Carl Reed, known for producing Academy Award-winning short Hair Love, has launched Composition Media, an animation studio headquartered in St. Louis, USA. The studio will make animated film and TV content for a global audience, with much of the content highlighting minority and underrepresented communities.
It launches with a content slate which includes an animated kids TV series and two animated features – Bad Grandmas and Sky & Luna.
Bad Grandmas is a 2D animated adult-comedy film that follows a closely-knit group of unfiltered older ladies as they attempt to stay relevant as they age. They party, get Brazilian Butt Lifts, go to nightclubs and show how 65 is now the new 25. The movie is a cross between “The Boondocks” and “The Golden Girls,” with a talented cast of comedians.
Bad Grandmas celebrates the idea that it’s never too late to have fun and be young at heart. It is created by Brandon Lee Anderson, who is represented by Joseph Adeife of Adeife & Rabii APC, while Reed, Steve Harvey and Brandon R. Williams serves as the executive producer.
Animated feature Sky & Luna represents the first movie in an eight-picture slate partnership Composition Media has with Labid Aziz’s PoC Studios.
In Sky & Luna, lonely 11-year-old Sky has finally found a new best friend who is out of this world…literally. Luna is a shapeshifting alien sent to Earth to explore the planet. Instead, she is hunted by a top-secret government organisation tasked with eradicating extraterrestrial threats – an organisation run by Sky’s own mother!
Sky & Luna will be directed by Duncan Rouleau, with screenplay by Patricia Villetto. Reed is producing the movie with Man of Action, Creation Station, and PoC Studios chief creative officer Andy Cosby.
On the TV front, Composition is adapting the popular board game Catapult Feud into an animated television series of the same title.
Catapult Feud is a kids television program about two feuding families, the Cunningfields and the Chauforts, who compete with catapults and conspiracies to conquer each other and rule the Kingdom. While the adults just can’t seem to get along, it’s not the end of the world (yet), because the next generation of Cunningfields and Chauforts have a plan to bring peace.
“Our aim is to break the mould and elevate the art of animation by producing content that truly represents our audiences,” said Composition Media founder and CEO Reed. “But more than that, we want to push the boundaries of what animation can be. It’s time to move past the limitations of animation as just a genre and explore the limitless possibilities of this medium.”
Reed co-founded Lion Forge Comics in 2011, and later co-founded Lion Forge Animation in 2018, serving as its president and chief creative officer. With Lion Forge, he produced Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. For Disney Junior/ Disney+, he produced Rise Up, Sing Out, an animated series featuring music by The Roots. It was nominated for Annie Awards and NAACP Image Awards. He has also produced the Emmy-nominated animated musical series Rhymes Through Times, created by Nick Jr./Noggin featuring music performed by Christopher Jackson (Hamilton).