Deals in Brief – September 4, 2024

Canal+ picks up family series Walter's Christmas for the holiday 2024 season, and Sinking Ship moves its Jane's Endangered Animal Experience into the Toronto Zoo for a year.

September 4, 2024

Canal+ in France has scooped up the first season of Walter’s Christmas: Keeper of the Forest (24 x 26 minutes) from Paris-based distributor APC Kids to launch at the end of the year. Produced by Cosmo Film and originally commissioned by TV2 Denmark, this live-action fantasy series follows a young boy who meets a shapeshifting girl from an enchanted forest near his family farm.
Canada’s Sinking Ship Entertainment—which produces Jane with the Jane Goodall Institute for Apple TV+—has brought its traveling interactive exhibit based on the series to the Toronto Zoo. Produced by Sinking Ship and Flying Fish Exhibits, Jane’s Endangered Animal Experience launched last year at LA’s California Science Center and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It will run in Toronto until July 2025, offering information about the North American Honey Bee and featuring a kid-sized model of a bee that young visitors can climb onto to get a bug’s-eye view.
Britain’s Entertainment Film Distributors will stage a theatrical rollout in the UK and Ireland for family pic The Magic Faraway Tree, likely sometime during the 2025 holiday season. Based on a collection of classic novels written by Enid Blyton between 1939 and 1951, this feature’s premise revolves around three kids who discover an enchanted tree in the countryside. Neal Street Productions, Elysian Film Group and Ashland Hill Media Finance are producing the project, with Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy in starring roles.
To build hype for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, WB Pictures has teamed up with LA-based creative agency Mirada to roll out an immersive web-based app called Welcome To The Afterlife Generator (pictured) that converts selfies of fans into spooky “Beetlejuice” versions. Digital seems to be at the heart of WB’s marketing campaign for the sequel pic, following a unique Roblox experience where players could buy movie tickets on the platform.