Feb 21, 2024

Disney+ will premiere "Morphle And The Magic Pets" in March and stream "Om Nom Stories" later this year.

Disney+ is deepening its involvement with Internet-native animated IP, with Moonbug Entertainment's new series "Morphle and the Magic Pets" set to launch next month, and Zeptolab's "Om Nom Stories" The company has acquired the European streaming rights to Zeptolab's "Om Nom Stories.

It is no wonder that media companies, primarily aimed at children and families, looking to bring profitability to their streaming platforms, are interested in adding to their catalogs animated features that have gained popularity on free web-based platforms. According to a recent survey, children are spending more and more time on gaming platforms and free streaming apps like Youtube.

There is also precedent for such a move to yield significant results. Last year, Netflix released ratings data for the first half of 2023, which showed that the most popular animated series on the platform was "Cocomelon," another Moonbug production that started as a web series.

Morphle and the Magic Pets was co-developed by Mark Palmer and Jill Sanford and animated by Toronto-based Guru Studio. The show is based on the hit Youtube franchise created by Arthur van Merwijk in 2011.The Youtube channel Morphle TV, launched in December 2011, has 11.7 million channel subscribers and its videos have been viewed over 8 billion times videos have been viewed more than 8 billion times. [Moonbug's Morphle General Manager Olivia Chausson had this to say about the deal with Disney, "We are very pleased to be a part of the Morphle family. We have great ambitions for this franchise, driven by the transformative power of Morphle and the richness of the Magic Pet world. This year, we are excited to accelerate our growth with new audience touch points and share Morphul and the Magic Pets with families around the world. [Alyssa Sapire, Senior Vice President of Development, Series and Strategy at Disney Junior, added:

At Disney Junior, we are always looking for new ways to connect with our younger audience of preschoolers and their families. morphle is already on Youtube has already been a huge hit with 3-5 year olds on Youtube, and we are excited to have the opportunity to work with the Moonbug team to create the world and characters.

Morphle and the Magic Pets will debut in the US on Wednesday, March 20 in Disney Junior and Disney+. International rollout will begin at a later date.

Disney has picked up all 25 seasons of the European Youtube hit series Om Nom Stories, produced by British video game developer Zeptolab and animation studio Metaxilasis. The Om Nom Stories Youtube channel was launched in March 2011 and has 4.1 million channel subscribers. The channel has over 2,000 videos and has been viewed over 3.5 billion times; each of the 250 episodes available on Disney+ is 3.5 minutes long and is available in formats for 17 languages.

Previously, Netflix picked up three seasons of the series, which also aired on Tencent in China, Turner in Latin America, and Nine Network in Australia.