Magnus Jansson

Magnus Jansson
CEO
The Nuttery Entertainment
Sweden
Pitching: Super Hakan Brakan

What is the biggest issue facing the animation industry right now?
The TV/streamer landscape is a shrinking kaleidoscope at the same time as we are seeing animation audiences continuing to segment into predominantly preschool and adult (the in-between mainly consume low-cost, single-creator, shortform content). This means more players in a smaller space and breaking through the noise becomes increasingly difficult. Leveraging brand partnerships along with new funding and creative marketing models become keys to success, assuming all creative is created equal.

What is your company doing in response to this?
For bigger projects, we look to partner with brands and talent to increase their chances. Of our studio’s current development slate, more than half are based on licensed IP with additional partners onboard, including the one we are presenting at Cartoon Forum this year. We are also constantly looking for new financing models developing from emerging platforms and technologies for creative production solutions.

For smaller projects, we have adopted a fail-fast approach from our gaming side. We go to where the audience is and we quickly test things out to see what works. For our game Whiskey & Zombies, we went to numerous Comic Cons and developed it on-site based on player feedback. We are now starting to use the same approach, modified for the intricacies of animation, where the online world and community building becomes a project’s best friend.

How do you see the rise of the metaverse impacting animation?
The metaverse as the unified oasis-like environment is going to take some time, but Web3 is already changing productions – from NFT-based animation to funding shows through access tokens or IP/characters/story rights transfer of ownership through tokenisation. But more than anything, it’s how kids today play, interact, learn and, more importantly, create! I think UGC such as the short stories created using Minecraft/Roblox (or the classic Red v Blue, a personal favourite) are an indication of how the industry has to start to think of always-on, on-demand, animated content in a metaverse environment.

How do you work with YouTube Kids and is it a platform that supports high-quality animation producers?
We haven’t worked with YouTube Kids but we will be soon. Does it support high-quality animation? It depends. If it is reading this, yes. Otherwise, no – not in terms of the technical parts of animation, but the creative/direction/timing can always be top-notch regardless of final execution.

Tell us about the project you are pitching at Cartoon Forum.
We are presenting Super Hakan Brakan (52×11’), a 6-9 comedy/adventure based on 30-plus book series from Scandinavia’s biggest authors. It is centred on a young boy and his kid sister, both makeshift superheroes sprung from the power of the humble potato in order to defend imagination itself from boredom and villainous grown-ups. Storytel, one of the world’s largest audiobook streamers, is making this property its next global kids publishing launch.