Flying Bark Productions to bring Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia to TV

Tales from Outer Suburbia is being backed by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation

Australian animation studio Flying Bark Productions is adapting author Shaun Tan’s book Tales from Outer Suburbia as a TV series.

Published in 2008, Tales from Outer Suburbia has been translated into 28 languages. The 12×30’ adaptation centres on an “almost 13-year-old” girl and her younger brother who begin experiencing weird and miraculous phenomena as they go about their everyday life in Australian suburbia.

Tan is acting as creative director on the series, working alongside writers Sam Carroll and Lally Katz.

Sophie Byrne and Flying Bark’s head of animation production Alexia Gates-Foale are producing, while Flying Bark CEO Barbara Stephen is exec producing with Bernadette O’Mahony, head of content at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

The ACTF is assisting with funding for the series’ development, alongside Screen Australia.

Another of Tan’s books, The Lost Thing, was adapted into a short film in 2010, winning the Oscar for best animated short the following year. Tan collaborated with Byrne on that project.