Bookish

David Wood hears from leading producers and distributors about what it takes to turn a kids’ novel or comic book into a hit TV show.

It’s seemingly never been a better time to be in the children’s book business. Sales are up, and as producers the world over seek out compelling concepts for the next big hit show, they are more than willing to option works by both big-name and unknown authors.

Underpinning this period of sustained growth in children’s book publishing are parents and grandparents, who have become avid consumers as they look for opportunities to share quality time with kids who are increasingly devoted to their smartphones and social media. That trend, coupled with a decline in the social provision of library services in some countries, has led to the boom in the children’s book trade and a wide range of new creative options for producers and distributors of kids’ television.

“The big opportunity in a property based on books or comics is that you have so much wonderful material to draw on,” says Vince Commisso, the co-founding partner, president and CEO of 9 Story Media Group. “At the very least [you have] an appealing central character and a great story. Success comes from building upon that.”

So the hunt is certainly on for the next big thing in children’s entertainment, with many producers focusing on book and comic fairs where they hope to strengthen existing relationships and forge new ones with publishers and authors.

“[Finding] new material from the Frankfurt and Bologna book fairs is most relevant for us,” says Hans Ulrich Stoef, the CEO of m4e.

Tom van Waveren, the CEO and creative director of CAKE, recommends keeping an ear to the ground at home and abroad for what’s new. “Look over the shoulder of your children, nephews and nieces—that’s a good way to find out what’s currently popular. If I have half an hour in a foreign city, I love looking at books in the children’s section and asking bookstore staff what’s selling well and why. You might get lucky and sniff out a property that nobody’s thought of.”

LIBRARY CARD
Halle Stanford, the executive VP of children’s entertainment at The Jim Henson Company, notes that the company has been tapping into its network of relationships for source material. The company is producing Dot., based on the acclaimed children’s book of the same name by Randi Zuckerberg, and is working with Weird Al Yankovic to adapt his books My New Teacher and Me! and When I Grow Up into a series.

“Randi Zuckerberg brought us our new preschool series Dot. and William Morris brought Weird Al to us,” Stanford says. “But at Henson, the most important places to find new work are bookstores and libraries.”

There is also a steady flow of new material from existing long-term relationships with publishers and author’s agents, reports Joan Lambur, executive producer for animation and kids’ live action and family programming at Breakthrough Entertainment.

“I try as best I can to be in touch with agents and publishers and hopefully get an early look at emerging authors and new titles,” Lambur says. “I have a stack of new titles on my desk waiting for me.”

Alternatively, there are plenty of book properties that are in the public domain—but it’s important to consider the potential downsides. Public domain properties are not protected by copyright, trademark or patent laws.

“If you are considering a serious L&M program it’s problematic—for a start it’s going to be tough to license a property where there is no guarantee of exclusivity,” explains Lambur.

The fear is that unscrupulous parties can piggyback on a successful relaunch of a classic character and you have no legal protection. “It’s not for the faint of heart,” insists Lambur, who adds: “A licensing expert once said to me they would never touch the classic children’s character Pinocchio for that very reason.”

BY THE NUMBERS
Broadly, the more successful a book or comic in terms of sales, the more a publisher will expect in return for rights to adapt it for TV. According to some kids’ TV experts, dealing with book publishers can be frustrating, with some having unrealistic expectations about what TV rights are worth in the current marketplace.

“Some of the traditional book publishers haven’t adjusted to the new world of TV and film adaptation,” says m4e’s Stoef. “The prices they are still trying to work with might have been relevant 15 to 20 years ago, but now it is more competitive and difficult to finance kids’ TV, so huge down payments for authors don’t work that well anymore.”

In return for accepting smaller license fees, some publishers can be offered co-production partner status in a tele­vision adaptation.

One of the big advantages of better-established properties is that they are seen as less risky by broadcasters and licensing and marketing executives and, therefore, are easier to finance. Strong sales also indicate that there is something in the story that appeals to its target audience.

Working with big-name authors also helps get that parental endorsement, says Breakthrough’s Lambur. The company is collaborating with Margaret Atwood on Wandering Wenda, an adaptation of her preschool books, and with Canadian poet Dennis Lee for a series based on his Melvis and Elvis poems.

But even in the absence of best-seller credentials, it can be worth developing projects that you just happen to like or that you have a gut feeling has potential, says CAKE’s van Waveren.

“Everybody’s heard of the big publishing success stories, but in the middle ground there is much more potential for finding a gem,” he says. In the case of CAKE’s Angelo Rules, for example, a producer simply thought the books, Comment Faire Enrager… by Sylvie de Mathuisieulx and Sébastien Diologent, were unique and funny, reveals van Waveren.

SPIRIT OF COLLABORATION
Signing up the rights to a book is just the first step toward creating a successful TV series or film.

“Having the right characters and design is the starting point,” says 9 Story’s Commisso. “The challenge with adaptation is always how you maintain the integrity and the DNA of the creative conceit of the original text.”

9 Story is currently developing a property based on the Otis the Tractor books, and has partnered with Scholastic on the reboot of The Magic School Bus and with Mattel on the brand-new Angelina Ballerina. It also recently acquired the classic Garfield and Friends library.

One of the keys to successful adaptation is a strong working relationship between the producer and the author (or their agent), the quality of which can determine a show’s success—or failure.

“You want to make sure there is a great creative bridge between the literary property and the TV show,” Commisso notes. “As a producer, you have to be confident that the bridge can be built, and you have the right people along the way to build the bridge. Sometimes you can get the wrong creative team and that might need changing, but generally the more closely involved authors are, the better. It helps you stay true to the original concept and its creative DNA.”

