After the recent international success of Parasite and the unfortunate Covid-19 Global lockdown, demand for live-action entertainment is being replaced by innovative animation projects like “Nullaboo Hullabaloo.” The very first tri-party collaboration between the USA- South Korea- Australia for an animated feature film, based on Fleur Ferris’s best-selling children’s book of the same name.
First published in 2019, the book follows Janomi the fairy that is forbidden to talk to humans, but when her grandfather, the king of the fairy colony, is captured by silver spiders, she desperately needs help. She places her trust in ten- year-old country kid Gemma and tells her she MUST keep the fairies’ existence a secret. But when Gemma’s school rival, Nina, steals the secretly recorded footage of Janomi and uploads it onto YouTube, a media frenzy explodes in sleepy Nullaboo.
“It’s a fun, magical, action-adventure story that shows what could happen if fairies were discovered, but it also so much more. This story shows how dangerous one ill-intended person can be to the masses if they are in a position of influence,” says Fleur Ferris.
The book option deal was struck between Jay Ahn from MBL Media (Korea) and author Fleur Ferris, who is represented by Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. Jay will lead the project after his various successes with Animation along with Tristan Barr and David Gim from Continuance Pictures producing their first animation with development to start immediately. Astro-Nomical Entertainment based in Burbank, will closely work together as a sister company of MBL Korea, being involved in development and production for the IP.
“There couldn’t be a more timely piece for the world with the current state of affairs. Not only from creative and production but from distribution and marketing perspective, I want to bring it up to a different dimension,” says Jay Ahn.
MBL Media, co-founded by MovieBloc and Pandora TV, is an IP development, production and management company focused on animation and film content, which can travel globally.
Astro-Nomical Entertainment co-founded by Chris Henderson and Jay Ahn, specializing in animated series and feature films for family audiences, has been strategically partnered with MBL Media.
Continuance Pictures recent feature Subject was set to be release late 2020 but has been postponed due to corona-virus following the success of Tristan Barr’s one-shot film Watch the Sunset which had one of the best Australian releases on streaming platform Stan and was also named one of Cinema Australia’s Top 5 Films of the year.
“As the productions of our live-action have slowed with Covid we are excited to be taking a different direction in the safe hands of Jay Ahn,” said Tristan Barr
“This is the first of many Korean projects I plan to bring to Australia as there is untapped market of quality practitioners,” David Gim said.
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