Iginio Straffi

***Iginio Straffi***Rainbow has sold a number of animated shows around the world and later this year its leading property, Winx Club, will be premiering on Nickelodeon in the U.S. and in other territories. Rainbow’s founder and CEO, Iginio Straffi, talks about the deal with Nickelodeon and other projects he has in the works.

TV KIDS: This year is starting well for Rainbow.
STRAFFI: This year started very well. We’ve made a very important deal with Nickelodeon U.S. This year the Winx girls arrive in America and will air on the channel, first with specials that will run weekly on Saturdays, then starting in September, the series will air daily. But more importantly, we will be co-producing season five and season six of the Winx Club series with Nickelodeon and this is a clear indication that they want to invest in this property and in its launch in the U.S. This isn’t a case of us experimenting and saying, let’s try airing a few episodes, see what happens and then we’ll decide what to do. Instead, thanks to this deal, for the next three or four years Nickelodeon will continue to invest in this property. And Winx will air on Nickelodeon not only in America but also on many of its international channels, in the U.K., in Latin America and in other countries so this is a very important deal for us.

So we believe this is a key moment for our company because the U.S. represents 50 percent of the worldwide licensing market and we have never gathered anything but crumbs from that market, which is so big. We foresee a lot of growth in the next few years. And besides Winx, it seems Nickelodeon is also interested in other Rainbow properties for their channels in the U.S. and internationally.

TV KIDS: Are there more opportunities in the worldwide children’s television market today than there were five or ten years ago?
STRAFFI: I feel that there are fewer opportunities because today with the dedicated children’s channels’ license fees are really very low. This makes it quite difficult for producers to recoup their costs and to work with the necessary resources required to make high-quality shows. There will always be fewer producers who can compete because the major channels and those companies that have sufficient financial resources will be able to produce quality. Even if license fees drop they can sell merchandising and they can still turn a profit. But people who have fewer resources are really struggling now.

TV KIDS: Is it very important today to sell one’s shows to one of the major children’s channels: Nickelodeon, Disney or Cartoon? Those three dominate the market don’t they?
STRAFFI: Certainly, you must sell your product to one of the major thematic channels.

TV KIDS: And is it still important to sell to one of the major terrestrials in Europe: TF1 or RAI or Mediaset or ITV?
STRAFFI: For now yes. Even in Italy, without a sale to one of the general-entertainment channels, Italia 1 or RAI, you can’t be sure of garnering enough awareness for your show. The satellite channels are pay channels and reach a smaller audience than the terrestrial networks, and digital penetration in Italy is still low. We are still in a transition period and general-entertainment channels like TF1 or RAI still make the difference. Clearly the landscape in Europe is changing rapidly and I think that in two years’ time children’s animated series will have almost disappeared from general-entertainment channels. And at that point we will depend entirely on thematic or digital channels—whether free or pay.

TV KIDS: On average nowadays how much can you make from license fees and how much from merchandising?
STRAFFI: At Rainbow, which isn’t a typical company among the independents, we make about 35 percent from TV sales and 65 percent merchandising, so one third TV and two thirds merchandising. I’ve seen balance sheets of other production companies like us, and aside from the fact that they are struggling now and their revenues and profits are much lower than ours, for the most part their split is 85-90 percent TV sales and 10-15 percent licensing.

TV KIDS: Tell us about Rainbow MagicLand.
STRAFFI: This is another great novelty this year. This spring will inaugurate Rainbow MagicLand, which is a theme park that will have all our characters, from Winx to PopPixie and Huntik to Monster Allergy. There will be roller coasters, rides and attractions for the family as well as attractions for teens.

It is the most state-of-the-art theme park in Europe at the moment because we are buying all the most advanced technologies. There will be an interactive dark ride—the only one in Europe—where it will be possible to interact with the surroundings.

We also have re-created the Castle of Alfea, the castle of the Winx fairies that houses one of the Winx attractions; the other is outside the castle. It’s a real castle with the classrooms and living quarters with towers that are 38 meters high and the courtyard is 60 square meters in size. So our fans’ dream of visiting the fairy school will come true near Rome—the theme park is half an hour from Rome by car.

TV KIDS: What other projects and productions do you have in the works?
STRAFFI: For TV we just launched the series PopPixie. The ratings have been very good so we have high hopes that the merchandising we will be introducing in a few months will be well received.

We are in production of our first live-action and CGI animation series called Mia and Me. It’s a co-production between us, Lucky Punch, a joint venture between m4e AG and Gerhard Hahn, the Canadian company March Entertainment and the German broadcaster ZDF.

We presented the first episode at MIP Junior and it was the most screened series there. We are in the process of closing many deals because Mia and Me features a new production technique and the story is interesting and this will also have a merchandising program set to launch in 2012.

Season two of Huntik: Secrets & Seekers is a major priority this year. We are investing $10 million in the series and will be doing a huge launch at MIPTV, including an exhibit of the illustrations to showcase the extraordinary quality and complexity of the characters, settings and production level.

Another project that I am talking about more and more and that is taking up much time and energy is the movie we are producing. It’s a comedy, the working title is Gladiator. We have been working on it for four years and it will be completed at the end of the year. It’s a comedy written by Michael Wilson, the screenwriter of Ice Age. We are making it with a care, quality and cost like never before because it’s our first original film. We’ve already produced three Winx films that were very successful, but with those we had the advantage of the huge awareness and popularity that Winx enjoyed, even though they targeted mainly girls and not boys. This new film, instead, is a movie for everyone, like Shrek, with humor that can also be enjoyed by adults. While the movie is for everyone, it’s an original idea and doesn’t have the built-in fan base of Winx, so we have to make it at the same quality level of American feature films, and that requires lots of work and effort and resources.

But we will be ready to release it in the movie theaters next January or February, and soon I will be able to announce the distributor for the U.S.