A new animated Netflix revolution is coming

In a small corner office in a sprawling studio lot in Hollywood, a woman is working on a treadmill. That’s not a figure of speech for being worked to the bone. That’s legendary children’s screenwriter and producer Chris Nee, and her workspace is, literally, a treadmill. It is set up under a standing desk, where she works on her latest animation projects for Netflix.

The significance of her office goes beyond the way she works; the very fact that this Emmy Award-winning person has been lured to Netflix is a clue to the streaming service’s determination to make the same impact on the world of kids’ entertainment as it has for adults.

Nee created the Disney series Doc McStuffins, which won numerous awards for children’s programming. It also earned wide acclaim for its portrayal of the African-American lead character, and for being the first Disney Junior preschool series to include a same-sex couple. She previously also won an Emmy for her writing on a children’s show.

At the end of last year, Nee signed a deal with Netflix to write and produce new animated and live action series for preschool and all audiences. “The excitement one feels in this place reminds me of working at Nickelodeon in the 1990s,” she said.

Back then, Nickelodeon changed the direction of televised animation with its diversity and willingness to deal with the real issues facing children.

The brief visit was part of a two-day event at Netflix studios in Hollywood, California, where a small media group from around the world dived deep into the streaming service’s animation plans, productions and possibilities.

The most revealing session is a tour of the animation studios, where legendary names in the industry, like Nee, are at work on a wave of animated productions, or just tinkering with new ideas.

One of them is Mat Layzell, a veteran of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, who shows off work in progress from his new series, Battle Kitty. Netflix has given the go ahead for the series.

“Kitty is an aspirational underdog with a big spirit of determination,” he said. “I want kids who feel small to realise that instead they can stand strong, have friends and go on to do amazing things.”

A new era in animation

His comments are at the heart of the new era in animation that Netflix appears ready to kickstart. It has offered children’s viewing since 2011, and its first kids’ original content show debuted in 2013.

However, its current strategy coalesced when it hired Melissa Cobb, who had produced Kung Fu Panda movies for Dreamworks, to head up a Kids & Family division.

“So it turns out that Netflix subscribers have kids. Who knew, right?” she joked. “One of the things that’s amazing about Netflix is that we really have an opportunity to understand what our audience is watching. And we see that about 60% of our audience every month watches some kids and family content.

“We want to make sure that they have a great selection of content to choose from that is curated by a team of people who really know and love family entertainment, and that it’s appropriate for kids to watch and for families to watch together. So it’s the viewership that drives us to continue to invest in the space.”

Cobb emphasised that Netflix was a fully global platform. “When we think about families, we realise they are not all the same. Every family has different tastes, different aged kids, different levels of maturity, maybe different cultures and we want them to be able to create their own Netflix, the one that’s appropriate for their family. So we look for creators from all over the world.”

Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation at Netflix, described the strategy as a “product mission”, which is “to provide the best possible Netflix experience we can for every member of the household, for every age, for every potential viewer.

“We want parents to feel confident when their kids use Netflix. That when they step out of the room, they have the confidence that their kid is going to have a great experience, that they’re not inadvertently going to come across some content that’s inappropriate. And that they feel empowered to make the choices that are right for their family.”

Many platforms, many voices

Netflix also understands better than most content providers that kids watch content on numerous platforms.

“As Netflix has proliferated to many devices and you can stream on any device that you have access to, the kids’ experience has followed suit,” he said. “So now we have kids’ experience on the television, we have kids’ experience on tablets, on phones and on the website.

“And, as we have iterated and learned, the usage of the kids’ experience has grown. In just the last month we have had over 50 million profiles stream from the kids’ experience around the globe.”

The session was hosted by James Baxter, an animation legend who created the Disney versions of Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Lion King’s Rafiki. For Dreamworks, he created the lead characters in Sinbad and Spirit, as well as Valka in How to Train Your Dragon 2.

He was, therefore, responsible for several creations that represented diversity and marginalised characters. Last year, he joined Netflix as director of character animation. We asked him to what extent he was bringing that sensibility of diversity to Netflix.

He replied: “One of the great things about working here is just the fact that Netflix does focus a lot on inclusion and going out and finding creators that might have a different voice, or a voice that is, if not marginalised, you don’t hear very often.

“So, we actively are out there looking at creators from all over the world to tell stories that reflect their story. That’s really exciting. As an animator, I get to be whoever I want to be. But it’s really, really nice to be able to work somewhere where you are seeing different kinds of voices in animation and kids’ entertainment.”

A protest song once warned us that the revolution would be televised. Now that television has been reinvented by streaming services, a new revolution is coming, and it will be animated.

Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee

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