Sony Pictures Television Kids’ Joe D’Ambrosia on reimagining projects including Wheel of Fortune and 1960s sitcom Bewitched for young audiences and kicking off an ambitious new slate of animated titles featuring soccer-focused Messi & the Giants.
Hotel Whiskers is set in a home away from home for animals
In a market hungry for shows with built-in brand recognition and innovative twists on existing IP, Sony Pictures Television (SPT) is mining its library to reimagine adult-focused scripted and unscripted properties for younger audiences.
The strategy has been taking shape over the past year at SPT Kids (fka Silvergate Media), which is preparing to introduce a slate of reimagined shows to buyers at Mipcom, in addition to several other new shows.
Among the shows being pulled out of the vault is Bewitched, the 1960s US sitcom that ran for eight seasons on ABC. While the original version followed Samantha, a suburban housewife and witch who could cast spells with the twitch of her nose, the updated version will follow her pre-teen daughter, Tabitha, in a series that “combines the teenage double-life adventures of Hannah Montana with the magic school antics of Harry Potter.”
“We’re looking to tap into that library and show a new generation of kids these new characters and shows,” Joe D’Ambrosia, executive VP and general manager of SPT Kids, tells C21, adding that there’s a “big global nostalgia play which we’re really leaning into.”
SPT Kids isn’t only looking at classic TV. The company also has its sights set on a younger-skewing remake of Wheel of Fortune, the word-game format that has been on the air in the US since 1975.
D’Ambrosia says his team has been working closely with SPT’s gameshow division, led by exec VP of gameshows Suzanne Prete, to adapt the format for younger audiences. The essence of Wheel of Fortune will remain, but new elements are being incorporated that will appeal to younger viewers.
“We’re going to stay true to the format but we’re having a blast incorporating some really fun twists that the younger audience will get a kick out of. For example, you can’t just buy a vowel, you have to earn a vowel, so we’ve added a bunch of physical and comedic challenges,” D’Ambrosia says. “We really want to have the kids strapped to the wheel in one of the rounds, too.”
Joe D’Ambrosia
Also on the company’s slate at Mipcom is a retelling of Stuart Little, the mouse who became a household name in the late 1990s with the release of the feature film of the same name. The reimagined version is aimed at kids aged six and up.
Of course, not every property that was popular in the past can or should be remade for modern audiences. There is no equation or formula for deciding what to remake, says D’Ambrosia; the only guiding principle is that the new take must bring fresh inspiration or meaning to the underlying IP.
“It’s something we think long and hard about before we dive into development. We want to originate, not duplicate, with known IP,” he says.
“We want to lean towards characters that are going to be aspirational to kids and figure out how to take the DNA of these original shows and put a new spin on it for a modern audience.
“Bewitched, for example, started in the 1960s and it was a very different time. In our version, Samantha is not going to be a housewife, she teaches genetics at Columbia University. We’re really just looking at what is the fresh take.”
D’Ambrosia emphasises that the SPT Kids slate is a 50/50 split between existing IP and new shows. “At the end of the day, you need to create new shows in order to have IP 10 years from now.”
SPT Kids, which has enjoyed recent success with two of its newest properties, Creature Cases (Netflix) and SuperKitties (Disney Junior), is looking to build on those hits with five new animated offerings it is bringing to market at Mipcom.
The Powers is a mini rock opera following five-year-old Will, the youngest member of a family of singing silly supervillains who has a problem: he’s just no good at being bad. SPT Kids is working on the show, which will consist of seven-minute episodes, in collaboration with Sow You Entertainment.
Hotel Whiskers is set in a home away from home for animals of all stripes and types, including pets, while Slayer Family Band follows a family that inherits cursed musical instruments and soon learns that a family that slays together, stays together. Sharks on Wheels sees hot-rodded vehicles battle it out on the racetrack to win the Megalodon Cup.
Sharks on Wheels follows hot-rod vehicle racing
Also being introduced to buyers at Mipcom is Messi & the Giants, an animated series inspired by Argentinian football star Lionel Messi. Produced and distributed by Sony Music Entertainment and SPT Kids in partnership with Leo Messi Management, the project follows a 12-year-old Messi as he confronts various obstacles while travelling through a video game on a quest to go home. Story editor and writer Guy Toubes (Odd Squad) is attached as lead scriptwriter, while Canary Islands-based Atlantis Animation (Tara Duncan, Miraculous Ladybug) is the lead creative studio.
Across both new shows and reimagined versions of existing IPs, SPT Kids has around 20 projects in development currently, says D’Ambrosia.
SPT is often referred to as the ‘arms dealer’ of the US studio landscape, as it opted not to launch its own streaming service and instead focused on selling content to the growing number of big-spending streaming platforms that have launched over the past four years.
This approach is often spoken about in the context of Sony’s adult-focused scripted and unscripted content, but it applies equally to its children’s content too.
D’Ambrosia says the arms dealer tag is “not the way I would want to describe the kids business,” but the ability to collaborate with and sell to any platform is an advantage for SPT.
“When we develop, we do think, ‘Oh this would be a great Disney show, or this feels like it would fit really well with Netflix,’” he says. “I love having the flexibility of really trying to find the best home for each project.”
There’s no denying that it has been a tough 18 months for the wider TV business, as buyers have slammed the brakes on some of their streaming investments amid a jarring market contraction.
D’Ambrosia – who concedes that he is an “eternal optimist” – says he believes the worst is now in the rearview mirror and that the industry will find itself on a surer footing within the next year. “It’s been a very disruptive year for all the different genres but one of the reasons I love working in the kids’ space is because we know it’s not going away,” he says.
“Every platform values kids’ content, and so although some of them have cut back a little bit, I do think it’s going to turn around and be business as usual within the next 12 months.”
