CANNES, France: Producers are laying plans for a new “Angry Birds” television series based on the cult video game, its distributors said Saturday.
The game, about a furious flock of multi-colored birds protecting their eggs from a tribe of green pigs, has already inspired a blockbuster movie franchise, a game show and a theme park in Qatar.
Now its Finnish creators Rovio are planning to expand its hit TV shorts into a full-length series based on characters from the game, which has been downloaded more than four billion times.
The series is likely to screen next year just as the second “Angry Birds” film rolls out in cinemas across the world.
The first “The Angry Birds Movie” grossed more than $350 million (302 million euros).
The news of the series aimed at 6- to 12-year-olds broke as the MIPJunior global children’s entertainment market opened in Cannes, France.
The British-based producers of the series, Cake, have not said how long the episodes will be.
Each episode of the existing shorts series “Angry Birds Toons,” and its two spin-offs, “Angry Birds Stella” and “Piggy Tales,” which star the birds’ nemesis, Bad Piggies, lasts only three minutes.
“Long-form content marks the obvious next step in extending the ‘Angry Birds’ brand on the small screen,” Cake’s CEO Tom van Waveren told Variety.
Cake signed a distribution deal with Rovio in June after which its managing director Ed Galton said, “We are looking forward to catapulting these iconic characters to television audiences around the world.”
New Angry Birds television series being hatched
New Angry Birds television series being hatched
Oracle says data center outage causing issues faced by US TikTok users
WASHINGTON: Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by US users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the US over the weekend.
“The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure US data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors — cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX — will hold a stake of 15 percent. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1 percent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 percent.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner” but noted that US users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
