Atlantyca’s Claudia Mazzucco

It’s natural for children to seek laughter and fun in the content they enjoy. Many producers and distributors feel young ones should also find helpful messages about dealing with emotions or today’s world embedded in shows. One of Atlantyca Entertainment’s major goals is to find that balance between entertainment and education. CEO Claudia Mazzucco talks to TV Kids about book-based shows with endearing characters, such as Geronimo Stilton, that act as bridges between children and the adult world.

TV KIDS: Children have many entertainment options today. What does Atlantyca want to offer them? Atlantyca’s properties are not only entertaining; they have important values, too.

MAZZUCCO: Regarding how children can enjoy entertainment, Atlantyca is very open. We recently produced a touring exhibition in Italy where we adopted virtual reality and augmented reality so children could travel through time in The Geronimo Stilton Live Experience: The Journey Through Time. This gave them the opportunity to learn using the tools they are used to because children today are different from the children that we were. Now, they are accustomed to engaging with content in different ways. So, we are very open regarding how they consume content.

On the other hand, what children consume is still an important challenge for Atlantyca. We always want to find a balance between entertainment and education. This is the reason why we started and what we still focus on. We believe that book-based properties offer a guarantee in solving this continuing challenge, and we have often reached this famous, magical balance thanks to IPs like Geronimo Stilton, Bat Pat and Berry Bees.

Having good values in our shows is still very important, but we are seeing a trend. The time has arrived when adults can learn something from children because children now have different attitudes and different words about at least two themes—the planet and diversity. Their world is so diverse. They grow up with peers and classmates who are very mixed. It’s not just in some nations; diversity is everywhere and becoming the norm. I feel that children can teach us something. Today, in order to have up-to-date content, we have to emphasize that we adults can understand more about good values from children than they can from us.

TV KIDS: To what do you attribute Geronimo Stilton’s international success?

MAZZUCCO: It’s not only a mix of entertainment and education. I ask myself this a lot because when I travel the world with Geronimo, the live character, I see children from China and other countries hanging on to his legs—wow! What is the magic recipe? Beyond the adventure and comedy that go together, I think it’s also that he’s an adult, but he’s on the side of the children. Frequently, when there is a hero in children’s books or programming, it’s usually a child or a young animal. Geronimo is a grown-up mouse, but he’s on their side. And being on their side doesn’t mean that he’s thinking the same thing that they are thinking. He gives them values that are adult values. But he also gives them love and affection. Children believe that Geronimo loves them, and I think that love is what children want the most at this moment. They feel a bit neglected. They feel adults don’t care about them enough because adults are distracted by other things, including social media. How many times do they see their fathers or mothers more interested in selfies and their “social media identity” than in taking care of them? Children feel they are the last part of the family.

Geronimo gives children a lot of attention, and he is the mediator between the adult world and children. He is a bridge. I think this is why teachers, parents and children love him.

TV KIDS: Children have the right to see characters like themselves and their families depicted in their entertainment. How important is diversity to Atlantyca?

MAZZUCCO: We won a diversity award in 2020 with Berry Bees. We chose three girls instead of three boys to be spies and the protagonists of a series.

But I think that the character that most represents diversity in our catalog is Bat Pat. He is a little bat who lives in a village where now and then a monster comes. This monster obviously scares all the villagers because what is most scary? Someone who is different.

But thanks to Bat Pat, who is another mediator, the villagers understand that the monster being different is actually good because he can find solutions to problems that they can’t. So, the monster is useful to the community because he is different. In every episode, there is a new monster—a vampire or werewolf—that offers the community a solution they couldn’t reach on their own because they are “just normal.”

The Bat Pat animated series released in 2014 and 2016 is now living a second life. A publisher in the U.S. is taking the licensing of the animated series to develop new publishing alongside the original publishing because Bat Pat is a book-based property. They fell in love with Bat Pat because of the diversity, which is so important in the U.S. They understood [that it is] a very funny comedy that can give children a way to reconsider what is scary in their classroom.

TV KIDS: Is licensing an important part of Atlantyca’s business?

MAZZUCCO: Yes, because licensing is a new revenue stream. The challenge for our company is that we want to develop book-based properties [that have long-lasting consumer awareness]. New IP is not the best for merchandising. We don’t want just an image placed on a T-shirt. Our licensing looks for the appropriate development of a property—a video game, an exhibition, a musical, a stage show. Our licensing is, above all, about what you can do with the right content based on existing IP—a book. We are doing a lot with Geronimo Stilton. We made a deal with the Minister of Culture in Italy. They asked us to invite Geronimo, the live character, to tell children about the beauty of 46 historical libraries. There are a lot of libraries in Italy that are neglected, but they are beautiful buildings of noble families. Geronimo had the honor to host children and go about like a guide. He was a cultural mediator.

We licensed the character to the Minister of Culture to do 46 events, and some libraries asked for two. The directors of the libraries didn’t even imagine the effect Geronimo Stilton has on his beloved fans. After they saw the kind of welcome he received—they had never seen so many children in their libraries—the directors from Rome and Florence asked Geronimo to repeat the live event.

TV KIDS: What is your vision for the company as you look forward?

MAZZUCCO: We want to develop something for a new target age group, preschool. So far, we haven’t produced for preschoolers, only older children.

Again, speaking of good values, we have a very good book-based property about popular science. Thanks to a great author, it takes advantage of scientific explanations to give other kinds of values about family and environment. We have this idea of continuing our mission of trying to educate children but using different genres, even scientific ones.