Interview: Xilam Animation Talks 2025
We sat down with Safaa Benazzouz, EVP of Distribution at Xilam to talk future plans and successes
Following on from MIPCOM, what plans have you got for the start of the new year?
It’s shaping up to be a busy 2025 at Xilam headquarters, with lots of plans in place across both our beloved long-standing franchises and newer IPs. At the start of the year, we’ll be looking at lining up new international partners for Piggy Builders – our upcoming CG original preschool series about a trio of charismatic and curly-tailed piggy siblings. We had a great response to the show at MIPCOM, so we’re now securing broadcast sales and looking for merchandising partners for the show across toys, publishing, games, gifting and apparel – while also looking ahead to our launch with commissioning partners France Télévisions, BBC, and ZDF in Europe from Q3.
Where’s Chicky? season four is going to be another brand we’re making plans for at the start of the year, as we look at fresh broadcast deals for this latest instalment with existing partners on the first three seasons, with delivery of the show then scheduled for May. We’re also expecting our adorable chick to reach some new digital milestones early in the new year, following the franchise recently hitting some key achievements online such as five billion lifetime views and eight million subscribers on YouTube.
And which properties in particular are Xilam focusing on in 2025?
Alongside Piggy Builders and Where’s Chicky?, we’ll also be focusing on our new adventure comedy Submarine Jim throughout the year– for which we already have France Télévisions and Super RTL on board. It’s going to be a laugh-out-loud funny 2D series that builds on our track record in comedy content, and we’re planning to showcase the series to the market in Annecy.
We’ve recently completed delivery on Buddybot, so this will be another key focus for 2025. The series follows Chloe, an ordinary 12-year-old girl, and Buddybot, a little robot from the future, who team up to instill positive change for the future. The show launched on France 4 last August and we’ve had great ratings so far.
Then for a family demographic, we have My Life in Versailles – again another series we’ve recently completed delivery on. We’re co-producing the series with Film Grand Huit and it’s a sequel to the multi-award winning TV special, which also had a remarkable performance on the film festival circuit – capturing the heart of audiences with its moving perspective on loss, family and belonging.
We’ll also see our animated comedy brand Zig & Sharko celebrate its 15th anniversary in 2025, so there’s already plenty of activity and plans in the works to mark the occasion with partners and fans.
What partners do you hope to secure in 2025?
For our newer titles, including Piggy Builders and Submarine Jim, we’re very much hoping to lock in TV and video-on-demand partnerships around the world, alongside L&M deals. Then across our portfolio of our popular legacy IPs, such as Zig & Sharko and Oggy and the Cockroaches, we’ll very much be looking at renewal deals to keep the brands growing for the long-term.
Finally, we’ll be looking at building fresh touch points for fans in the digital space through new partnerships in the FAST and AVOD businesses.
Can you outline some of your latest news?
On the licensing side, we recently signed a deal with French fashion retailer celio, which saw a collection featuring Oggy and the Cockroaches, Space Goofs and Ratz hit shelves and its online store summer.
We’ve also recently shared news on our footprint in Central Easten Europe with a wave of broadcast deals across Oggy Oggy, Athleticus, Pfffirates, Where’s Chicky? and more. Over the course of 12 months, we sold over 637 hours of our series to leading broadcasters in the region, including RTL Klub Hungary which picked up 170 hours of content alone.
It was also fantastic to round-out 2024 with a win at the Unifrance TV Export awards for Zig & Sharko season three in the animation category.It was a wonderful recognition of our passion to make French animation content shine on the global stage, and to all our broadcasters and partners for their support on the brand since day one.
