Programming Profile

With its holiday hit Superworm wriggling its way into millions of festive front rooms last Christmas, UK animation house Magic Light Pictures is lining up new content for 2022 and beyond.

UK-based Magic Light Pictures, founded in 2003 by joint MDs Martin Pope and Michael Rose, has built up a strong reputation in the kids’ and family space, particularly for its animated Christmas specials for the BBC. With classics like The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child under its belt, the prodco has won three international Emmys and two Baftas and has been nominated for four Oscars.

“We formed the company because we wanted to make high-quality programmes with a focus on the family audience,” Rose says.

“The journey really began for us by getting the rights to The Gruffalo, which we started talking about in 2003 and then secured in 2007. Up to that point, there had been very few animated Christmas specials – there had been The Snowman [on Channel 4] and the Wallace & Gromit films on the BBC from a decade before – so we sort of revived the genre. The Gruffalo premiered on Christmas Day 2009 on BBC1 at 16.45 in a primetime slot. Ten million people watched it, with families all around the UK watching together.”

Family co-viewing is a huge priority for Magic Light, which has produced nine half-hour animated Christmas specials for the BBC that are based on books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. In addition to The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child, these also include Stick Man, Room on the Broom, The Snail & the Whale, Zog, Zog & the Flying Doctors and The Highway Rat.

The ninth and most recent adaptation is Superworm, about a super-strong worm who is always saving the day, but who can save him when he gets too full of himself and is captured by the evil Wizard Lizard? It is voiced by Patricia Allison, Rob Brydon, Olivia Colman, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Matt Smith. The show premiered on BBC1 last Christmas and headlines Magic Light’s playlist on C21’s Digital Screenings this week.

Pope describes the show as “a lovely comedy with a heart-warming theme of friendship with a brilliant hero and a terrific villain – not to mention a fabulously talented cast.”

Regarding its Christmas outing, he adds: “We were absolutely delighted with how Superworm performed. It was the fifth most watched show on Christmas Day and the number one children’s show, with 40% share of viewing. During the first week, over seven million people had watched the film, and then there were more on the [BBC streaming platform] iPlayer. It’s gone absolutely phenomenally and we’ve had brilliant reviews.”

After their BBC premieres, Magic Light’s Christmas specials stay on iPlayer all year round and also go to the prodco’s coproduction partner, ZDF in Germany, before being sold all over the world. According to Rose, the films have travelled to 180 countries. Superworm has already been sold to Movistar in Spain, NRK in Norway, RTV in Slovenia, SVT in Sweden, The Knowledge Network in Canada and ABC in Australia, among others.

Magic Light has also struck partnerships with cinema operators in countries like France, Spain and the UK to play its films. “Our films work wherever families gather. They are for a pan-family audience, with a core of younger children maybe between three and eight years old, but are something the whole family can watch together,” Rose says.

Magic Light’s execs also point out that while their animated specials have been produced for a Christmas premiere, they can be, and are, watched throughout the year. Room on the Broom, for example, gets a big audience in the US every year at Halloween.

“The specials are popular all around the world. In the UK, they are a particular Christmas thing because that’s when families are sitting together in front of the ‘gogglebox.’ But they’re experienced by kids in Germany and in Italy and so on at very different times. They are continually in demand. It’s about imaginative entertainment and when kids want to watch,” Pope says.

While Magic Light has made a huge name for itself in the animated specials market, the prodco’s credits go beyond that genre. Last year, it expanded into the kids’ series space with preschool hit Pip & Posy (52×7’), which also features on the company’s Digital Screenings playlist. The show, for UK terrestrial Channel 5’s Milkshake! block, Sky Kids and ZDF, is based on Axel Scheffler’s books of the same name about the adventures of a mouse and rabbit.

“We started developing Pip & Posy three or four years ago as we were looking to gently expand what we do,” Rose says. “It’s a world of preschool friendship, showing the ups and downs of friendships and how you might navigate through them.

“We thought that was a lovely subject matter for a series, particularly in a world where people are growing up ever more disconnected from each other. We thought if we could encourage children to develop friendships from an early age, showing how to navigate them, how to sustain them, how to repair them when little things go wrong and how to do the right thing for their friends as well as for themselves, then this would all make for a lovely underpinning to the show and a reason to make it.”

Magic Light’s debut kids’ series has been tremendously successful. It has sold well internationally, with deals in place in France, Italy, Australia, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Canada, the Netherlands and Israel, among other markets.

“We’ve had more than 3.1 million viewers on Milkshake! and have also been creating a social media marketing strategy around it, focusing particularly initially on YouTube, where we’ve had 7.5 million views in little over six months for our clips and shortform content,” Rose says.

According to Rose, Magic Light has increased investment in marketing and social media in order to adapt to an ever-evolving market. The prodco’s Gruffalo YouTube channel has had over 115 million views in the last few years, while its catalogue on iPlayer gets millions of plays every month.

Additionally, the Magic Light brand has expanded into the live entertainment sector, with experiences based on its IP at places including theme parks, entertainment venues and even walking trails across the UK. The latter came about after a deal with Forestry England, part of the Forestry Commission, to create 26 Gruffalo-themed walking trials, and these have recently been augmented with Superworm trails designed to educate kids about the importance of worms and other creepy-crawlies.

Looking to the future, Magic Light intends to continue focusing on its existing IP but is also in the market for new ideas.

“We continue to believe that you get what you focus on and that it’s best to do a few things, but do them really well,” Rose says. “So as well as continuing to grow Pip & Posy and the Gruffalo brand, we’re always looking for the next thing. There’s one other children’s picture book series that we’ve optioned called Mr Panda, by the brilliant author-illustrator Steve Antony, and there are some other ideas we’re looking at as well, in addition to a new film for Christmas.”

Pope adds: “We are certainly looking to expand what we do. We will definitely be doing at least one other series very soon.”