Mar 5, 2020

Cartoon Movie 2020: Telescope Animation announces the first slate of projects

Telescope Animation, a young German production company, has announced its first slate of upcoming projects. They reflect the company's commitment to working across a range of media.

Leading the slate is The Last Whale Singer, an original animated feature due for release in 2023. Currently in development, it was presented today at Cartoon Movie, Europe's leading pitching forum for animated features. The director is Reza Memari (A Stork's Journey), Telescope's co-founder and co-CEO. The company describes the film as follows:

Although the film will serve as a standalone project, its storyline will be expanded through a prequel game, an ar/vr project, an interactive storybook, and a series for web, tv, or streaming platforms. The game will come out on Nintendo Switch, Playstation, Xbox, and PC. As Memari told Cartoon Brew, “We're aiming to get it released before the film and really treat it as a standalone project, and NOT as a second-rate movie spin-off.”

Telescope is producing both the film and game with Unreal Engine. As the company says, “Both the film and the game are being developed using real-time game engines, allowing for flexibility through real-time editing and the sharing of assets between mediums.”

The slate also includes two as-yet-unannounced projects. One is a feature with a tie-in game and the other is a “potential episodic series,” also with an accompanying game. As with The Last Whale Singer, the releases will be original, standalone stories, but together they will build narrative universes.

Memari founded the company in 2018, having worked in screenwriting, directing, editing, marketing, and game development. He was joined by Maite Woköck, his co-founder and co-CEO, and a veteran producer. From the start, the company's ambition was to conceive stories as transmedia projects, as Memari explained in a statement:

Woköck added:

The Last Whale Singer - the film - is being developed with Big Bad Boo (Canada), L'Atelier (Canada), and PFX (Czech Republic). Its first trailer will be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival in May.