Thomas Borch Nielsen

Producer
Nice Ninja
Denmark

Pitching: Foreverly Friends
 
What is the biggest issue facing the animation industry?
Of course Covid-19 is affecting us. Since there’s so many people in lockdown and we’ve been restricted where we can go, there’s also a huge need for more content. I believe that over the next period – although nobody knows how long that may be – there’ll be rising demand for more TV series because content is consumed so fast by users at the moment.

What is your company doing in response to this?
We are definitely more focused right now on TV series, rather than feature film projects, because we think it’s a safer market to enter. We haven’t forgotten everything about our feature film projects, but right now we are looking very much to TV series because we think that they will be the most sought-after product.

What impact could the Covid-19 pandemic have on the animation industry long-term?
What we have experienced through the lockdown is that we are actually able to work from home a lot more than we did before. It’s actually incredible how well we function working from home in animation. In the future it will be easier, with the set-up we now have, to work from a distance and easier to work with animators across the globe.

How are subscription video-on-demand services changing the animation industry?
It will depend on how the traditional broadcasters respond to it. It’s so easy now for parents to let the kids go on a streaming platform. Over the next few years, it will depend on how our traditional public broadcasters and commercial broadcasters react to that. Can they keep coming up with new stuff and hold their audience’s attention compared with competitors like Netflix?

Tell us about the project you are pitching at Cartoon Forum.
Foreverly Friends (52×7′) is a comedy series for preschoolers. It’s very educational but a little more on the light side. It’s about a group of five oddly matched friends who go on a new adventure every day. But each of them wants to do it in their own way, so every adventure becomes a struggle about how to deal with their differences.