by Peter White
Sky is currently searching for kids aged five to 12 with a passion for action sports to appear in Revolution: Skills and has also ordered Revolution Cuts, based on the big-budget skateboarding and BMX format. It is looking for skateboarders, BMXers, rollerbladers and scooter kids. Revolution Skills will see the pros teach kids tricks, while Revolution Cuts is a compilation of the original series aimed at youngsters. Both are fifteen episodes of ten minutes.
Motion Content Group, the rebranded GroupM Entertainment run by Richard Foster, is co-producing alongside Natalka Znak’s transatlantic indie.
The show is one of Sky One’s latest high-end entertainment bets since it revamped the channel’s strategy last year. The kids’ spin-offs will air on its Sky Kids app as well as its on-demand service.
Sky launched its kids app in 2016 as it looked to tie up younger viewers. It launched with a reboot of iconic animation Morph from Aardman Animations and has also commissioned shows including wildlife series Monkeys and Apes: Wild Files from Offspring Films. The service, which also features a raft of third party series from the likes of Cartoon Network, Disney and Nickelodeon, is run by Sky’s head of kids content Lucy Murphy.
The move comes after Znak & Co., run by I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here producer Znak, recently scored a U.S. pilot for Revolution. It is working with Fox on the competition format. Znak said recently that she sold the show to the U.S. network in “quite possibly the worst pitch of all time”.
“I couldn’t get any of my materials or the tape to play but then I just told them about the show and they absolutely loved. They said it’s like Ninja Warrior, in the sense that it’s exciting, it’s sport, it’s got very strong characters, so it has that co-viewing feeling. You’re watching it for the thrills, spills and amazing drama and amazing accidents that we dealt with all of the time but actually you’re really rooting for people and turning on week after week to see how they do. It’s got everything a breakout entertainment show should have,” she added.