Moonbug has named Gina Costelloe as its head of distribution and originals for EMEA, Kidscreen has confirmed.

She’s now in charge of the company’s sales and original content production in the region, managing a growing lineup of kids brands that includes CoCoMelon (pictured), Blippi and Oddbods.

Costelloe has been at Moonbug for two years and in that time she has inked broadcast deals, such as with Disney+ EMEA for CG-animated preschool series Go Buster (30 x 2.5 minutes) and Lellobee City Farm (78 x two minutes) in August. Last month, she also signed a broadcast deal with BBC for a package of CG-animated shows, including Blippi Wonders and Little Baby Bum.

She joined Moonbug in 2020, bringing EMEA knowledge and distribution experience from her previous position at The LEGO Group as senior manager of content distribution for Western Europe. Before that she was Disney’s content planning manager for franchises in EMEA.

After building success acquiring digital-first brands—such as preschool IP CoComelon—and distributing its content, Moonbug has been moving more into original production, making the CG-animated series Blippi Wonders (pictured, 26 x three minutes), CoComelon Lane (24 x seven minutes) for Netflix and live-actioner Blippi’s Treehouse (12 x 20 minutes) for Amazon Kids+.

Moonbug has been growing across content and consumer products this year, following its acquisition by Candle Media (a media company owned by former Disney execs Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs) in November 2021. Buoyed by Candle’s support, Moonbug acquired the YouTube network Little Angel in February and the Singaporean studio One Animation (Oddbods) in May.