Beverly Hills, California – Genius Brands International, Inc. (“GBI”) (OTCQB:GNUS), a global brand management company dedicated to providing entertaining and enriching ‘content with a purpose’ for toddlers to tweens, has announced the start of production and delivery of its pilot episode of the new animated children’s series Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab.
The pilot entitled “If the Fossil Fits” has been produced with Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Edison Innovation Foundation. Featuring adventure, comedy hijinks and inspiring fun, Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab demonstrates that invention can foster creativity, imagination, can-do spirit and positive entrepreneurship.
Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand, characteristics that are synonymous with Thomas Edison,” said Andy Heyward, Chairman and CEO, GBI. “By blending real science educational experiences with fun, interactive entertainment, we hope to inspire children and encourage them in the love of science. We are especially excited to have a dynamic young lady as “Angie”, our lead character, as a young role model scientist.”
“Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab reminds kids that all they need to be an inventor is ‘a good imagination and a pile of junk,’ something Mr. Edison often said,” added Georgia Public Broadcasting Medias’ President and CEO Teya Ryan. “We’re thrilled to present this fun and imaginative series that inspires kids’ natural curiosity while encouraging them to push conventional scientific and technological boundaries through experimentation.”
Demonstrating how much fun science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) can really be, the animated series follows Angie, a 12-year-old prodigy and her young science club, who discover Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab – a scientist’s ultimate dream lab equipped with everything they could ever imagine, including two of Edison’s very last inventions: a hologram that brings Mr. Edison himself “to life”, and a wacky robot they bring to life called Von Bolt. In each of the 52 11-minute episodes, Edison “comes to life” in the form of a hologram, to encourage and inspire the kids in all sorts of scientific and technological explorations, including physical science, live science, earth science, space science and lots of other fun and wacky, wild and engaging topics.
Thomas Edison is being voiced by American singer, songwriter, and Berklee College of Music Professor Livingston Taylor. Emmy-nominated writer Steve Banks (SpongeBob SquarePants) has written the pilot episode, and Jeffrey Scott, multi-Emmy award-winning writer, creator and story editor (Dragon Tales), and production supervisor Chris Keenan (Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs) serve as the series’ story editors; Emmy Award-winning Michael Maliani (Madeline, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego) serves as co-producer and director; Kevin O’Donnell (Mask, Inspector Gadget) is the series co-creator and co-executive producer; and Emmy Award-winning Mark Young (All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, Tutenstein) serves as co-producer and writer.
An academic team led by Professor Emeritus, Don Roberts, and a team of Emmy Award-winning writers developed Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab, which will be E/I (Educational/Informational) compliant per FCC standards. Thomas Edison’s Secret Lab will be a fully immersive multi-media property that encourages kids to engage themselves in the fun and exploration of science. An interactive website, digital applications, toys, games, electronics, in-school curriculum and more are all in development.
International distribution of the series outside of the U.S. and Canada is being handled by PGS Entertainment.
