Amazon Studios greenlights five new children’s pilots, all 11 in-production pilots to hit LoveFilm too

Amazon Studios has announced its first foray into original content for children, with five pilots given the greenlight.

Just to recap, Amazon Studios uses audience feedback to develop original entertainment and, since the division’s launch in November 2010, thousands of movie scripts and series pilots have been submitted.

You may remember that back in June last year, Amazon enlisted Hellraiser’s Clive Barker to bring Zombies vs. Gladiators a step closer to our screens, making it one of only a handful of projects to be developed past the script-submission stage.

Since then, Amazon Studios has gone head-to-head with Netflix after selecting its first four original TV projects for production, while it also optioned another two children’s series in its quest for original content.

Today’s news follows on from its first pilot production commitment back in December, which gave the go-ahead to six comedy pilots, and this now brings the total number of Amazon Studios pilots currently in production to 11.

Amazon Instant, Prime and LoveFilm

It’s also worth noting here that in addition to Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video, all 11 pilots will also arrive on Lovefilm UK and Lovefilm Germany, with viewer responses helping to determine which series go into full production.

“Production is already underway for the first set of comedy pilots we announced last month, and now we are excited to add even more pilots to the list—five amazing preschool children’s series,” says Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “Our children’s series come from industry luminaries with credits such as Blue’s Clues, Sid the Science Kid and Dino Dan. We think parents—and our very youngest customers—are going to love the magical combination of entertainment and learning that they’ll discover in these children’s series.”

The Children’s pilots include Creative Galaxy, an animated interactive art adventure series, designed to inspire kids’ creative thinking through crafts, story, music and dance; Oz Adventures, an “innovative problem-solving series”; Teeny Tiny Dogs, produced by The Jim Henson Company and created by Howard Baker (Rugrats); Tumbleaf, aimed at preschoolers and set in a whimsical land with a small blue fox; and The Untitled J.J. Johnson Project, which revolves around Anne, a young scientist, who creates three robot helpers to assist her scientific experiments in the back of her dad’s junkyard.

Since its launch in 2010, more than 14,000 movie scripts and 2,500 series pilot scripts have been submitted to Amazon Studios. The original series announced today will be added to the Amazon Studios series development slate, which currently has 20 additional projects.