Oscar-nominated Brown Bag Films nets €200k for new kids' series
The Irish Film Board is backing the programme.
AWARD-WINNING ANIMATION studio Brown Bag Films has netted €200,000 in state funding to help kickstart development of its new children’s television show.
The supernatural comedy, Gilbert and Allie, is a co-production with independent French firm Cyber Group Studios that will debut on the European Disney Channel in 2017.
Brown Bag is one of Ireland’s leading animation studios. As well as winning a slew of awards it has been nominated for two Oscars and has produced multiple high-profile animated children’s shows including the hugely popular Doc McStuffins, which has generated hundreds of millions of euro of merchandise sales.
The award was made as part of the Irish Film Board’s (IFB) funding commitments for the first quarter of the year.
Brown Bag has previously received funding from the IFB for several other projects including Give Up Yer Aul Sins, which was nominated for Best Animated Short Film in the 2001 Oscars.
Funding
The €200,000 award was the joint-highest amount that the IFB granted to a single project during the quarter, with supernatural thriller Muse receiving the same amount.
In total the IFB allocated just over €1 million in production loans to eight films during the first three months of the year, while two more projects received provisional funding commitments.
Just over a dozen projects received slightly more than €186,000 in development funding, which is used in areas such as screenplay developments.
Four Irish movies that hit cinema screens during the quarter received distribution support from the IFB including the well-received drama My Name Is Emily and drama The Truth Commissioner.
