Today Hulu announced its partnership with OVFX Studios, the animation studio from The Outlook Company, that will make the streaming service the new home for the Kulipari franchise based on the popular children’s books written by former NFL player Trevor Pryce. The third season and latest addition to the franchise, entitled A King Rises, will be a three-episode arc that brings the “Amphibilands” saga to a close with the coronation of a new King of the Lands. It will debut on Hulu in late 2023.
The original first two seasons of the show, entitled Kulipari: An Army of Frogs and Kulipari: Dreamwalker, begin streaming today and come to Hulu as all-new special editions, remastered with new artwork, remixed sound and credit sequences. Both seasons will be featured in Hulu’s “Black Stories Always” hub honoring Black stories and visionary storytellers in February, and year-round.
Finally, the OVFX Studios’ first feature film will be a reboot of the first Kulipari book in the series, An Army of Frogs, in lifelike 3D, made with the latest in motion-capture technology and rendering techniques, that will restart the franchise in a fresh, reimagined way. It will premiere exclusively on Hulu in late 2024.
All projects, written and directed by Pryce, are being produced by The Outlook Company, a minority-owned, innovative digital animation and production studio in Baltimore in the Hoen Building, a new development near the Johns Hopkins Medical campus. It now houses a world-class, high-end capability animation studio with 80 artists, and has become the leader in the growing art ecosystem in the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly in Baltimore.
“We are beyond excited to partner with Hulu on the next productions of the Kulipari Franchise,” said Pryce. “They’ve been inspiring to us, and have trusted our process from the beginning. Especially being a new studio, one that is embracing cutting-edge technology and is partly funded with public and private capital, and staffed with mostly first-time artists, this is the opportunity we needed to show what this part of the world could do in the competitive franchise and pop culture space. And to do this in both 2D and 3D, we couldn’t have picked better partners to help us with that mission.”
Both upcoming projects are being distributed by Splash Entertainment out of Woodland Hills, California.
Kulipari: An Army of Frogs and Kulipari: Dreamwalker originally premiered as Netflix Original series in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The voice cast featured Josh Keaton, Mikey Kelley, Lacey Chabert, Phil Lamarr, Keith David, Charlie Adler, Wendie Malick, Mark Hamill, Jess Harnell, Candi Milo, Cree Summer, Kevin Michael Richardson, Kath Soucie, Rolonda Watts, Amy Margolis and Laraine Newman.
