Argentina, Spain Team on Musical Animated Series ‘Turuleca’s Funny Farm’

By Jamie Lang

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Tandem Films, in co-production with fellow Spaniards Gloriamundi Producciones, Brown Films AIE, Producions A Fonsagrada and Argentina’s Pampa Films will launch their first animated feature, “La Gallina Turuleca” (“Turuleca the Hen”) in August of 2019.

Banking on the international success of the already well-established Spanish and Latin American character, the Madrid-based production company attended this month’s 3D Wire animation festival in Segovia to pitch “Turuleca’s Funny Farm,” a 26 x 7-minute musical animated series which sees them partner once again with Pampa Films.

“Co-producing with Argentina is always interesting because it opens up the Latin American market and allows us to reach a larger audience,” said Tandem’s Adriana Pujol and Diego López in a conversation with Varietyafter the presentation.

“It is a creative co-production,” they went on to explain. “The series is still in the development phase, but the idea is that from the beginning we work together on the scripts and the rest of the other processes. We want to create a product that reaches and appeals to the public on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The series takes place on Isabel’s farm. A retired teacher, Isabel has taken it upon herself to teach the animals on her farm how to play musical instruments and sing, while also teaching them important lessons like manners, sharing and resourceful means of conflict resolution. Each lesson is converted into song which will be performed by the animals and Isabel at the conclusion of an episode.

The barnyard band is helmed by singer extraordinaire Turuleca the hen. Her band is made up of Ritmo the pig on guitar, Harmony the cow who plays the trumpet, and Compás the sheep who is responsible for keeping rhythm on the drums. There are many other characters as well, but the band is at the core of everything that happens on the farm.

Pujol and López explained the challenges the trans-Atlantic teams face in adapting the feature film to a small-screen format, saying: “The production approach varies enormously. We are currently modifying the pipeline to be able to produce the series because they are very different products. Developing an animated series on a tight budget is a challenge, but using the IP allows us to take advantage of many scenarios and characters in the film.”

For the songs, Pujol indicated that the team plans to use a mix of Spanish and Latin American standards as well as content created specifically for the show.

“The music is very important,” she explained at 3D Wire. “Many will be pop songs while others created for specific episodes, but in each case they will be connected to the narrative.”

The series is still in development but nearing production and looking for distribution.

According to the team at Tandem, “Right now our series is a rough diamond that we are just starting polishing.”