Ukraine’s Glowberry Hurries to MIPCOM with Brand-New Series ‘Mom Hurries Home’
Credit: Glowberry
This year, Ukraine will bring to MIPCOM a new animated project – Mom Hurries Home by Glowberry production studio, famous for the Brave Bunnies animated series.
Every day, Mom turns her daily trips home from work into magical adventure stories, inspired by her son Alex’s fantasy games. Together, they are transforming their humdrum city into a magical place. The main idea of the project – kids and parents could play the same game, making everyday extraordinary by their imagination.
Mom Hurries Home was first presented at MIP Junior in 2016. After that, the creative concept of the series became the finalist at major European animation festivals, and beyond: International Animated Film Festival MIFA (France), Cartoon Forum (France), Animation Production Day (Germany), Cartoon 360 (Spain), Financing Forum for Kids Content (Sweden), Ottawa International Animation Festival (Canada) in 2016-2019. Along with Mavka: The Forest Song, from Animagrad Studio (FILM.UA Group), it was the first Ukrainian animated project to get through the competitions and represent Ukraine at these important industry platforms.
Besides, Mom Hurries Home is a successful Ukrainian brand, developed from a series of books by Sveta Dorosheva (Ukraine/Israel) that quickly became popular among children and parents alike. The series was also published in China and South Korea, where it gained noticeable success as well. The interactive version of the books for Android and iOS have had more than 80,000 downloads in over 10 European countries. Building on this success, Glowberry production together with FILM.UA Group began the development of the preschool TV series.
By 2019, the project was appreciated by broadcasters in Europe and Asia, and global distributors and co-partners expressed interest. Now, Mom Hurries Home is a 52-episodes × 7 min project in development, for kids aged 4-7. The author of the TV series concept is Olga Cherepanova, showrunner, content creator, and creative producer at Glowberry. This is her second big animated project after the Brave Bunnies animated series, which achieved thrilling international success: its first season was aired in over 80 countries.
Brave Bunnies is an animated TV series that follows the adventures of the Brave Bunnies Family, on their exciting Big Journey to explore the wider world, where they discover diverse new friends. The first season (52×7) was created by Glowberry in co-partnership with the Ánima Studio (Spain), and co-producer De Agostini (Italy), while multi-award-winning animation studio Aardman Animations (United Kingdom) was engaged in the global promotion. Penguin Random House became the official global book partner, while the leading global children’s entertainment company, Spin Master, launched a toy collection with the heroes of the series in 2021 across multiple European territories.
The first launch of Brave Bunnies Season 1 took place at the end of 2021 on the Ukrainian TV channel Plus-Plus. Since then, it has aired in more than 80 countries around the world with global broadcast partners including Milkshake/Channel5, Nick Jr, Rai YoYo, ABC Kids, HBO Max, Family Jr., Clan, SuperRTL, NRK, SVT, DeA Junior, YLE, RTP, Ceska TV, HOP, Daeyko TV, and other.
The full-scale attack of Russia on Ukraine in early 2022 threatened to dramatically change the plans for the second season of Brave Bunnies. But international partners rallied to support Glowberry, and at the end of 2022, the leading Canadian kids’ entertainment company WildBrain partnered with Glowberry to bring the beloved Brave Bunnies brand into its portfolio of kids’ and family franchises, taking a majority stake in the IP. The partnership gave Cherepanova a leading role in Brave Bunnies animation for Season 2, as creator and creative producer, while keeping all the Ukrainian Glowberry team. Production of the second season of Brave Bunnies is under way in partnership with Spanish animation studio Ánima and Italian co-producer De Agostini. With season one, Brave Bunnies achieved prominent international success, and its creators are planning an exciting and entertaining follow up with season two.
And now, with Mom Hurries Home, Glowberry looks for broadcasters in Europe and Asia, and interest from global distributors and co-partners for it newest show.
Mom Hurries Home is an exciting concept that allows us to infuse the daily lives of children and their parents with magic and wonder through the power of imagination. Drawing from our unique and successful experience working on two seasons of the hit preschool show Brave Bunnies, we have enhanced the initial creative concept for Mom Hurries Home, making the show even more aligned with the expectations of today’s parents and children, and we’ve also taken into account the feedback and preferences of international broadcasters.
Olga Cherepanova
Despite the war, Ukrainian production companies continue developing new large-scale projects, often in co-production with partners from all around the world. The latest achievements of Brave Bunnies and Mavka prove that the creative stories by Ukrainian authors are interesting, inspiring, and uplifting for the worldwide audience, bringing fresh new ideas and views.