Rubble & Crew, the latest chapter in Spin Master’s Paw Patrol universe, marks the franchise’s first expansion into TV spinoffs.
It arrives just in time for the brand’s 10-year anniversary and the launch of its second theatrical film, Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie. But the show’s Feb. 3 premiere also comes after its IP holder, as well as platform distributors Nickelodeon and Paramount, have already vested into just about every other corner of kids entertainment possible: publishing, merchandising, toys, video games, stage shows, social media and theme parks, to name a few.
The series centers on Rubble, an English bulldog and his pup family of construction workers. It’s a step away from the rescue-driven world of the original Paw Patrol series, which was first conceived in 2010. That show follows Ryder, a young boy who mainly calls on his six pup friends to spring into action whenever someone in their community needs help.
“It has been extraordinary to see the pure joy that Paw Patrol continues to bring to kids and families as we hit the ten-year mark of fans seeking out all the ways to interact with these characters,” Pam Kaufman, president and CEO of international markets, global sonsumer products and experiences, Paramount, says. “It’s clear just how meaningful the show’s message of friendship and community is.”
Rubble & Crew marks a long-awaited small-screen expansion of a beloved series creator Keith Chapman tells The Hollywood Reporter is “number one on Nick Jr., number one on Parmount+ and number one on Netflix globally.” And with the arrival of a second big-screen adventure in October, Paw Patrol — including its first film’s $150 million in box office revenue and top-selling, award-winning toy lines — illustrates how a brand can weather major industry shifts and reach its audience across multiple and even competing mediums.
“At this point, it’s more than fair to say that Paw Patrol has entered icon status that stretches way beyond its roots in preschool television,” says Ramsey Naito, president, Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation. “I think its magic comes from how families find the adventures to be aspirational while the friendship and teamwork are grounded in real-life experience. And it doesn’t hurt that they’re some of the cutest pups ever.”
Ahead of Rubble & Crew‘s debut, THR spoke to Chapman and Spin Master’s executive vp entertainment Jen Dodge about why they launched the TV spinoff now; how they’ve united their story universe across theme parks and stage shows; what they’ve tapped into with their preschool audience that’s produced such a rock-star-like craze; and the future of the franchise.
You’ve done a lot since Paw Patrol debuted in 2013, but you hadn’t done a TV spinoff until now. Why?
JEN DODGE When you’re dealing with a really young audience, there’s always a question of, How much do they want? How much do they need? Where can you take the story creatively? I think we’ve always taken a step-by-step approach. We started out with 11-minute episodes, then we played with 22-minute specials, then we played with 44-minute specials, and at 44, they’re still interested, attentive, and they can handle that deeper storyline. That gave us the confidence to try the movie, and then obviously, that worked very well. [It was] deeper story, bigger action, a more emotional storyline. They were there for all of that. We’ve also introduced over the years 10 different pups to the universe outside of the core six, and [they were] well-received all the way along. So I think it’s been about trying new things, trying to reach our audience where they’re at, and then, “Could we try a spinoff?” We were looking at older properties, at the Marvel universe, Star Trek, DC and saying, “Can we do this in a preschool kids and family way?” Everything else that we’ve tried and met the audience where they’re at, it’s worked, and that gave us the confidence and feeling like 10 years in, everybody knows these core pups and their stories so well that you can take one of them and introduce them in a different place and it would make sense. The appetite is certainly there from a content perspective as well. All those things led to, “Why did it take us so long?” It was a gradual evolution to get to a spinoff.
Paw Patrol was conceived around the concept of community building and celebrating emergency responders after 9/11. How did you think about Rubble & Crew similarly or differently in terms of story?
DODGE One of the things that Keith, myself and the team really focused on in the early years, in development and as we moved through production on that first season was exactly that — the service pups being of service to their community. That idea of first responders and how they run into danger to save their community and those around them. That was a really important premise. When we thought about if we were going to do a spinoff and which pup, we actually explored every pup. I think there are a few things that are unique about Rubble. He’s the funniest, probably, of the crew, so he’s really beloved in that way. Also, if we did a spinoff with Chase or Marshall we’d still be in that kind of first responder, rescue storytelling. But with Rubble being focused on construction and building, it enabled us to do storytelling in a different way, and have those stories be about building. Of course, Keith is also the creator of Bob the Builder, so he knows an awful lot about building. There is some rescue at the heart of Paw Patrol within the stories, but primarily, they’re about building, fixing, community. Then we decided, “Let’s make it about family,” so it’s his family around him that he’s building with. We can tell family stories about aunties, uncles, cousins — those are really important connections in a child’s life. So it gave us a different way to tell stories, a different play pattern with construction and building, and could still be the core of the Paw Patrol — rescue and community.
