Banijay’s Beyond Entertainment has tied up with Silas Hickey’s indie animation/creative studio, Custom Nuts, to co-develop/produce a slate of hybrid Japanese anime/Western animation series for the international market.

The first three projects out of Beyond Custom Nuts are sci-fi slapstick comedy "Jock and Sunny" (52x7 mins); factual/slapstick anime "Shape & Shapers" (26x11 mins); and surfing subculture title, "Classical Chaos" (26x11 mins + feature-length specials). 

Hickey, formerly APAC regional head of development and original production at WBD’s Cartoon Network, co-founded Custom Nuts in 2019 with Matthew Howison. 

The aim is to “combine the best of Japanese anime and western cartoons into a new kind of hybrid animated entertainment”. 

Beyond Entertainment’s Melinda Wearne ("Beat Bugs", "Motown Magic") is leading the new partnership. Among other projects, Wearne created "Hoopla Doopla", a co-production between Australia’s ABC and CCTV in China.