Malaysia’s Animasia Studio announced triple deals at the Asia TV Forum and Market (ATF) 2015 including their animated series, Chuck Chicken, being acquired by Nickelodeon India. These deals were done in conjunction with the Malaysian Creative Networking Reception held at the Malaysian Pavilion.
Nickelodeon India has acquired Animasia Studio’s famous animated series, Chuck Chicken (52 ep x 11 min). Hence, Nickelodeon has now joined the list of prominent broadcasters such as Disney Asia and Disney China, where the action comedy animated series targeting 7 to 11 years children is set to air in January next year.
“We at Nickelodeon are always on the lookout for engaging and entertaining content for our channel. Animasia Studio is known for creating shows with high entertainment values and ‘Chuck Chicken’ is one of them. We hope that this show will further complement the existing lineup of shows on Sonic which consists of primarily fast-paced humourous shows,” said Anu Sikka, SVP of Programming and Scheduling, Kids Cluster, Nickelodeon India at Viacom 18 media.
The other deal is an agreement to co-produce short form children’s programming targeting the Asian audience with leading Asian production powerhouse, Prodigee Media. Completed content will be exclusively distributed and marketed by Asian digital multi-platform network WebTVAsia as a new kids’ channel brand, to be named during the expected Q1 2016 launch.
The first phase of co-production will involve a series of children’s animated nursery rhyme videos whereby Prodigee’s music division will create original songs in various languages while Animasia is responsible for producing full animation with popular characters from their current brand library. WebTVAsia will globally release the content on digital platforms such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Tencent, Youku-Tudou, LeTV, as well as Whaley TV, a connected TV company funded by Alibaba, Tencent and China Media Capital.
Prodigee and WebTVAsia, Group CEO, Fred Chong remarked, “Localised children’s content with high production and educational qualities are in great demand in Asia. Combining Prodigee’s creative knowhow and WebTVAsia’s extensive digital reach, I look forward to partnering with Animasia Studio in creating a successful Asian kids digital channel brand.”
Animasia, Managing Director, Edmund Chan said, “Capitalising on new emerging trends in digital media with a partner like WebTVAsia will help expand Animasia’s portfolio of popular children’s content brands globally. We also believe Prodigee’s proven music production capabilities will complement our animation expertise very well.”
The third deal is a follow up to its partnership with Zodiak Kids Studios that was announced in Kid Screen this year, as now the Content Malaysia Pitching Centre has agreed to co-fund the production of the pre-school animated series Magiki (52 episodes x 11 min), together with Animasia Studio. Furthermore, the studio estimates that the project will involve around 100 Malaysian creative talents. The production will begin in Q1 of 2016 and the series will be distributed worldwide by Zodiak Kids, and Animasia Studio will exclusively distribute the series to the South East Asian markets.
ATF is the go-to market to experience the exhilarating dynamism of Asia’s expanding content entertainment industry; hence FINAS is seizing this opportunity with the objective to create and coproduce new content, particularly in feature film, animation, TV series, documentary and more. This year, over 20 Malaysian companies participated under the Malaysian delegation, such as Animasia.