SA animation up for Emmy

Revolting Rhymes has been nominated in the Animation category at the International Emmy Kids Awards, where it’s up against Oddbods, Siesta Z, and Trude’s Flatmate.

Produced by Magic Light Pictures, Revolting Rhymes was animated at Magic Light’s Berlin studio and Cape Town’s Triggerfish Animation.

This means South African companies are now up for a hat-trick at the International Emmys, as Penguin Films’ Disney Cookabout is nominated for Non-Scripted Entertainment at the Kids Awards, while Is’thunzi’s Thuso Mbedu learned last month she is a nominee for Best Performance by an Actress.

Directed by Jakob Schuh (The Gruffalo) and Jan Lachauer (Room on the Broom), Revolting Rhymes is an adaptation of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake’s classic book of surprising fairytales. It’s voiced by a stellar cast that includes Dominic West (The Affair) as The Wolf; Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) as Red Riding Hood; and Gemma Chan (Humans) as Snow White.

Since premiering on BBC One at Christmas 2016, Revolting Rhymes has racked up four international awards: Best Animated Short at TIFF Kids and Best Animation at the World Banff Media Festival in Canada; Best Storytelling at Shanghai International Film and TV Festival in China; and the Cristal for Best TV Production at Annecy in France, the world’s premier animation festival.

The International Emmy Kids Awards will be presented at MIPTV in Cannes on 10 April 2018.

Last week, the BBC released the first image from Magic Light Pictures’ third collaboration with Triggerfish: an adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Highway Rat, a swashbuckling tale of bandits and biscuits the whole family will enjoy. David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch) leads an impressive cast as The Highway Rat.

Stick Man, Magic Light Pictures’ previous Donaldson/Scheffler production animated at Triggerfish, premiered on BBC One on Christmas Day 2015 to record ratings of 9.3 million viewers, with an overall 41 percent audience share, the fourth highest rated programme of the day. The film also won critical praise and a raft of global industry awards including the Annecy Crystal and a BAFTA nomination.