Animated ‘Fred’ Web Series Coming

As part of the joint press announcement this morning in New York between management firm The Collective

and online network blip.tv, YouTube star Lucas Cruikshank, creator of the infamous Fred channel announced his next project for the high-pitched character—an animated web series. The project is still in the development phase, but the showrunners are now attached with Kate Boutilier and Eryk Casemiro, creator of The Rugrats and The Wild Thornberries on board. The project budget is not disclosed, but it is being financed by The Collective’s newly formed Collective Digital Studio.

The Fred channel, which has been relatively quiet after Cruikshank shifted into making feature-length film versions of the character, still sits as the #6 most subscribed channel on YouTube with just over 2.2 million subscribers and 777 million total views. The first feature, Fred: The Movie, was independently financed and taken to cable TV on Nickelodeon where it drew 7.6 million viewers and marked the most successful basic cable TV movie of 2010.

Now a follow-up Fred feature is shot and in post production and is targeting a theatrical release later this year. Fred’s latest video hinted at the project with Cruikshank running around what is clearly the film set.