Amazon Announces First-Look Partnership With Superplastic, New TV Series
Amazon today announced a first-look deal with Superplastic, a Vermont-based character design studio that creates synthetic celebrities. The deal includes a $20 million capital investment by The Alexa Fund, Amazon's venture capital arm that focuses on new media, smart consumer electronics, ambient intelligence, and other areas of digital technology. The deal also includes a greenlight for The Janky & Guggimon Show, starring the Superplastic synthetic celebrities of the same name. The first-look deal signed by the two companies is expected "to facilitate the creation of additional series and films starring other characters in the Superplastic universe."
According to Amazon's official synopsis, The Janky & Guggimon Show follows the adventures of two lazy and spectacularly incompetent best friends who are hell-bent on getting rich and famous but leave a trail of chaos and destruction in their wake. The endearing duo includes Janky, the loveable idiot who spends his spare time scamming celebrities, and Guggimon, a fashion icon and master manipulator who's too narcissistic to care.
"Superplastic's universe of synthetic celebrities have earned a cult following in every medium they've touched," said Superplastic founder and CEO Paul Budnitz. "The new collaboration partnership with Amazon Studios reaches a massive audience and provides a new playground for us to wreak havoc worldwide. We're grateful for the investment the Amazon Alexa Fund gave us to help us continue to grow the Superplastic Universe!"
"As we expand the Alexa Fund to address a wider range of consumer technologies that include ambient computing, smart devices, and the future of entertainment, we're very excited to add Superplastic to our portfolio," said Paul Bernard, director of the Alexa Fund. "Superplastic's virtual celebrities delight audiences and meet their customers where they are, and we see them as demonstrative of a new class of IP that is going to be increasingly relevant with younger generations. We are excited to be an investor and to continue to help Superplastic and Amazon's Media and Entertainment teams identify more ways to delight customers."
Superplastic is a Vermont-based character design studio that creates synthetic celebrities with millions of followers worldwide, and who appear in social media, music, gaming, high-end collectibles, fashion, animated entertainment, web3 and live experiences. Janky and Guggimon built a massive fan base on social media before landing a first-look deal on a major streaming service . Each episode features a cast of animated and human celebrity friends. If ordered to series, it will be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.