Bridge prodco reboots Moomins

The Endemol Shine-owned production company behind The Bridge is developing an animated series based on the classic Scandinavian children’s property The Moomins.

Moomins on the Riviera

Filmlance International has struck a licensing agreement with Moomin Characters and Bulls Licensing to reboot the franchise, which began in 1945 with a book by Finnish illustrator and writer Tove Jansson.

Since then, 13 books and 73 comic strips featuring the distinctive-looking creatures with big white snouts have been published in more than 40 countries.

Talent attached to the project includes Academy Award-winning director Steve Box (Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit).

Filmlance MD Lars Blomgren is set to executive produce and will work with Sophia Jansson, the niece of the original creator.

Marika Makaroff will act as creative director on the project, with Box heading up a writing team that features Mark Huckerby, Nick Ostler and Laurie Hutzler.

“The series will honour Tove Jansson’s original style of illustration, as well as the original stories, while utilising the latest techniques and bringing those stories to the present day,” said Makaroff.

Endemol Shine International will handle distribution.

There have been three made-for-TV adaptations of Jansson’s books, with the most recent, Moomin, produced in 1990.

More recently there has been the animated feature film Moomins on the Riviera, which was produced in France and released in cinemas in more than 50 countries in 2014.

The producers of the feature, Pictak Cie in France and Handle Productions in Finland, pitched a Moomins reboot at the 26th edition of Cartoon Forum in Toulouse last year.