On the eve of Guru Studio’s 25th anniversary party tonight in Toronto, president and creative director Frank Falcone is feeling energized. 

An industry veteran who worked as an animator at Nelvana and Spin VFX much earlier in his career, Falcone set up his own company in May 2000. And tonight, the studio that started out as a commercial shop working on campaigns for Kraft Mac & Cheese and Hershey’s will celebrate a quarter century in business. 

Falcone says one of the keys to its longevity comes from a lesson he learned during those early advertising days: If you want to grab attention, you have to focus on telling a story. 

This mandate helped Guru evolve into a company that has been a key partner on PAW Patrol (Spin Master/Nickelodeon) and Oscar-nominated feature film The Breadwinner (Aircraft Pictures/Cartoon Saloon/Melusine Productions). And along the way, it has also built up a slate of internationally successful originals including True and the Rainbow Kingdom (Netflix) and Big Blue (CBC). 

Now 25 years in, Guru is just getting started, says Falcone, who wants to see the studio take more big swings with new projects as it heads into what he calls its “third wave”.

Ryan Tuchow: What’s going through your mind as you plan ahead for the future? 

Frank Falcone: I’m feeling energized. I can’t believe it’s been 25 years already. And you know, I would say here’s to another 25, but I can’t be working at this pace 25 years from now. I don’t think that maths out. 

So obviously I’ll be transitioning myself into a role where I’m handing more of the creative reins to other people, which I’ve been doing the last few years. And really picking and choosing projects that I care even more deeply about and that I think the world needs to see.

RT: What new projects are you working on?

FF: There’s a feature film that we’ll be announcing soon when we secure a distributor. I can’t go into details, but it’s an adaptation of a Toronto-based book that we’re really passionate about.

I didn’t even know the book was written in Toronto initially. I just loved the cover and the concept, and then found out the creators—well-known Toronto illustrators called The Fan Brothers—live just a few blocks away. 

Where’s Spot? has also been on our development slate for about a year, and we’ve been working with partners to figure out how to reintroduce Spot to the market. The question is how to engage kids who already love the character in new ways, because the stories are secondary to the appeal and timelessness of the character. 

And then we’re also doing some more shorts for True and the Rainbow Kingdom. We haven’t fully announced this yet, but Ontario Creates has come in to contribute funding for about 30 minutes of short-form content, which is a really great way to keep the brand refreshed in a market where additional seasons don’t seem to be coming from some of the streamers. 

True and the Rainbow Kingdom.

True is still growing and attracting an audience on YouTube. We get emails asking, “When are more seasons coming?” We want to satisfy the super-fans out there looking for something new, and I think short-form content is a good way to sprinkle some freshness on a brand that’s been around for almost 10 years now. 

RT: Why is now the right time to make your first-ever theatrical feature film? 

FF: I’ve always found that the pursuit of feature films is like a bug that gets planted in an animator’s brain—the idea that you’re not worth anything if you’ve never made one. 

I think the animation colleges in Ontario do a good job of making people feel less valuable unless they’ve made an animated movie. And unfortunately, what that has done is drive talent away from Canada, because there aren’t a lot of them being made here.

Personally, I would much rather work on a TV show that people love for 15 years and that’s reaching the entire world—one that’s entirely made here with talent in the city, with our partners like Spin Master—than I would a film that nobody sees.

But then this project came along, and when I saw the book, I knew it was something I wanted to do. It contains a much bigger story than what was being told on its pages. When I approached the creators, they said: “You’re totally right. We have a bigger story that we couldn’t fit into the book.” And that’s amazing because there’s nothing worse than taking a thin story and trying to stretch it out too far. 

RT: How are you dealing with the broader challenges facing the kids media industry, especially the lack of financing? 

FF: No doubt it’s challenging. The funding is not there, and the triggers for funding are what I call rusty triggers, because you can’t pull them. Nothing shoots.

I know that the Youth Media Alliance is making a proposal to the federal government for changes. And there’s hopefully some dedicated allocation to kids programming that will put us back into a leadership role in this country in terms of creating content for that audience. 

We’ve definitely fallen far behind in the last few years through a kind of atrophy. And that’s something we need to get back on top of because we have such capacity to create great stories, and we’re not tapping it right now because of the lack of triggers.

I’ll pat myself on the back a little bit for making the conscious decision to focus on the long-term relationships between characters and audiences, which has served us well. 

We have challenges in front of us, though. In terms of how to produce faster, how to produce more effectively. There’s a lot of pressure around the world on costs, and there’s pressure on finding audiences. My favorite quote is: The mechanisms for the modernization of content are in disarray.