Valeria Korotina, VP, Chief Commercial Officer, spoke to ttvnews about how the company creates and distributes high-quality titles that are designed to engage kids of multiple ages and across many international territories.
Animotion Media Group is a content production and distribution company specializing in high-quality family entertainment. With a strong focus on engaging storytelling and captivating visuals, the group develops and distributes animated films and series that resonate with international audiences.
Through their expanding portfolio, which includes Finnick, Detective Finnick, The Fixies, Beardy Bodo and many others, Animotion continues to set new standards in kids’ entertainment, bringing unique and meaningful stories to young audiences across the globe.
In the following interview with ttvnews, Valeria Korotina, VP, Chief Commercial Officer at Animotion Media Group, talks about the new trends in kids’ content production and the highlights from the company’s current catalog, which follows kids’ interests, and caters to a wide age range with compelling and engaging stories.
What is your current outlook on the kids’ content industry? What do you believe will be the main trends in terms of genres and productions for 2025?
The kids’ content industry is redefining itself, as now the productions have to follow the kids interests, rather than offering them content, which the adults believe kids should watch. There’s a medium, like YouTube or TikTok, which shows what kids audiences want to watch. Productions have to follow the kids’ interests, rather than offering them content, which the adults believe kids should watch.
What are the main challenges of producing kids’ content today? What do you look for when it comes to selecting projects for your catalog?
The main challenge is keeping up with your audience, hence many of the productions stay in the safe harbor of preschool, the age when the parents selects what a child will watch. This factor creates an oversaturation of the preschool content in the market and a niche for quality productions for kids, tweens and teens. When selecting new project we, at Animotion Media, first of think about the target audience, so that our catalogue caters to all the ages withing the range from 0 to 12.
Which are the star titles from your current catalog for the international market?
This year Animotion is introducing a new series Detective Finnick, which is aimed at kids from 7 to 10 years old. It’s about a creature called Finnick, who is an invisible to humans “house elf”. He’s friends with a girl Christine, who lives in his house, the story of their friendship was revealed in the first feature, which was premiered in 2022. This year a second feature about Finnick coming in October, which will be premiered on multiple territories.
Unlike older generations, who accessed content solely on linear TV, having content available whenever-wherever they want is the norm for kids today. How do you think the streaming evolution has changed the business of how kids content is distributed?
Enormously. More and more IPs are launched digitally first, and then find their way to linear. Linear broadcasters analyze closely what’s happening in the streaming world, both AVOD and SVOD, as they need to keep up with the competition.
In this regard, which platforms and territories do you currently work with? Which regions do you believe have the biggest potential for your content to grow in?
Animotion Media Group is based in the UAE, so MENA region is a primary focus for us. We work with MBC, Shahid, Spacetoon, eVision, Yango Play and some other partners. We’re very focused on China, as our IP The Fixies has been successfully distributed there for 10 years now on Tencent and other platforms, and we are launching our edutainment series Beardy Bodo in China this year. The Fixies are also very successful on YouTube. The English channel has 2.6M subscribers with over 45% of viewership coming from the United States. The Spanish channel has 2.48M subscribers with Mexico, Argentina and Colombia being in top 3 territories. This year we’re planning to come to the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas to introduce The Fixies to potential licensees.
How do you see kids’ content and younger audiences evolving in the coming years?
I believe there’ll be more focus on live action shows, since young audiences are watching kids influencers a lot, and there will be more hybrid shows too.
