Gutsy Animations (Finland), the Emmy Award-nominated studio behind the internationally celebrated Moominvalley 3D animation series, has secured €5 million investment from one of the most successful Finnish mobile gaming companies globally, Rovio Entertainment, creator of the Angry Birds franchise.
“I’m thrilled to have Rovio joining us and bolstering our efforts to create meaningful international content that leans into Nordic values. This investment shows growth does not always need to come from far afield and is an incredible display of confidence in Gutsy Animations’ ability to create high quality, distinctive content for the global market,” said Marika Makaroff, Founder & CCO of Gutsy Animations. “Additionally, by forging a collaboration between three Finnish companies, this partnership shows a high level of trust in Finnish know-how, as well as serving to highlight the power of storytelling through shared values. Through this investment, we’ll have a valuable opportunity to continue writing Finnish success stories that span the worlds of both entertainment and culture, and which follow in the footsteps of our celebrated, Emmy Award-nominated adaptation of the original Moomin stories, Moominvalley“.
Additionally, Rovio has secured exclusive rights from Moomin Characters Ltd and Rights & Brands, the global licensing agency for the Moomin brand, to develop and publish Moomin IP-based games for any platform and exclusive rights for all mobile platforms. Rovio’s first Moomin game, based on the original story and world created by Tove Jansson and inspired by the Moominvalley visuals, is already being developed and is expected to reach soft launch later in 2021.
“Gutsy Animations did an astonishing job at bringing to life the rich stories and alluring atmosphere of the Moominvalley. We are honored and excited to enter this partnership with Moomin Characters and Gutsy Animations,” said Alex Pelletier-Normand, CEO of Rovio. “Working with Gutsy and Moomin will give us the opportunity to present this iconic brand to new audiences across the globe at the same time as we surely will delight our existing fans. This partnership will diversify our IP portfolio, which is a key step in our consistent growth strategy. We are already working on a mobile game that is still in early phase of the development, and we expect it to reach soft launch later this year.”
“Moomin Characters looks to expand their digital footprint and offering, it’s fantastic to join forces with Rovio Entertainment, who bring a wealth of expertise and success in this space,” added Roleff Kråkström, Managing Director of Moomin Characters. “We’re confident this partnership will open up new opportunities not only to the Moomin trademark, but also to the additional Nordic story. This partnership marks an important milestone in our strategy to take local Nordic creations to the international marketplace.”
Gutsy Animations, founded in 2016 by awarded creator Makaroff, is a Finnish production house that creates high quality content for the international market. The company’s flagship production, multi award-winning Moominvalley, has a record-high of 16 million starts on YLE’s streaming platform in Finland. Gutsy Animations believes that the world is in need of kind, clever, meaningful and gutsy content for global audiences.
Rovio Entertainment Corporation is a global, mobile-first games company that creates, develops and publishes mobile games, which have been downloaded over 4.5 billion times so far. Rovio is best known for the global Angry Birds brand, which started as a popular mobile game in 2009, and has since evolved from games to various entertainment and consumer products in brand licensing — as well as The Angry Birds Movie (2016) and The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019). Rovio is headquartered in Finland.
Moomin Characters Oy Ltd is the official copyright holder of all the Moomin characters created by Finnish-Swedish writer and artist Tove Jansson in her books and comics between 1945 and 1980. All characters from Moominvalley are trademark registered worldwide. The company was founded in the 1950’s by Tove Jansson (1914-2001) and her brother Lars Jansson to take care of the copyright of the Moomins and is still run by family members. Rights and Brands is the worldwide licensing agent of the company.
