Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart Producing 'Epic' TV Series for Apple TV+
At the end of 2020 Cartoon Saloon's latest feature Wolfwalkers finally arrived to much fanfare, with limited cinema screenings and a global release on Apple TV+. The film is campaigning for Awards season (with an Oscar nomination considered likely) meaning that directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart appearing in a fresh batch of interviews. In one with trade publication Deadline the duo revealed a new project that had not been publically announced before.
They revealed that they were working on a TV series for Apple TV+ that is to be animated in the same style as Wolfwalkers (itself an evolution of their earlier works) and will be "feature quality". They describe the series as an 'epic' that will be told over 13 episodes, 12 half-hour episodes with an hour-long final episode.
They didn't really reveal any more about the project, which is in the early stages. However, we'd expect to be waiting for a while. Wolfwalkers took about five years to complete, and this series will have a running time many times the length of a film. Cartoon Saloon will need to expand their production big time (or bring in help from more outside studios) if we're not going to be waiting for over a decade for this to come out.
This won't be the Irish studio's first TV series. They have produced Puffin Rock, Skunk Fu and Dorg Van Dango for the BBC, Nickelodeon and RTE and are producing Vikingskool for Disney. This feels like a bigger deal though, more in line with the 'prestige television' Apple is trying to align itself with.
This leaves us plenty of room for some fun rampant speculation. Will it be a whole fresh concept, or in some way be connected to Wolfwalkers or another of their past films? I'd lean towards the former, as I get the impression the studio wants to spread their wings and not tie themselves to stories connected with Irish history and mythology. What do you think? Let us know in the comments or via our usual social media channels!
You can be sure we'll be watching this like a hawk and will bring you more details as soon as we get them!
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