French producer/distributor StudioCanal has snapped up the international distribution rights to Oda Upside Down, a new live-action preschool series and the first children’s production from Copenhagen, Denmark-based Sam Productions.

Available as both a 10 x 10-minute series for children aged three and up and as a format, Oda Upside Down features a healthy dose of magic and comedy in tales of its titular character, a fairy who helps a group of children reclaim their right to fantasy and imagination after a strict and villainous kindergarten teacher asserts his authority on them.

The series is created by Ida Mule Scott (Vitello) and Iben Albinus Sabroe, and executive produced by Sam Productions’ CEO Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen.

Since launching in 2014 by co-founders Sørensen (Melancholia, A Royal Affair), Søren Sveistrup (The Killing) and Adam Price (Ride Upon The Storm), Sam Productions has focused on writing and producing TV dramas for adults including Ride Upon the Storm and In the Name of the Father.

Along with actively developing and distributing high-end TV series through its network of European production partners, StudioCanal boasts a film library of more than 5,500 titles from 60 countries including kids and family features Paddington (2014) and its 2017 sequel, as well as Aardman’s upcoming stop-motion film Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.

StudioCanal is also currently working with Nickelodeon and Heyday Films, in association with Copyrights, on a new CGI-animated Paddington (working title) series, helmed by Blue Zoo’s Adam Shaw and developed for TV by Jon Foster and James Lamont (The Amazing World of Gumball, Cuckcoo, Paddington 1 & 2). Nick will premiere the show worldwide in 2020, and local broadcast partners have also been secured in France, Canada, China and Japan.