At Cartoon Forum this week, 75 creative teams from around Europe have gathered in Toulouse to pitch their animated TV projects, in hopes of connecting with potential buyers, co-producers and other partners. Kidscreen’s senior reporter Ryan Tuchow is there, and will be covering the trends and exciting projects he sees. (You can also catch up on our Cartoon Forum preview series from last week here.)

The first day of pitches at Cartoon Forum is almost over, and there were several strong presentations right out the gate. For those who aren’t in Toulouse with me, and for those at the event who can’t see everything, here’s what’s looking really hot. 

A slam dunk in the making 

PGS just announced during its presentation for the basketball-inspired series Alien Dunk (pictured at top, 26 x 22 minutes) that it has partnered with NBA phenom Victor Wembanyama, whose nickname is “the Alien”. He was Rookie of the Year in 2024—the first Frenchman to earn this distinction—and PGS co-founder Philippe Souter mentioned that he’s one of the top-picked characters in the video game NBA 2K. 

Wembanyama will serve as a brand ambassador for this new CG-animated series, which is inspired by his life—the main character is based on him, another character is his older sister, and animators at Stim Studio used his actual moves on the court to construct movement protocols for his character. 

In Alien Dunk, Victor is a human who plays basketball against teams from other parts of the galaxy. Commissioning broadcaster TF1 says the show for six- to 10-year-olds fills a gap in its lineup for the upper end of its target demo. And the French channel greenlit the US$15.4-million project before it even knew Wembanyama was involved, just off the strength of its comedy-adventure mix, according to youth programming director Yann Labasque. 

PGS has ambitious plans to expand the brand into hats, trading cards and books (inspired by Wembanyama’s love of reading). With Wembanyama behind it and TF1 very much into it, this could be a kids TV—and consumer products—slam dunk. 

Move over, Inside Out

Elle(s) from France’s GO-N Productions was high on my list of Cartoon Forum projects to check out—and judging from the crowd that took up maybe every seat in the pitch room, it seems like I wasn’t the only one. I’m predicting now that Elle(s) will be one of the most attended pitches this year. 

This eight x 30-minute, CG-animated series targeting tweens is based on a Kid Toussaint comic book series published by Le Lombard that has sold a million copies in France and Belgium. 

The concept has hints of Inside Out—a comparison the producers embrace, describing it as a mix between the Disney/Pixar franchise, Heartstopper and Mean Girls. 

GO-N’s vision for the adaptation is to tell a touching coming-of-age story in which Elle, a young tween, is literally doing battle with the different parts of her personality. (I think many of us can relate to that particular brew of anxiety.) GO-N presented a powerful—and fully animated—trailer that showed Elle struggling with her feelings and traveling into her mind to confront alter egos including Blue Elle, who wants to take control. 

The series has a US$5.9-million budget, and GO-N is looking to shore up co-production partners and start production at the end of 2026 for a Q3 2028 delivery. 

Road trip! 

Interestingly, there are two projects focused on road-tripping families in this year’s Cartoon Forum lineup: Murphy’s Lore (Adventurverse Studios, Ireland) and A Trip With a Drip (gretels gold, Germany).

Murphy’s Lore

How do you touch on all of Ireland’s folklore in a single eight x 22-minute series? For Murphy’s Lore co-creators Ray Quigley and Sam Moorhead, the answer is a road trip. In this 2D-animated series, two kids are dragged along on what seems like a boring vacation…until they begin to encounter all manner of mystical creatures—fairies, banshees and more—providing just enough fun and excitement to bring the family closer together. 

Exploring new places in every episode (a fairy fort one day, and a haunted lake the next, for example) will keep the adventure fresh and help the characters—and the audience—realize that “every bend in the road has its own story,” says Dave Minogue, creative director at Adventurverse Studios. And while this editorial strategy does mean having to create more art assets, the show has a campervan as a “home set” that it can reuse while introducing each episode’s environs. Murphy’s Lore is budgeted between US$4.1 million and US$4.7 million. 

RTÉ has signed a letter of intent for the series, and Screen Ireland is providing development funding. “We’re now looking for broadcast partners and distributors who want to take a weird, wonderful slice of Ireland global,” says Minogue. 

Also on today’s pitch schedule was A Trip with a Drip from Germany’s gretels gold. Budgeted at US$1.8 million, this 30-minute special is an adaptation of a graphic novel that’s been published in 22 countries. (And an English translation is due out in the US this fall.)

It kicks off when a rabbit saves a lonely wolf’s life, and wolf code says he must protect the rabbit in return. So the two unlikely companions head off on a wild cross-country road trip to avoid a hunter, encountering biker gangs and a scary bear before finding a spot to hibernate for the winter. 

A Trip with a Drip

Book author Josephine Mark regularly hears from kids at readings how much they enjoy road movies, says creative producer Sunna Isenberg. There’s universal appeal in the concept since kids around the world can compare this road trip to their own travels. And for kids who don’t travel much, there’s something exciting about imagining an adventure like this one, she says. 

“The road trip is a symbol,” adds Isenberg. “In the journey from one place to another, it’s really about the development of the characters and how they change for the better.” 

Pictured at top is Philippe Souter and Guillaume Souter, co-founders of PGS, showing off Alien Dunk.