When Daisy Shang first got here to Cannes in 2008, the Chinese language animation trade was nonetheless actually simply beginning to discover its ft, and billion-dollar franchises should have appeared like a dream.
As the manager president of Fantawild Holdings and chairwoman of Fantawild Animation tells it now, animated productions that pushed their field workplace previous round $14 million (RMB 100 million) have been a rarity – even because the Chinese language field workplace was breaking report after report – and, on the French Riviera, Shang discovered a world market that also considered Chinese language animation as one of many movie trade’s nice unknowns.
Shang had arrived on the Croisette with two of Fantawild’s first animated TV titles to promote – the dinosaur battle-themed Dino Rampage and aquatic adventures of Conch Bay. However the mission was actually extra about analysis, as her firm regarded to shift its focus just about absolutely away from the high-tech tools and multi-media know-how it had been constructed on. By 2008, Fantawild had discovered these two markets too cluttered, and the corporate determined to make use of the technical experience it had been creating to segue into animation.
“We have been amongst just a few [Chinese] corporations to go to Cannes, and I feel we have been fortunate to have the ability to promote our applications even on the first market,” says Shang through video name. “I feel folks noticed the standard in our merchandise and so they had confidence in our merchandise and so we began to promote our applications abroad.
“Solely a only a few consumers had labored with China in these days. We introduced two early applications and shoppers informed us the standard was good and that our tales have been additionally fascinating, and they also needed to strive us out.”
Taking onboard what she’d seen and heard, Shang went again to Fantawild’s southern China base in Guangdong and principally rebuilt the corporate’s future.
By 2014, Shang had returned to Cannes and she or he had introduced the Boonie Bears along with her, a transfer that over the subsequent decade would see her firm acquire greater than $1 billion in field workplace returns from the cartoon characters’ big-screen antics whereas increasing their IP footprint throughout all the things from hamburgers to theme parks.
“By the point it got here to creating the Boonie Bears, we’d obtained a whole lot of suggestions from our shoppers. By then we knew what sort of applications they lacked and how much program their viewers preferred,” explains Shang.
And it appears the Boonie Bears ticked all of the packing containers. A decade on and the now 10-film franchise this yr broke the $1 billion field workplace mark.
Initially launched as a TV sequence in 2012, Boonie Bears follows the travails of two buddies who bond over the roles they assumed as protectors of their forest dwelling. Initially, Fantawild had plucked three bears from the supporting forged of their sequence Kung Fu Masters of the Zodiac however the firm thought three could be too many characters to give attention to. So, these three bears morphed into two, Briar and Bramble, and an assortment of facet characters, together with Logger Vick and Warren, the purple squirrel.
The Boonie Bears sequence has been wildly profitable domestically – with Chinese language media claiming greater than 200 billion on-line hits, has thus far bought to round 80 markets and on to platforms of such leisure giants as Disney, Sony, Netflix and Discovery Children.
However the large payday got here when Fantawild branched out into films, starting with 2014’s Boonie Bears: To the Rescue – which noticed the 2 bears attempting to guard an orphaned lady, in addition to their forest – after which with 9 follow-ups, together with the ninth film, Boonie Bears: Guardian Code, which bought large at Hong Kong’s Filmart in 2024.
Boonie Bears: Guardian Code
Fantawild Animation
“We tried to construct an IP for not solely the Chinese language, but in addition these exterior of China,” says Shang. “Earlier than we rolled out this IP, we had many various kinds of content material – I feel it was greater than 10. Earlier than we began with the bears, we had produced Kung Fu Masters of the Zodiac, Hen Stew, Brainy Bubbly Bug Buddies, and others, and from this content material growth, we gained expertise about how the [animation] market works [asking] what’s the market, what do shoppers like?
“We additionally carried out some analysis into the market to see what sorts of cartoons have been turning into well-liked. This all led us towards the Boonie Bears. We additionally found that folks needed to discover the tales relatable. They’d to have the ability to see their very own lives within the lives of those characters.”
Whereas animated options date again to the early days of Chinese language cinema and the enduring and influential Princess Iron Fan (1941), the primary of a whole bunch of productions primarily based on the Sixteenth-century textual content Journey to the West, the style hadn’t actually stored tempo with the Chinese language movie trade’s meteoric rise through the first decade of the 2000s.
Shang claims it was uncommon for animated movies to go round RMB 100 million ($14 million) till the record-setting Boonie Bears: To the Rescue grew to become the then-biggest grossing animated Chinese language movie with round RMB 245 ($41 million) in its launch yr 2014.
Rance Pow, CEO of consultancy Artisan Gateway, says the Boonie Bears’ success has been constructed on “evolving storylines” that cope with such subjects as house journey, genetics, environmental safety, and “maintaining with the occasions.”
The movies additionally got here into the market with a well-established fanbase and have been delivered for launch through the Chinese language New 12 months growth field workplace interval.
“It’s family-friendly leisure that crosses cultural hurdles,” he mentioned. “There are constructive attitudes and values, after all, authored from a Chinese language perspective [including language] and sensibilities.”
Fantawild retains pointing to “relatable characters” and storylines that resonate. As a substitute of life-and-death struggles between the bears and the logger, for instance, the corporate claimed in a press release that it’s extra a “conflict of concepts and rules: The logger needs to chop down timber for cash, primarily portraying a working-class character, whereas the bears goal to guard the forest which is their dwelling.”
“Logger Vick is rather like everybody, similar to us,” says Shang. “He isn’t a foul man, and he’s simply attempting to make his method. He will get a whole lot of strain from his boss, and he simply has to do the issues he does to outlive. Folks in every single place can relate to that.”
Within the decade since Boonie Bears hit the large display screen, Fantawild has expanded their workers numbers to between 18,000 and 20,000 – relying on what initiatives are ongoing – after which there are these theme parks and people burgers.
“The associated enterprise covers Boonie Bears-themed sights in Fantawild parks, Boonie Bears-branded zones, resorts, dwell reveals and we’ve got shops, and we developed a whole lot of merchandise with licensees,” says Shang. “We even have meals just like the Boonie Bears Burger. However our predominant objective continues to be that we are attempting to create an increasing number of profitable movies and sequence. We predict that the standard will get higher and higher annually. We’re all the time trying in direction of the subsequent one and attempting to make that one the very best.”