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Miss Spider™ spins her web far and wide
Callaway makes deals with Nelvana, Nickelodeon, Penguin, and Fisher Price.
Sunny Patch™ Product Line Continues at Target.
NEW YORK, February 17, 2004. For Immediate Release…Callaway Arts & Entertainment is proud to announce many new ventures for Miss Spider, its best-selling character created by David Kirk.
- TELEVISION: Callaway Arts & Entertainment will executive produce a half-hour daily television series, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends that will debut in the United States on Nick, Jr. in fall 2004, and in France on TF1 in fall 2005. This will be produced in association with Nelvana, the renowned Canadian animation studio. The series follows the highly-rated computer-animated prime time television special, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Kids, that debuted on Nickelodeon in March 2003.
- MASTER TOY LICENSE: Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Nelvana have also signed an international master toy deal with Fisher-Price, which will produce a range of infant and preschool products based on the television series Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America. Slated for a fall 2005 retail debut, the line, featuring key characters Bounce™and Squirt™, will include preschool toys, playsets, plush and software for learning platforms.
- BOOK PUBLISHING: On the tenth anniversary of first publication of Miss Spider’s Tea Party, with 12 titles and over four million copies sold, Callaway Arts & Entertainment has formed a major new publishing partnership with the Penguin Group worldwide:
- In the book trade, Callaway will publish a new series of illustrated storybooks based on the forthcoming Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends television series. These books will be distributed by Penguin in North America. The U.K publisher will be Puffin. The first titles are slated to launch in spring 2005.
- Callaway has licensed English-language mass market rights to Miss Spider throughout the world to the Penguin Group (Grosset & Dunlap in the United States, and Ladybird in the United Kingdom), for a variety of activity, pop-up and other novelty formats.
Rights were negotiated by The Wylie Agency of New York and London.
- CHILDREN’S LIFESTYLE BRAND: After its successful debut at Target stores nationwide in 2003, Sunny Patch, a line of children’s lifestyle products based on characters and designs by David Kirk, launches its second year. The new line of gardening and automotive tools and accessories has also been created exclusively for Target by Callaway Arts & Entertainment. The 2004 line features more than 30 pieces highlighting new and existing characters.
“David Kirk and I are delighted that Miss Spider has become a contemporary classic children’s brand that continues to capture the imagination of children everywhere,” says Nicholas Callaway, CEO of Callaway Arts & Entertainment.
About Callaway:
Callaway Arts & Entertainment, founded by Nicholas Callaway in 1980, specializes in family entertainment across all media—illustrated book publishing, animation for film and television, and product design—and creates and produces original characters and stories. Callaway’s most recent titles have been The English Roses and Mr. Peabody’s Apples, the first two titles in Madonna’s series of books for children of all ages, published in fall 2003. Madonna’s third children’s book, Lotsa de Casha, will be released by Callaway in June 2004.
For more information, please contact:
Lindsay DiLorenzo, (212) 843-8025, Rubenstein Communications for Callaway Editions
ldilorenzo@rubenstein.com
Andy Shearer, (212) 843-8061, Rubenstein Communications for Callaway Editions
ashearer@rubenstein.com
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