News round-up: Toonz, Epic & Aliya LeeKong team; Prime Video UK orders boxing doc; Odd Squad’ gets UK spin-off

Issa’s Edible Adventures

Toonz, Epic & Aliya LeeKong team

Toonz Media Group and Epic Story Media have partnered with chef and TV personality Aliya LeeKong to produce Issa’s Edible Adventures.

The new 52 x 11-minute animated series is centered around 7-year-old Issa, an aspiring chef with a big heart who, with her best friends Tartufo the Basque pig, and Maha the magical bird, ventures into the world in search of the one ingredient that’ll complete her amazing dish.

Toonz, Epic and Aliya will jointly develop, finance, produce and distribute the series. Epic will have exclusive distribution and L&M rights in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, while Toonz will retain the distribution and L&M rights in rest of the world.

Prime Video UK orders boxing doc

Prime Video UK has commissioned Four Kings, a four-part documentary examining the notorious rivalry between British boxing legends Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno.

The series will launch exclusively on Prime Video in the UK & Ireland in 2024 and will follow the meteoric rise of these four men from the same London neighbourhood who heralded a golden era in British boxing and changed the way Britain viewed its black athletes.

Thirty years on, the series will revisit the notorious rivalries of Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn; and Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno, combining archive footage of the clashes which had millions across the globe glued to the TV, and newly captured exclusive interviews that reveal their tough struggles with mental health issues away from the limelight.

‘Odd Squad’ gets UK spin-off

BBC Studios Kids & Family and Sinking Ship Entertainment have partnered to produce Odd Squad UK, a new format of the original series in association with CBBC, PBS KIDS, TVOkids, and Radio-Canada.

Fred Rogers Productions will distribute the series in the US and Sinking Ship will take worldwide rights.

Odd Squad UK features a brand-new world of oddness and group of agents with a predominantly British cast filmed exclusively in the UK. Twelve half-hour episodes of ODD SQUAD UK are currently in production and set for release in 2024.