Baboon Animation and IQI Media have revealed they’re working on an animated prequel feature and series to A.A. Milne’s 1926 children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh.
Here’s what we know so far:
- The film will be directed and co-written by industry veteran and Baboon founder Mike de Seve (sequence director on Madagascar and segment director of Beavis and Butt-Head Do America) and co-written by John Reynolds (The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, Middlemost Post).
- Now that the character is in the public domain, Winnie has been popping up all over the place, even appearing in a gory horror film. For this animated feature and series adaptation, however, de Seve and Reynolds are writing about Pooh and his friends when they were younger, and are aiming their productions at kids and family audiences.
- In a release, de Seve explained: “I think this unsinkable young cub is totally relatable for today’s kids, with his hell-bent craving for honey and his ludicrous schemes to get it. The whole gang is hilarious, and are even more hilarious as kids, we’re finding out.”
- Brooklyn-based animation writing and voice acting company Baboon Animation is teaming with content incubator IQI Media, a Winvest Group subsidiary, to produce the film. Winvest chief intellectual officer Charlene Kelly and IQI founder Khiow Hui Lim will executive produce the film and series. The companies have pointed to other feature adaptations from classic literature, such as Peter Rabbit and Paddington, as a source of inspiration for their prequel idea.
- The plan is to have the film ready for theaters by 2024, with the series to come out immediately after. No concept art has been shared yet, but when prompted about what Winnie and his friends will look like, Kelly said: “You’ll see. Brace yourself for a surprise.”
