Rainbow Group’s Iginio Straffi

Rainbow began as one company in 1995, focused on animated fare for youngsters. One of its first hits was Winx Club, a series for girls that spun off movies, a live-action series, toys and merchandising. Today, Rainbow Group, led by Iginio Straffi, founder and CEO, includes animation and live-action studios, a talent agency and a toy company. Straffi talks to TV Kids about his investments, upcoming shows and the joy he derives from reimagining stories from the past for today’s young audiences.

TV KIDS: What has been the strategy to expand the company?
STRAFFI: My vision for the last ten years has been to grow the company with some strategic acquisitions, starting with Bardel in 2015, an established animation service provider in Vancouver and Kelowna. We wanted a fully integrated company from preproduction and postproduction facilities in our studios in Italy to original and top-quality animation in Canada and have everything in-house, from the concept to the finished show. Bardel has contributed to increasing the quality of our work. They are also servicing Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. We have produced many shows with Bardel, and visually, you can see the improvement. The first one was 44 Cats, which I believe brought the standard for television animation to a new level—the facial expressions, fur and movement, all of which we implemented thanks to the collaboration between our studios in Italy and Vancouver. We are working on other shows together; one is Mermaids: Magic of the Deep for Netflix, announced last year, and our reboot of Winx, which will probably be released in 2025.

We were also doing well in live action with Maggie & Bianca Fashion Friends, but the world was changing fast, and platforms’ appetites were getting bigger and bigger. So, I thought buying a studio specialized in live action would contribute to faster growth for Rainbow. In 2017, I acquired Colorado Film, an Italian leader in comedies. They have a network of screenwriters, directors, directors of photography and even a talent agency called Moviement. We thought we could grow much faster in live-action production through Colorado Film, and that has been the case. We continued with Colorado’s business in comedies, but we immediately started with new genres and more international shows in line with Rainbow’s DNA. We are producing successful thrillers based on best-selling books like The Girl in the Fog and Into the Labyrinth, a love story for Netflix, which was also quite successful. We had a big action movie, My Name is Vendetta, among [the top] non-English-language movies on Netflix. This was a big achievement, not only because Colorado can now produce genres besides local comedies but also because we managed to have the most-viewed Italian movie on Netflix.

We are continuing our live-action kids’ and family strategy. We launched the Me Contro Te franchise, two very popular YouTubers. We are very happy to expand our content offer from kids’ animation to kids’ and adult live action in various genres.

TV KIDS: Is it necessary for a company to be of a certain size to compete in today’s market?
STRAFFI: Yes, that is one of the reasons why we have made these acquisitions. We are looking for other opportunities in the market because size matters a lot, nowadays more than before. You have to have a certain size to sit at certain tables, finance certain projects and retain the rights. If you don’t have money, you have to produce IPs just as a ser­vice provider; you will not get a contract where you own the IP. We try to own IPs and their rights and exploit them in every media, including licensing and merchandising. We have to make investments to finance our IPs and shows, and then the platforms will start to pay on delivery and, in the next two years, with quarterly payments. But you have to [make the investments] upfront. If you are too small, you can’t even find bank facilities to help.

TV KIDS: What is your view of the children’s content market today, and how do you identify ideas that have the potential to become successful brands?
STRAFFI: We see many proposals on paper and IPs coming from publishing or other media, such as video games, and we try to analyze their potential. First, it needs to be content audiences want to engage with. Second, it has to have merchandising opportunities. It’s a double challenge because sometimes we have content with great entertainment value but poor chances of translating into successful merchandising and none of the elements that make a toy company or licensees happy. So, most of the time, Rainbow has to pass on these kinds of IPs because we have developed our business into a company that produces content that can be merchandised with salespeople organized by categories and countries. To feed our organization, we need to have IPs with certain elements. That’s our criteria for choosing.

The world of cartoons and entertainment has fragmented. It is now more competitive than before because there are so many places where kids are watching their favorite content. The best option would be to be everywhere, which creates two problems. One is that many broadcasters want to have all the rights, and they also have certain digital expectations. The other is that there are too many broadcasters and platforms, but you can’t be on a network and a competing network, so it’s more difficult to reach kids. We’ve learned that if you have IP with a certain heritage, background and awareness, you can try to create something around it and bring it to a new audience. That is the advantage of something that is already in people’s minds. When you start from scratch, you need a great idea and very committed broadcast partners or platforms because otherwise, they don’t have the patience to let the IP grow. They want immediate results. You risk having a great product that never becomes successful.

TV KIDS: You are working on a live-action show, Gormiti: The New Era, that you will bring to MIPCOM.
STRAFFI: Gormiti was a toy in the ’80s but still has a high level of awareness in certain European countries. It started in Italy, but it’s also in Spain, France and Greece. It was brought to television in the form of cartoons. When I had the opportunity to create new content for this brand, I embarked on this project because I strongly believed in its potential. Instead of a new animated version, I immediately thought we should do a live-action show with many stunning visual effects—a very interesting coming-of-age story about kids who end up living an adventure far bigger than them. They must keep everything undercover because they cannot tell anyone in school or their parents. They must live a double life because they have this special encounter—they have to save the planet of Gorm, where the Gormiti are from. The children develop a bond with people from this other world and will have to save their world, which, in a way, is related to our planet. It is a real action adventure, but I want it to be more in line with today’s storytelling, like We Can Be Heroes, a very successful Netflix movie from a couple of years ago. To bring Gormiti to a new generation of fans, you have to give them all the [right] elements—characters they can relate to, a desire to become friends with the Gormiti and be part of the Gormiti world. We are very pleased with what we are doing.

TV KIDS: You also reimagined Pinocchio.
STRAFFI: I’m trying to reimagine all these big IPs. My first question is always, what can be attractive today about this beautiful story if you are a boy or a girl in South Korea, Mexico or Africa? When I pose this question, I have to come up with solutions to reinvent parts of the story that the original author was not interested in solving. For Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio was an Italian tale told more than 100 years ago. His world was different from ours. I tried to reinvent the world of Pinocchio, maintaining its DNA, the main characters and the main parts of the story, like when Pinocchio has the misadventure with the shark. We have placed everything inside a modern setting where Pinocchio lives with his friend Freeda; I thought we needed a female lead in Pinocchio’s world. I liked the idea of having a pirate girl who lives on an island and is under a spell. She was transformed into a ragdoll and needs to become a girl again. We know from the book that Pinocchio wishes to become a real boy. It’s nice that these two characters cross paths, become friends, live an adventure and have the common goal of becoming human. Pinocchio and Friends is doing very well in the countries where it is airing, so I think we have managed to give new life to this fairy tale.

TV KIDS: How are Rainbow’s licensing and merchandising businesses?
STRAFFI: We suffered during the pandemic with stores closed and licensees that were not producing stuff for a while, at least not in Europe. Now, post-Covid, we are back in full action and very excited. Pinocchio and Friends is already delivering licensing results even with only 26 12-minute episodes, and the second season will be released this fall. We are launching the licensing program for Mermaids: Magic of the Deep, Gormiti: The New Era and, eventually, the reboot of Winx. We will have three merchandisable IPs that will air between 2024 and 2025.

TV KIDS: If you look ahead 12 to 24 months, in which businesses do you see the most growth potential?
STRAFFI: We have a lot of potential in licensing and merchandising, but my live-action division, Colorado Film, is growing double digits every year in revenues and number of projects. We have a pipeline with various output deals in place. I believe the kids’ licensing and live action for kids and adults should give us nice growth.