MIMO Studios is partnering up once again with Like a Photon Creative and Crayola Studios as the companies are moving forward with an animated feature adaptation of “Maggie and Abby’s Neverending Pillow Fort,” TheWrap has exclusively learned.
The 85-minute film begins production in Australia later this month. It will receive the assistance of Screen Queensland’s Post Digital and Visual rebate incentive.
Written by Will Taylor, “Maggie and Abby’s Neverending Pillow Fort” follows two friends who learn that their pillow fort isn’t the first to exist. It’s actually part of massive network of pillow and sofa forts all around the world with its own authority system — and they’re not happy with Maggie and Abby.
“There was three of us who all read the book at the same time right at the beginning of COVID. It felt like quintessential antidote to what it was like to be a kid in that particular window of time,” Cyma Zarghami, founder and CEO of MIMO Studios, told TheWrap. Zarghami noted that while COVID was socially difficult for children, those years led to children spending more time with their families and embracing their imaginations.
“They were being really creative and inventive, which is one of the things that I think attracted Crayola to the project,” Zarghami said.
This marks the second collaboration between Like a Photon Creative (LAPC) and MIMO Studios after “The Pout-Pout Fish,” which is expected to premiere later this year. That upcoming animated feature is an adaptation of Deborah Diesen’s popular preschool book franchise and will include the voices of big-name stars like Nick Offerman, Amy Sedaris and Jordin Sparks.
The two companies are also in the midst of developing two more films. MIMO Studios already has history with Crayola Studios, which was formed in 2023. They are in the midst of developing Gen-Z Media’s award-winning podcast and best-selling book series, “The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian.”
This partnership also continues the new business model MIMO Studios and LAPC have been experimenting with, which bypasses the often time-consuming development cycle to get movies to children and families faster.
“We collectively decide on projects that we like, and we have a financial model that allows them to be greenlit almost immediately. We have to go out and find a little bit of gap financing, but we are good to go within a very short period of time,” Zarghami explained. “That is very new. If you’ve been stuck in the development cycle or you’ve been waiting for somebody to redevelop a project, it makes it go much faster and it’s incredibly economical.”
Despite the fact that the team for “Maggie and Abby’s Neverending Pillow Fort” is in New York, Los Angeles and Australia, Zarghami noted that the the process has been “incredibly smooth and incredibly collaborative.” Zarghami, who served as the president of Nickelodeon for 12 years, has been pleased to see children and family entertainment become more globalized.
“It’s very cool and really additive,” she said. “It makes animation and kids content really exciting because it isn’t dependent on pop culture so much.”
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