MUMBAI: After a long gap, Paramount Pictures is readying to tap into the powerful Nickelodeon television brand for making movies that would have a kid-to-family appeal.
Modeling itself along the lines of Walt Disney Studios that moved television programming properties like Hannah Montana to the big screen, Paramount will have a development slate that include ‘The Last Airbender’ and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.’
‘The Last Airbender,’ built on a budget of $150 million, is the story of a boy who can control air, fire, earth and water. Directed by M Night Shyamalan, the live-action 3-D movie is based on the first season of hit cartoon ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender.’
“Now that we have something, let’s keep it going,” Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami told The New York Times. “There’s no reason this can’t be the first of many successful movies built around our television properties.”
While ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is produced by Michael Bay, the director of ‘The Transformers,’ other films in development include a family adventure built around Mattel’s Magic 8-Ball toy and a property around ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants.’
Paramount will look at broad, family movies - and not focus on kids films - while developing the television properties, a genre that is raking in big monies in Hollywood like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Toy Story 3.’
Paramount Film Group president told The New York Times that he wanted to stretch the Nickelodeon brand to include racier content — just as Disney did with PG-13-rated movies like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.’
Though Nickelodeon succeeded with ‘The Rugrats Movie’ in 1998, it subsequently failed in 2004 with ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’ and ‘Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.’ It is only now that it is trying to aggressively mine Nickelodeon movies.
