Nelvana is aiming to capture The Most Magnificent Thing…again. Canada’s Corus Entertainment has greenlit a CG-animated series based on author Ashley Spires’ book and a same-name 2019 short film for its Treehouse preschool channel. 

Millie Magnificent (52 x 11 minutes) features the book’s namesake protagonist taking on kid-sized challenges in the neighborhood with her friends and pet dog using STEAM-based skills and creative problem-solving. 

The series will debut on Treehouse in 2024 and is also being shopped to international broadcasters, says Nelvana president Pam Westman. Ruth Ramirez (Scaredy Squirrel) is directing and Laurie Handforth (The Wild) producing, with scripts written by Sheila Rogerson (Mia & Codie). Jillianne Reinseth (Kim Possible) is also on board as supervising creative producer.

In 2019, Nelvana adapted The Most Magnificent Thing (pictured) into a CG-animated short film that premiered at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International that year. Targeting kids ages six to 11, the 22-minute film sees Millie doing something magnificent with a tool kit she receives as a gift.

While the characters, stories and settings in the new series are similar, it stands out from the short film by way of its younger target audience and soundtrack. The series will have new music to better engage with today’s preschoolers, says Westman. She notes that the IP is ripe for adaptation because Millie is able to build something new in every episode and showcase her problem-solving skills as she strives to make whatever her imagination cooks up. 

The Most Magnificent Thing was first published in 2014, during the height of the maker movement, when schools and libraries were hungry for books celebrating creative engineering, Westman says. It has since sold nearly 800,000 copies in 21 different languages. Publisher Kids Can Press released a follow-up book called The Most Magnificent Idea in 2022, and a third title, The Most Magnificent Maker’s A-Z, is due out this fall. 

Nelvana has had similar success with the short film, which was acquired by France Télévisions (France), ABC Australia, TVNZ (New Zealand), Discovery Kids (Latin America), CzechTV (Czechia), RTVS (Slovakia) and NRK (Norway).