Family

Amazon Studios will do pilot for Maker Shack Agency. Prime Instant Video just greenlit the live-action pilot from Electus Studios, for children ages 6-11.

Image Credit: Amazon

If you took Scandals Olivia Pope and Associates, made them kid-friendly and gadget-savvy, you would have Maker Shack Agency, a new pilot coming to Amazon Studios.

Prime Instant Video just greenlit the live-action pilot from Electus Studios, which is aimed at children ages 6-11. Maker Shack Agency follows a 13-year-old inventor named Angus Wolfe and his best friends, Jo and Merle. Together, they “use all the branches of science and personal ingenuity to solve their client’s problems by making a new invention every episode,” according to a press release.
“We are incredibly excited for our first initiative with Amazon and we look forward to inspiring the next generation of makers,” said Drew Buckley, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Digital for Electus. “With Maker Shack Agency, we hope to inspire kids to think about new and different ways to solve life’s problems and to never be afraid of failure – as Wolfie always says, ‘Fail Forward. ‘”
But not everything on the show will be fiction. The production team will join forces with research and development company Applied Minds to create the gadgets featured on the show. After all, Inspector Gadget is so 1999.

Warner Brothers is developing an animated Scooby-Doo partnering with Atlas Entertainment who worked on the Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. film.

Image Credit: Warner Bros.

It’s been almost a decade since the last Scooby-Doo film, but fear not, Mystery Inc. fans, Warner Bros. is bringing the gang back to the big screen in a new animated feature.

The studio is partnering with Atlas Entertainment for the project, with producers Charles Roven and Richard Suckle – who worked on the live action films starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. – at the helm.
Though the latest spooky plot is still under wraps, Warner Bros. has hired writer Matt Lieberman to pen the ghost-hunting Great Dane and Mystery Machine crew’s adventure. Lieberman just finished a screenplay for Short Circuit, a remake of the 1986 sci-fi family film, as well as a project for Paramount Animation.

Swindle premieres Saturday, August 24 at 8 pm ET on Nickelodeon. Starting at 8 pm fans can join McCurdy, O’Neal and Crawford for questions on @NickelodeonTV

Image Credit: ALL CROPS: ITV

Your tween is probably staying in Saturday night. Nick will premiere its original TV movie, Swindle, this Saturday, and the cast of the silly caper features everyone who’s anyone for the under-13 set. Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande from Sam and Cat, Noah Crawford and Chris O’Neal from How to Rock, Ciara Bravo from Big Time Rush, and iCarly’s Noah Munck will all star in the adaptation of the the popular children’s book by Gordon Korman.

In Swindle, an evil collector cons Griffin (Crawford) out of a million-dollar baseball card that could have saved his best friend’s (O’Neal) home, so he unites a ragtag group of his classmates (McCurdy, Grande, Bravo and Munck) to take down the swindler.

The popular Barbie web series Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, aimed at teenage girls, is coming to Nickelodeon for a television tryout.

The popular Barbie web series Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, aimed at teenage girls, is coming to Nickelodeon for a television tryout. “Nickelodeon is a longstanding partner of the Barbie brand, this made them the perfect place to premiere our first half-hour special based on our popular web series,” said Ed Horasz, senior director of entertainment marketing for Mattel. “With more than 800 million web views worldwide, the extended episode lets Nick’s audience get a peek into Barbie’s life, and will pave the way for more Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse content in the future. ”
This extended episode of Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse on Nick is currently a one-time special, however, future episodes seem likely.

Pixar’s fifteenth feature film The Good Dinosaur will hit theaters next May. The beloved animation studio has just fired the film’s director, Bob Peterson.

Image Credit: Pixar

Pixar’s fifteenth feature film The Good Dinosaur will hit theaters next May. It might sound strange, then, that the beloved animation studio has just fired the film’s director, Bob Peterson, from the project, according to the LA Times. But Pixar has lately made swapping directors Standard Operating Procedure – most controversially with last year’s Brave, the company’s first-ever female-headlined film, which was also going to be its first-ever female-directed film before the ousting of original helmer Brenda Chapman. Chapman now works for cross-court rivals DreamWorks Animation, and recently implied to the New York Times that Pixar chief John Lasseter micro-manages; coincidentally, Lasseter himself stepped in to replace the original director of Cars 2, that terrifying post-apocalyptic horror film that your kids love so darn much.
The LA Times quotes a couple of Pixarites who claim this is just a typical animated-movie shuffle. Because of Pixar’s unique brain-trust set-up, most of the films resemble group projects, with creative personnel regularly shifting roles and features. The Executive Vice President of Production for Pixar is quoted as saying that Bob Peterson is still employed at Pixar and notes, “We hope he will stay here for the rest of his natural life,” which sounds a bit like a threat if you imagine the EVP speaking with Kelsey Grammer’s voice and twirling a cartoon mustache. (Pixar’s set-up is a bit reminiscent of an Old Hollywood studio in that sense; hey, Wizard of Oz had about four directors, and it turned out okay.)
Still, it’s yet another curious development for Pixar, which has spent the post-Toy Story 3 era making fabulously successful movies that pretty much everyone agrees aren’t as good as Pixar’s older fabulously successful movies.