Netflix aims for the best stories in global animation
Credit to Author: Stuart Derdeyn| Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 19:00:17 +0000
Melissa Cobb is vice-president for original animation in Kids and Family programming at Netflix. Before taking on her present position in September 2017, the industry veteran held senior management positions at the Walt Disney Company, Fox Feature Animation, and DreamWorks, where she was the producer of the Oscar-nominated Kung Fu Panda trilogy.
The UCLA School of Management MBA and Stanford BSc of California was in Vancouver recently to receive a Women in Animation Diversity Award, presented in partnership with the Spark Computer Graphics Society (Spark CG).
Melissa Cobb, Netflix VP kids-and-family content.
Before receiving that honour on the opening night of the SPARK Animation 2019 conference, Cobb took time to discuss the slate of animated features and series that are appearing on Netflix, and the changing face of how products are delivered to a global viewership.
While she was in Vancouver, Cobb visited Burnaby-based BRON Studios, where the Kris Pearn and Cory Evans-directed animated feature the Willoughbys is being produced. Hollywood North animation houses such as BRON Studios, Atomic Cartoons and others are actively involved in the creation of content for Netflix’s massive schedule. As more OTT (over-the-top) streaming services enter the market, it’s a sure bet that local animation houses will be cranking out new programming. Cobb said that receiving the diversity award reinforced the conscious effort that she and Netflix have made to promote women into all positions of an industry that has been accurately described as a “pirate ship.”
From females in top jobs to an incredible amount of mobility, the times are really changing.
“There has a been a big difference lately, with women running Paramount, DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and Nickelodeon,” said Cobb. “It’s a really cool thing to see these people that I grew up with, even if we are in competition, being in these sorts of positions. The business has never been as fluid as it is now, with so much mobility for artists and others to be going to work on projects that they are excited about.”
The idea being that, rather than sticking to the past practice of staying at the same studio for decades on end, creatives today are able to pursue their passion and get a paycheque. It translates into better quality work when the team is genuinely into the project.
“It’s a very international industry now, with new talent coming out of China, Ireland, Mexico, India and, of course, Canada,” she said. “With the new models taking into account all the opportunities all over the world, the traditional route of coming through Hollywood to get a feature film made or be a serious creator is changing. There will be opportunities for new talent to emerge in regions and get supported in the country in which they live.”
The decisions of what to program still roll out of Los Gatos, Calif., but the amount of new, original content coming to the online broadcaster from other places is substantial. Talk to anyone at any major animation hub and they will tell you that the key to a really vital industry isn’t in doing service work for others, but in creating your own intellectual property. Netflix has partnered with Hollywood North studios such as Atomic Cartoons to produce such popular original programs as Beat Bugs, The Last Kids, as well as service hits such as Hilda.
As well as North American products, Cobb has brought Mighty Little Bheem to Netflix. The first animated series from India follows the adventures of the baby version of the mythologically inspired character of Chhota Bheem, which has enjoyed multiple spinoff series. Nothing has been done to “package” the product for other markets either.
“It’s a non-verbal, preschool program that’s entirely created in India that is now one of our biggest shows in that category globally,” she said. “We don’t judge what might work in a particular market, we make a piece of content, put it out everywhere, in every language and let the audience decide. We’re finding that everybody gets it or doesn’t, and what’s the best is what rises to the top.”
Every major service provider is pursuing new content too. Competition for original new programming is fierce and that’s translating into good jobs, more variety in shows and — best of all — what Cobb describes as a “smarter kid space.”
“There is a lot of really smart writing and interesting work going on in kid’s programs,” she said. “Once you’ve opened up the doors to more creators around the globe and you are no longer looking at ‘this needs to be for the 10 a.m. time slot’ anymore, things become a lot more exciting. You can take more risks, diversify more and bring in many more and varied voices. ”
There is also the bottom line behind Netflix bringing in someone with Cobb’s considerable chops to helm the kids-and-family fare.
Disney+ launches Nov. 12, and the children’s entertainment juggernaut pulled all of its movies from Netflix last year. Other content is expected to go away as different entertainment companies launch their own streaming services. The Magic Kingdom is beyond a formidable challenger to any and all firms that pursue a piece of the profitable younger-viewer segment. Cobb’s division needs hits now, as Variety.com reports that 60 per cent of Netflix customers — or about 83 million households — regularly watch kids-and-family content.
First up is director Sergio Pablos’s holiday adventure comedy Klaus. The Spanish animated comedy is Netflix’s first original animated feature and stars Jason Schwartzman, Rashida Jones, J.K. Simmons and Joan Cusack. It’s a fictional origin story for the Santa Claus myth revolving around a friendship between a gung-ho postal worker who befriends a recluse who makes toys.
Also on deck is the Willoughbys, an adaptation of a Lois Lowry novel about a family adventure directed by Pearn (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), which features a cast including Ricky Gervais and Martin Short. Jorge R. Guitiérez (Book of Life) is producing a nine-episode limited series titled Maya and the Three based around Mesoamerican mythology, due to land in 2021. Maya and the Three has a Canadian connection as work is being done on the show at Montreal’s Tangent Animation.
Cobb says that animation is a major component of both family-and-adult, or prime time, Netflix content.
“It’s a huge shift in the industry, where we have our L.A. studios doing kids shows and the big features and the prime time division producing shows such as Big Mouth and other cool things,” she said. “Then we have our Tokyo division, which is producing 30-plus anime a year, which is a huge shift in that global anime market and very good for us globally. And then there is the stuff that falls outside of all that into special projects and so on.”
With no commercial breaks, direct toy tie-ins and other typical marketing around Netflix kids-and-family programming, the streaming service is banking on a high volume of quality content to keep customers engaged.