'We’ve set ourselves the goal of making content to the Disney level,' Zuru co-founder and president Nick Mowbray says. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Global toy brand Zuru, co-founded by the now-billionaire Mowbray siblings, is expanding into video games and animated video content.
Nick Mowbray told the Herald the company had formed a video game division plus a studio, now working on its first 3D animated series with the first content from both due to appear in early 2024.
Things are not being done by halves. Zuru Studios (its working title) is headed by former Weta Workshop creative director Theo Baynton, who is now working with a team of 100, which he expects to double to 200 by year’s end. He’s adding writers, storyboarders, animators and other roles every day.
The Wairarapa-based Baynton, who was headhunted for the role, previously directed a Thunderbirds reboot that screened on Britain’s ITV and worked on Weta’s The TotTots, says key management, planning and creative roles are New Zealand-based. But others will be in China and India, where he’s spending around half his time.
The new gaming wing, with about 20 staff, is headed by global content manager Cushla Henry, a former content partnerships manager at Herald publisher NZME.
“We’ve set ourselves the goal of making content to the Disney level,” Mowbray said.
The Hollywood model has been for a studio to create a hit movie or TV franchise, or a hit game, then license merchandise rights to a toy company.
Mowbray wants to own the whole thing.
“It’s part of our 360-degree strategy. We’ve always been focused more on building our own IP [intellectual property] and going more vertical [industry speak for owning every step of the chain] rather than licensing existing properties.”
Many details are still under wraps, but Henry says Zuru will release its first game on the Roblox gaming platform in the new year. If you’ve never heard of Roblox, your kids almost certainly have. It claims just over 70 million active users a day.
Baynton says the first animated series will probably emerge in April – likely initially on YouTube – with a second probably to follow by year’s end.
What’s the ultimate ambition? To go head-to-head with the likes of Disney-owned Pixar?
“Definitely the North Star is going head-to-head with the best animators in the world, to be up there with the big boys, to have a show that resonates with kids all around the globe,” Henry says. “It’s the ambition of those Mowbrays to take on the world.”
“Those Mowbrays” are siblings Nick, Anna and Mat, who have a collected net worth estimated at $3.2 billion by NBR, which put them at fourth on its rich list this year.
The Herald understands that Zuru’s revenue, pegged at $600m in 2019, will be in the $2.3b to $2.4 billion range this year.
The trio moved to China in 2003 when Nick was 18, living on $1 a day as they shared a tiny eighth-floor apartment with no lift and subsisted on rice and vegetables as they worked to get Zuru Toys off the ground.
These days they own properties including the $39m ex-Chrisco mansion in Auckland’s northwest, a sprawling estate made famous by its former rent-dodging tenant Kim Dotcom. Side hustles now span everything from a haircare line producing 100m bottles a year to a global push to build new homes at a fraction of the usual cost.
Both the Roblox game and the two series will be based on Zuru toys – “Rainbowcorns” in the case of the first game, part of the firm’s plush (soft) toy range, which Henry says is the second-biggest-selling plush toy in the world.
She says Zuru’s content plans were focused after a visit to the Kidscreen conference in Miami. The Roblox platform was chosen for its ready-made audience, with ready-made tools to jump-start the development. To accelerate things further, beyond its inhouse hires, Zuru has worked with US game developer Novaly Studios, which specialises in Roblox titles. The NZ gaming industry deployed lobbyist Conor English – brother of Sir Bill – in a successful attempt to persuade the last Government to introduce tax breaks for game developers in a bid to stop a drift offshore. But Zuru has always taken a multinational approach.
“We have built our animation and gaming studio to expand or brand experiences to reach broader audiences and reinforce brand recognition. It allows us to extend the story-telling around our brands,” Mowbray said.
The multiplayer Roblox game will be free, but over time in-game transactions will be added as updates are rolled out every two to four weeks. Kids will initially be able to choose from one of 40 characters, or avatars, and explore seven worlds, free-to-play, as they embark on quests to collect objects. New worlds, and new characters, will probably come at a cost.
That could include the option to buy goodies to get ahead in a game, or just get a flasher-looking character than your friends. These in-game purchases, central to Roblox’s model, and almost every major gaming platform these days, and virtual worlds like Fortnite and Microsoft’s Minecraft are each a micro-transaction, but can add up. It’s no accident that in-game purchases are now a US$68b market.
Roblox, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, had revenue of US$2.2 billion last year, representing its cut on microtransactions. Earlier this month, as it filed that its daily active users had jumped 20 per cent to 70.1m over the past year, its shares jumped 11 per cent, giving it a market cap of US$23.6b.
The platform has faced criticism for encouraging kids to spend. And in May, the BBC reported on a 10-year-old who managed to spend some £2500 (NZ$5200) across hundreds of Roblox microtransactions after discovering then changing a parent’s password.
But Henry says the platform now features a host of parental controls, including screentime limits, chat content filters, identity verification, activity reports (including chat history, trade history and “private” message history), friends and follower screening, the ability to reset a child’s password and spending limits.
While the Roblox game – already in a closed beta trial – is a near-cert for January launch, the timeframe for the first animated series is broader.
“Mat and Nick’s first priority above everything else is what we make has to be absolutely world-class,” Baynton said.
There has been a lot of buzz about AI’s ability to create 3D animated content lately, but Baynton says he’s not seeing any holistic artificial intelligence that could create everything from engaging scripts to storyboards and animation.
“The design team up in Shenzhen are just phenomenal. The amount of prompting that you would have to give a generative AI to match what these guys can achieve.”
He says the first Zuru series is still a few months away from release.
“Nick’s been blown away by what we’ve achieved so far. It’s been a brilliant year. The best year of my career.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
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