#Imagine an R-rated Bluey. Wow!

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This is a summary of the article that appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 3, 2024. I summarized it a fair bit to focus on what was interesting to me in the article. That said, this is still a long read.

Watch out, a couple of swear words in here.

Bluey may be acquired by Disney which would help Disney: 20% of all TV views on the streaming service Disney+ are “Bluey”. In the fourth quarter of 2023 (excluding movies). Americans watched 731 million hours of “Bluey”.

Brumm accepts an award for best children’s program from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts in 2019.Photographer: Brendon Thorne/AFI/Getty Images

Joe Brumm is 46, likes sports and surfing, and is brash and unpolished; he seems a little like James Dean in that he’s talented but uncomfortable with fame and having to follow Hollywood conventions and rules… It was noted that Joe Brumm had public relations minders/handlers with him from Disney and the BBC to watch what he said when he was interviewed.

Brumm’s influences include Simpsons, South Park, Peanuts, and Calvin and Hobbes. “Peanuts just meant so much to me growing up” said Brumm. He studied animation in the 2000s at the University of Brisbane and worked in London for the BBC before returning to Australia in 2010 to start Ludo animation.

He came up with Bluey himself, and it was a hard sell initially that the show would be targeting adults and children. He used a lot of his own experiences with his kids to come up with story ideas.

For a while there was the idea of making the show something like an R-rated version of “Peppa Pig”, but that idea was dropped because there was already a similar adult Australian sitcom about raising kids being piloted.

The Australian Broadcasting Company liked the concept of “Bluey” and provided Brumm with A$20,000 ($13,000 US) to create a pilot, which became “The Weekend” episode of Season 1, which was screened at the Asian Animation Summit in November 2016.

Bluey is created at Ludo’s headquarters in Brisbane rather than contracting out the animation overseas, which allows Brumm to continue to tweak episodes up until the last minute. If there’s something he doesn’t like them. He also uses local vocal talent.

The ABC and BBC put up A$6 million to complete the first season of “Bluey”. The BBC made it possible to do this, providing the lion’s share of funding in exchange for distribution and merchandising rights. Australia didn’t have the resources to make the show happen otherwise.

Brumm was very angry when an early critique of Bluey in 2018 said the show made fun of stay-at-home dads; Blumm said he thought to himself “go fuck yourself”.

Within seven months, Bluey was the most watched series ever on the ABC streaming service with 75 million plays of episodes, which led to the BBC commissioning a second season of the show.

Ludo was able to retain control the show, and Brumm was entitled to a share of the revenue.

By 2019, networks in the US were interested in Bluey: Nickelodeon wanted “Bluey”, but they were worried about the name, because it was too close to “Blue’s Clues”. Other networks wanted to change the accents of the characters, and this was a dealbreaker for Ludo and Brumm.

This created an opening for Jane Gould, who was at the time the executive vice president of research and scheduling at Disney’s general entertainment division, who had a comfort level with Bluey because she hailed from Brisbane, and she understood the desire of Brumm and Ludo to keep the show Australian. She didn’t think this was a problem, and she borrowed two episodes to test screen in the US; the kids and parents didn’t have a problem with the Australian aspects of the show. Disney acquired the rights from BBC Studios to air Bluey everywhere except Australia, New Zealand and China.

“Bluey” didn’t get the same marketing push as shows like “The Mandalorian” when Disney+ began broadcasting "Bluey" in June 2020, but soon begin to dominate viewership numbers, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (There was a lot of families spending time watching television and they watched a lot of Bluey.)

The ABC didn’t have a problem with the off-colour humour in “Bluey”, like the use of the word “poo”, and seeing a pony poop in “Markets” and this had to be edited out. Brumm said he hated making these edits... Disney defended these edits saying they were trying to be respectful of different cultural sensitivities, and it’s noted that Disney has since released the uncensored versions of the episodes.

Brumm likes to control his creation. He was upset with some of the early prototypes of Bluey toys because Bandit didn’t look right, he looked like a fridge. He was also concerned that at the beginning that there was too much of a focus on Bluey herself and there weren’t enough toys of all the characters. This concern turned out to be accurate; people wanted toys of all of the characters in the show.

Brumm originally was not sure he wanted to do a second season of “Bluey”, fearing it might not be as good as the first. Brumm doesn’t want to repeat himself in terms of episodes. He wants to make sure that each season is better than the previous one. He was also worried that Bluey would have to stop when Brisbane shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the show continued, with staff working from home.

The “Rain” episode was dialogue-free because Brumm wanted to take a break from writing dialogue at the time.

In Australia, the public and the media have publicly questioned why the ABC didn’t try harder to retain control of the profits from "Bluey" merchandise sales. There was an article in the “Australian Financial Review” that lamented that the ABC had let a gold mine slip through its fingers. It was thought that this decision was shortsighted, but the ABC responded saying they made the best deal at the time that they could. Disney has also been said to have made an error in passing on theme park rights and allowing BBC Studios to retain those rights; people go to Disney parks and ask why they can’t see Bluey there.

Disney isn’t releasing details on whether it’s explored buying “Bluey”, but Ludo says Bluey isn’t for sale, but this could change.

It is noted that there hasn’t been a clear announcement of a fourth season. Brumm has stated previously there will be a hiatus and he’s concerned about the children’s voices changing. His preference not to have to replace the voice actors, and he knows he can’t continue to draw upon his own kids experiences because they’ve grown up.

During the interview, Brumm’s handlers interjected and couldn’t said he couldn’t discuss the final episode.

Speaking anonymously, someone familiar with Disney’s “Bluey” dealings said that Brumm is trying to decide whether he’s comfortable letting other people write for the show, which would make it easier to continue to create episodes, and possibly smooth the way for a Disney acquisition in the future, as Disney would be reluctant to spend billions on a show with only three seasons of episodes.

Brumm said over email that he’s already collaborated on writing some additional episodes and ultimately it isn’t his decision who writes Bluey as he doesn’t own the show.

He thinks the final episode is magical and it sums up everything Bluey has tried to do in the last few years.

#Bluey long reads #Imagine an R-rated Bluey. Wow! #Interesting stuff #Bluey