Is Skylanders Academy Your Kid's Next Netflix Obsession?

After months of buzzing, thirteen episodes of Skylanders Academy from Activision Blizzard Studios landed on Netflix late last calendar week. The show is a bright nonetheless smart take that brings the loved game characters onto the lean-back screen experience.

It'due south based on the US$three billion Skylanders franchise, a concept that pioneered the toys-to-life category every bit it introduced players to the act of putting their physical 3D characters on the Portal of Power peripheral and seeing them appear within the game itself.

PCMag went to Los Angeles to meet showrunner Eric Rogers and the Co-Presidents of Activision Blizzard Studios, Stacey Sher and Nick Van Dyk, to find out more than.

Van Dyk joined Activision Blizzard Studios, in stealth fashion since its launch less than a twelvemonth ago, from Disney where, as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, he played a significant role in the acquisitions of Lucasfilm, Curiosity, and Pixar. Sher is a Hollywood producer with credits including Pulp Fiction, Hateful Viii, Living Out Loud, and Out of Sight.

Eric Rogers got his start in the writers' room at NYPD Blue, earlier joining Matt Groening's empire on Futurama. "I knew what Skylanders is about," he told PCMag. "Just at the fourth dimension I had been busy writing on Futurama and then not really playing videogames. I pitched a version of the show to Activision Blizzard Studios, that I guess had been a home run and away we went. I threw myself headlong into it."

Skylanders Academy

"We took a number of pitch meetings," Van Dyk confirmed. "But when Eric came in with a agglomeration of the figurines, and Portals of Power, then started moving them around, I thought, 'Perhaps this guy is really passionate—or really unhinged,' but we knew he was right for the chore."

The team took a research trip to Toys for Bob, now an independent studio within the Activision Blizzard group, to meet the originators of the Skylanders franchise, including character designer and cult steam-powered robot tinkerer/game-maker, I-Wei Huang (aka: CrabFu).

"He had been in his mad scientist corner of the room when we met him," said Rogers. Together, they poured over the 'world books' to pull out grapheme descriptions, arcane data, and gameplay to build a truly original serial.

Skylanders Academy

"One of the big themes of the game, which is also a through-line of the series, is harmony," explained Sher. "A balancing of the forces of light and nighttime in the universe. Like The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Greek mythology through the lens of Joseph Campbell, an idea which we go further into in Spyro'due south Quest, as we see him searching for his identity."

Netflix had been obviously pleased with their piece of work; a 2d season, which contains Spyro's Quest, of Skylanders Academy is already in production.

What'southward next for the Activision Blizzard Studios squad? Call of Duty movies?

"Are we allowed to talk near this yet?" asked Sher, who received quick yet cautious nods from the Activision Blizzard handlers sitting in the corner. "Well, we do accept a writers' room—a nifty group of writers for Call of Duty—who are our retrieve-tank for the franchise. The script is [still] being written, but nosotros certainly know the story for the first grouping of movies."

Non merely i film, information technology's a proper group of movies. This is a major undertaking. As with Skylanders University, in that location's also an impressive behind-the-scenes operation to get the story and the action correct. Y'all don't desire to annoy Call of Duty's massive fan base, after all.

"Nosotros had the Under Secretary of the Ground forces come in, together with Obama's former National Security Advisor, every bit well equally individual military corporations, Australian Special Forces, and those who were involved in SEAL Squad Half-dozen," Sher said. "Our Vice President of Production, Coco Francini, has been to boot-camp and we've been invited onto aircraft carriers. I joke that, considering it requires an overnight trip, we'll exist in that location, and state of war will break out, and it'll be like a sequel to Private Benjamin because my push-ups aren't good plenty to authorize for the Basic Underwater Demolition Navy SEALS (BUD/S) test."

At Activision Blizzard Studios, a whole new business concern model is being brokered within the entertainment manufacture; one that owns and exploits the intellectual holding across a multitude of platforms and in many new incarnations.

The numbers are staggering. Last year alone, players around the world spent 14 billion hours playing Activision titles. Activision Blizzard acquired Candy Shell maker King Digital Studios for US$5.ix billion. Now Skylanders is bringing audiences to the U.s.a.$3 billion franchise through the new Netflix series and, the studio hopes, back to the games in a virtuous circle.