Ludo Studios aims to nail down an international co-production partner for 2D animated series The Strange Chores and is developing a second season of #7DaysLater and a comedy feature film with an online hub.
Its first multi-platform project, #7DaysLater has snagged an International Digital Emmy® Award nomination. The awards will be presented on April 7 at the MIPTV market in Cannes.
“It’s ridiculous, amazing and a privilege,” said Ludo Studio’s Daley Pearson. “I’m looking forward to telling my parents we’re nominated for an International Emmy and leaving out the digital part.”
There are three other nominees for best digital program, fiction: Real Escape Game TV (Tokyo Broadcasting System Television); Collider (Beactive Entertainment, S.A. / FICA – Fundo de Investimento para o Cinema e Audiovisual, Portugal); and Latitudes (Losbragas / House Entertainment, Brazil).
Billed as the world’s first crowd-sourced TV show, #7DaysLater ran for eight weeks on ABC2. The online audience contributed to the storylines which were performed by YouTube identities and guest stars such as Corey Feldman (Stand By Me, The Goonies), Collin Mochrie (who’s Line Is It Anyway?), John Jarratt, Jemaine Clement, Megan Washington, Sigrid Thornton and Toby Truslove.
Each episode was telecast as five minutes but ran longer online. Pearson tells IF the ABC wants to extend the format to half hours and he and the Ludo team are developing the concept.
Pearson and Ludo Studio partner Charlie Aspinwall are developing The Strange Chores for ABC3 as a 52-episode animated series, a tween-targeted multiplatform comedy about two 12-year-old troublemakers who earn pocket money doing supernatural chores at their neighbour’s mysterious old mansion.
Media World’s Colin South, who produced the toon series Dogstar and The New Adventures of Ocean Girl as well as live action drama The Circuit and the movie Stone Bros., is serving as an executive producer and Media World is the animation producer.
They pitched the project at the Asian Animation Summit in Thailand and Kidscreen in New York and got strong responses from broadcasters in Asia and Europe.
Nick Boshier, co-creator of #7DaysLater co-creator and one half of the Bondi Hipsters, is producing six-part half hour comedy Soul Mates with ABC2. Co-produced by the Van Vuuren Brothers and Ludo, the bromance about two friends who find themselves bound together throughout the course of human history goes into production in May.
The comedy feature with online hub is being developed for Roadshow Films. Pearson says it’s in the spirit of #7DaysLater.