Kids TV From Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro: How Dreamworks Animation TV Changed Children’s Programming
Ten years ago, the studio set out to change the kids and family landscape, and with auteur partnerships, preschool franchises and gateway horror, they have.
BY ABBEY WHITE
In February 2013, Dreamworks Animation Television teamed with Netflix on its first-ever children’s and family series, Turbo Fast. Just four months later, the studio and streamer would unveil a multiyear content deal — 300 hours of exclusive original, first-run content.
The pact was the official beginning of the television animation studio and at that time, the largest content deal in the streamer’s history. One of the most significant signs of the rise and permanence of the streaming era, the deal heralded a new age for the kids and family content industry.
Dreamworks Animation TV and current DWA president Margie Cohn’s team would spend the next decade steering the studio through that and an NBC Universal acquisition, producing more than 2,100 episodes of animated programming across 43 series and partnering with Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon and free-to-air broadcasters around the globe.