Mediawan Kids & Family’s new 2D production house, Somewhere Animation, is teaming up with video game adaptation specialist Marla Studios to turn creature-collection game Temtem into a comedy-adventure series for kids.
The partners are developing the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Spanish developer Crema into a 26 x 22-minute series for kids ages six and up. Josh Hamilton—best known for his work as a writer on Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender—will write and direct the new series as showrunner.
Temtem was released in 2020 on PCs and consoles after a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. By September 2022, it had reached one million total users across all platforms, according to its Kickstarter updates.
Set in a fantastical island world, the game lets players collect and tame mystical creatures called Temtem, which can be used for battling, trading with friends and breeding to create offspring with new powers.
The game differs from other MMORPGs by putting a greater emphasis on teamwork and offering more humorous storylines, according to a release.
Based in Paris, Somewhere Animation opened its doors in April 2022 and is led by Totally Spies! producer Arthur Colignon. The studio is one of Mediawan’s eight subsidiary companies. LA’s Marla Studios specializes in adapting video games for film and TV. Though its credits include adult-skewing IPs such as Duke Nukem and Brothers in Arms, Marla’s founder—Assassin’s Creed producer Jean Julien Baronnet—also produced Netflix’s animated series adaptation of Ubisoft’s popular kids and family game Raving Rabbids.
This Temtem collaboration joins a growing number of fantasy games that are being adapted as TV series for kids and families. Other such projects currently in the works include Final Fantasy IX from Cyber Group Studios and Aurion from French prodco Chouette and African video game studio Kiro’o Games.
In other Mediawan news, the company revealed at a press conference yesterday in Annecy that Warner Bros. Discovery EMEA has signed on as a co-production and broadcast partner for sister studio Method Animation’s new CG-animated series Karters (52 x 11 minutes). Cartoonito EMEA will exclusively air the show in a first window, though a premiere date has yet to be announced. Aimed at four- to eight-year-olds, Karters tracks a group of heroic kids who race mini-cars in fantastical environments while trying to help legendary creatures known as Unipets.
Method is also adapting a picture book series called Taïtikis by PJ Masks creator Romuald Racioppo as a CG-animated preschool series (52 x 11 minutes). And the studio has joined on as a co-pro partner for action-adventure kids series Anansi from South African prodco Diprente.
Finally, Spanish prodco DeAPlaneta Entertainment has struck a deal to be the exclusive licensing and merchandising agent in most territories except China for upcoming Mediawan Kids & Family animated series Karters, The Three and Witch Detectives. DeAPlaneta will also manage digital, interactive, gaming and web3 rights for these brands. Other Mediawan properties included in this master licensing deal will be announced at later dates.
