Trevor Pryce, two-time Super Bowl champ with the Denver Broncos and all-pro defensive end, has launched a post-NFL career based on his childhood angst about frogs getting flattened on the roads of Florida.
Netflix last year bought the rights to “Kulipari: An Army of Frogs,” based on his book triology published by Abrams, about superhero frogs fighting hordes of scorpions and spiders in the Australian outback. The show’s 13 22-minute episodes are set to debut worldwide on Netflix Sept. 2, as part of a fall wave of original kids’ programming coming to the service.
Pryce funded the production of the animated series himself, teaming with production company Splash Entertainment. Originally envisioned as three feature-length animated specials, the project was distilled into a single season for Netflix — after the streamer jumped to acquire the rights to “Kulipari.”
“Netflix said ‘yes’ the quickest,” said Pryce, who also shopped “Kulipari” to two traditional TV networks (which he declined to identify). He signed the deal with Netflix before even pitching it to Hulu or Amazon. ...
Splash Entertainment, headquartered in the Warner Center on the western end of the fabled San Fernando Valley, (where Warner Bros. used to make cavalry pictures) has been around for years, first as Mike Young Productions, then as Moon Scoop. The Animation Guild briefly held a contract with the company when it was producing its Clifford the Big Red Dog feature, but there are no binding legal documents in force between the parties at the present time.
Netflix is pursuing animated projects in a major way, which is one of the reasons the cartoon business is at sky high levels of employment here in the second decade of the 21st century. Kulipari is a cagey mashup of cartoon and super hero. (What could be smarter than taking two red-hot sectors of the movie/television business and combining them?) Whether the series blossoms into a feature, or video games get developed, whether action figures and shiny medallions are in the offing, remains to be seen.
But it wouldn't be surprising if those things come to pass.
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