9 Story has worked closely with Katharine Holabird on Angelina Ballerina and with Loren Long on developing his Otis stories.

“When you develop a story and make changes you really want the author’s buy in—in my experience you need to ask them, ‘Is this a journey you can envisage this character taking over 13 or 26 episodes?’” Commisso says.

Henson’s Stanford agrees, stating, “We like to have authors involved in the process of assembling the creative team itself and picking the writers. That way we make sure that we put together the right team for the adaptation.”

Stanford says that in Henson’s adaptation of Weird Al Yankovic’s books, the company agreed to having his book editor, Anne Hoppe, brought on board as a creative consultant.

“When Al asked us if we would hire on Anne Hoppe we thought, ‘How is this going to go?’ It turned out to be a wonderful collaboration, and we learned a lot from her about briefing writers.”

REVEALING SOURCES
In some instances, it pays to keep close to the source material, as Breakthrough Entertainment did on its feature adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Montgomery’s granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, served as an executive producer on the film. “I don’t think we would have undertaken tackling such a beloved and precious character without having that family backing—even though it is now public domain,” recalls Breakthrough’s Lambur.

“The upside was huge—Kate Macdonald Butler’s knowledge was invaluable. She has so much insight and information about what makes Anne tick. She knew exactly what license we could take and where the novel’s internal rules couldn’t be broken.”

More often it’s about creating a new world that feels exactly like the original books, but tailored for TV.

CAKE’s van Waveren underlines that successful adaptations are all about staying true to the original, putting your finger on what made it special and not messing about with that essence too much. However, he stresses that TV has its own narrative requirements.

As an example, van Waveren references the new series Bottersnikes & Gumbles, based on a series of kids’ books published from the late ’60s to the late ’80s by Australian author S.A. Wakefield and illustrated by Desmond Digby. The CAKE-distributed show centers on two groups of fantasy creatures. CAKE and Australian producers Cheeky Little Media and Mighty Nice tweaked the property for a new generation of viewers. It is airing on Seven Network in Australia and CBBC in the U.K., and on Netflix in the rest of the world.

“To give kids a more obvious entry point to this imaginary world, there needed to be a good number of characters who are obviously children, so we created three new key characters to lead the action from a kids’ point of view,” van Waveren says. “Essentially, we made the kids’ perspective more explicit.”

ARTISTIC LICENSE
On CAKE’s TeamTO-produced Angelo Rules, the main character gets his own way by knowing how to push people’s buttons. He had to be adjusted for TV to appear less obnoxious, while keeping the essential ingredient of the original—namely that Angelo instinctively knows what makes people tick. “He was put in a school with friends and sets about fighting perceived injustices in his everyday life,” van Waveren says. “It’s about him standing up to adults and setting up strategies to turn the situation around based on his insights.”

Problems can start when you have a series of books that have sold well, and the author wants to animate them but is determined to stay closer to the original than you think is appropriate, observes van Waveren.

“We have been in situations where after a few conversations it was clear that the people controlling the publishing rights haven’t accepted that moving to a new medium requires a different approach.”

Breakthrough’s Lambur believes that if the chemistry between the author or publisher and the producer isn’t right, then the project probably won’t work out.

“I have worked with creators who are precious to the point where it makes it really hard, so before you get into working with estates or particular individuals, you might try to find out what they are like from people who have worked with them before. If you have heard from a few people that the author is difficult, it might be best to stay away.”

PAGE TURNERS
The failure of a book or comic adaptation might not always come down to any clash of views between different stakeholders. Some books or comics adapt less easily than others because of their intrinsic nature. For example, sometimes the original texts are so well written that you’d lose too much of the integrity of the original project if you tried a TV version, explains Stoef at m4e.

“In CG animation, the budget limits the number of sets you can build,” he says. “This is one of the first things we look at before deciding if it’s a concept we can take on or not. If you have a series of books that will need the creation of 50 sets, that’s going to be almost impossible because for every episode you’d have to build a new set.”

The German company is adapting the fantasy comic Jinnrise by Sohaib Awan as a CGI action-adventure show, together with Jabal Entertainment, and is showcasing a new season of Miffy’s Adventures Big and Small, inspired by Dick Bruna’s classic picture books from Mercis.

“There are lots of wonderful stories that we can see won’t translate easily,” 9 Story’s Commisso adds. “A unique character in a book that lives inside a unique world tends not to adapt too well. In the book, you invite the reader to share this unique world, but on TV, kids want to see something that reflects their world and their experiences.”

MAKING THE TRANSITION
Stoef recalls a German animation inspired by Joachim Masannek’s The Wild Soccer Bunch series. The children’s books were hugely successful and spawned five live-action movies that were big box-office hits. “But when they tried an animated series it was a complete disaster, which didn’t help the brand at all,” Stoef says. “The films worked because they got young actors who were part of a well-known acting dynasty, but the animated version lacked that familiarity—it came over as cold and stiff, and kids couldn’t easily identify with it.”

What this boils down to is that not every book or comic property suits the TV treatment. And for Stoef, there are simply too many book-related kids’ properties on the market at present.

“Book adaptations fill the pipeline and restrict access to the broadcasters for other potential projects. I think it’s a shame that people try and turn each and every book that is successful into a TV series—sometimes it is better to keep the fantasy in the book. If you nail it down with a TV visualization, you can destroy this a little.”

Pictured: The Jim Henson Company’s Dot.