By Andrea Hernandez and Sadhana Bharanidharan

As MIP Junior gets ready to kick off on Saturday, we have a fresh rundown of some pre-market announcements to share.

Pocket.watch 

The LA-based company has partnered with eight new YouTube creators and has plans to expand their brands beyond the platform. Joining pocket.watch’s roster are JunyTony (music), Crafty Hacks (arts & crafts), Hungry FAM (food), My PB and J (family life), Kamdenboy and Kyraboo (imaginative games), Lively Lewis Show (family fun), Yogapalooza (yoga) and Woohoo Storytime (educational games). They join teen magician Dan Rhodes, who partnered with pocket.watch earlier this month, and 13 other YouTube creators that came aboard in May. The company’s library now boasts more than 70,000 videos.

Toonz Media Group

The animation studio has teamed up with Spain’s Futurum Kids to co-produce and co-distribute a new CG-animated series called Charlie’s Ark (52 x 11 minutes). Based on Mike Payne’s kids book series, it features the adventures of a five-year-old boy and his animal-shaped toys that magically come to life. The partners have started production in Ireland and Las Palmas, and will present the concept at MIPCOM.

Xilam

The French studio has secured multiple EMEA renewals for its upcoming fourth season of Zig & Sharko. Gulli (France), VRT-Ketnet (Belgium), Discovery (Italy), DeAKids (Italy), Nickelodeon (India) and Nova TV (Israel) have acquired the latest batch of episodes, which are slated to start airing in September 2023. The 78 x seven-minute slapstick comedy features a hyena who is constantly scheming to eat a mermaid under the protection of a shark.

Apple

Animated short The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse has joined the Apple TV+ Christmas programming lineup. Based on a 2019 book of the same name by Charlie Mackesy, this co-pro from J.J. Abrams’ prodco Bad Robot and London-based NoneMore Productions will also launch on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK on Christmas Day.

MIAM!

The Paris-based distributor has signed a deal with Narrative Entertainment in the UK for The MiniWhats (pictured), a 2D-animated series based on a book series called Les QuiQuoi by Olivier Tallec and Laurent Rivelaygue. The 52 x seven-minute toon will air on Narrative’s linear channel Tiny POP in 2023. Commissioned by France Télévisions, The MiniWhats is produced by Silex Films and Doncvoilà Productions in Paris.

Discovery Family

The US broadcaster has snapped up CG-animated adventure-comedy series Petronix Defenders from French prodco Method Animation. Mediawan Rights distributes the series featuring a team of kid superheroes who save endangered wild animals. It will premiere on Discovery Family in English on October 15, and on November 5 in Spanish on Discovery Familia. The show first launched in China this August, followed by rollouts on RTS (Switzerland), RTBF (Belgium) and Tiny Pop (UK). It will also air on M6 Kid and Gulli (France) in November and Super RTL (Germany) next February.