El Tabador – the little animated pro wrestler with the Hispanic accent who left the ring to be brand ambassador for Koodo – is getting his own TV series.
Carl Demarco, a former executive with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), has secured the rights from Koodo and its parent company, Telus (TSX:T), to create a new family-oriented TV series based around the El Tabador character.
It will be a combination of live action and computer-generated (CG) animation: real actors will interact with the animated El Tabador character.
It's not the only pop culture figure that is migrating from one media format to another. Rovio Entertainment recently announced its popular mobile game, Angry Birds, is being turned into a movie, and Vancouver's Sony Pictures Imageworks studio has the contract to do most of the animation.
Demarco said his 26-episode El Tabador TV series is still in early creative development, so he hasn't chosen an animation studio yet. He did not rule out some of the work going to a Vancouver studio.
Several Vancouver studios were represented at a recent Kidscreen Summit in New York, where Demarco was shopping around his new TV series.
"We met with numerous production companies that are very capable and qualified," he said. "It's going to have to be a company that really specializes in CG but also specializes in CG combined with live action, and that's a very unique combo."
Kate Robb, manager of marketing for Koodo Mobile, said a TV series featuring Koodo's pitchman will be good for the company's branding.
"Whenever we test in a market, people know it's a Koodo commercial immediately, as soon as they see him come through and they hear that voice," Robb said. "They immediately associate it with Koodo. So the more exposure we have of El Tabador, the more our brand name will be known."
After leaving the WWE, Demarco founded Camillion Corp. to invest in technology and entertainment franchises. He said El Tabador was a ready-made TV character.
"The spots were so well done, I just felt this was an opportunity that we could take that character and grow it. They did a great job on the character, and the character really grew larger than life. It's funny, it's a little bit edgy, but not to the point that kids can't watch it."
With 15 years as a WWE executive, Demarco not only has extensive television production and distribution experience, but he also has a lot of connections with pro wrestlers, whom he plans to bring into the series.
The trend of basing movies or TV series on pop culture figures or games suggests producers may be wading into "the shallow end of the creative pool," said Matt Toner, CEO of Vancouver animation studio Zeros 2 Heroes Media Inc. and advisory board member for the annual Merging Media Conference.
It's not so much that Hollywood has run out of ideas, he said, but rather that an icon that already has mass appeal is simply a safer bet.
"If they've got three scripts in front of them and one is based on a successful video game, that's enough to set it apart from the other two untested ideas," Toner said. "For them, proof of take-up in another media channel is almost a prerequisite to get on base." •
