disney features since the ’90s—not to mention his Best Animated Feature Oscar for Big Hero 6—should make this one to keep an eye on.
- Canada’s Corus Entertainment has made several acquisitions to pad out its 2024/2025 kids programming slate. YTV picks up live-actioner Spooky Files (Tony Ayres Productions and Megaboom Pictures) to launch this fall, along with Nickelodeon’s Thundermans spinoff. Meanwhile, Treehouse will debut Tea Town Teddy Bears, Team Mekbots: Animal Rescue (both of which hail from Thailand’s M2 Animation and were ordered/renewed by US streamer Peacock last year) and Mattel’s CG-animated Barney’s World revival sometime this fall.
- Screenwriter Patrick Burleigh (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) is adapting acclaimed tween novel The Last Bear as a live-action feature film, with ZQ Entertainment financing the script development. ZQ’s Ara Keshishian, Matt Wexler (WexWorks Media) and Adrian Askarieh (Prime Universe Films) are producing—and the team is currently hunting for a director. Penned by Hannah Gold, this bestseller explores the unlikely friendship between a young girl and a polar bear in the Arctic.
- GKIDS has acquired North American theatrical, video and digital transactional rights to Science Saru’s upcoming anime series Dan Da Dan (pictured)—on the heels of Muse Communication picking up Asian market rights in March. The premise centers around two high-schoolers who form a bond while investigating ghosts and aliens. Based on Yukinobu Tatsu’s same-name manga, the teen series will debut on streamers Netflix and Crunchyroll (all markets excluding Asia) this October.
Deals in Brief – June 5, 2024
Skydance Animation signs on for an original feature from the co-director of Moana, and 2021's The Last Bear goes from book shelves to the big screen.
June 5, 2024
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