KEITH CHAPMAN Rubble was my favorite character, so I was really pleased to see that Jen and the team had focused on Rubble and giving him his own show because he deserves his own show. He’s a really lovable character. And also, like Jen says, you would have ended up with a competing show if it had been about Marshall or Chase. I think it was the right decision.
The visual art style for Paw Patrol was decided more than a decade ago, but has remained pretty visually consistent as the story has ventured into different mediums. Can you talk about how the team settled on it?
CHAPMAN I remember when we kicked off with this, I did a few little doodles really to sell the idea to Spin Master. We went down that route. There was a studio that put together the original trailer — animation test — which we showed and pitch to Nick Jr. It was when you got the toys out on the table, but that was a different look, more rounded heads and slightly different look. I think the lucky break for us when we managed to get the green light from Nickelodeon. Jen and Tim went out and found, right on their doorstep, Guru Studios, who just did the most amazing designs. It was almost like a bit of a throwback to old Disney artists, the way they captured the pups and the personalities in this brilliant style. They look so adorable with the proportions of the eyes and the bodies. It worked — including the vehicle designs. The coloring was beautiful. A lot of CG shows actually don’t look that good because the coloring is not that good or the styling is not that good. But Guru just got it together. It was perfect.
DODGE We looked at a lot of different design styles, and we could have gone quite cartoony, but what we felt was important was that the dogs looked like real dogs. That they looked like their breed and that they had a realism to them because wanting a puppy is such a universal thing for children. They couldn’t be so cartoony that you couldn’t feel like that’s the pup that you have at home or that’s down the street. It had to fit into the human world in a really realistic way. Another thing was that because they were puppies, they couldn’t look like adult dogs. So the paws are a little bit bigger, Marshall’s clumsy because of it. They move like dogs. Rubble’s gait as a bulldog is very different than Chase’s gait as a German shepherd, or Skye’s as a cockapoo. When we looked at them all in black and white silhouette, they all had to have unique silhouettes that were distinguishable from one another, but also identifiable to their breed.
Did that style or look change at all going into the Paw Patrol movie where you might have a little more budget, and what were the overall challenges of moving the series to the big screen?
DODGE From a budget standpoint, as a TV producer, the Paw Patrol movie was my first movie and it felt very luxurious in terms of what you can do in a movie that you can’t do on [TV]. The size of the set pieces, how much effects you can have, how great everything looks, the kind of stories you can tell — with all of that, the world is your oyster. Within that, I think the challenge is — and what I think we were very successful in — was delivering a movie that was a theatrical experience without deviating from the look of the show and the pups that kids love. When a kid gets a Paw Patrol toy, they’re satisfied because it looks exactly like the show. So the last thing we wanted to do was have kids come into the movie and feel like this didn’t feel like Chase to them or didn’t feel like Skye to them. The ability to be hyperreal in feature animation is there. You can see it in many movies where that brick looks like brick and that animal looks like that animal. But we did not want to go too far into that realism.
We really felt like these were still the pups that you’ve known and loved for 10 years on television, they just have finer rendered fur that moves, more joints, more expressions and cooler-looking vehicles. We wanted it to be a heightened experience, but still very organically Paw Patrol. We did a lot of work to find that line and to find the line in storytelling where it was exciting and the adventures field big enough for the big screen, but that were not terrifying our young audience. The sound effects are bigger, everything feels bigger. We were not trying to make a four-quadrant movie here. That was never anyone’s intention. We made that movie for our fans who love Paw Patrol at home with their family. And is it a little broader? Yes, there’s a few jokes, there’s the music, there’s great voice talent that adults can go, “Holy crap, that’s so-and-so?” You feel like you got your money’s worth at the movies, but this story was still at its heart for a four-year-old.
In October you’re releasing your second Paw Patrol movie, with this one focusing on cockapoo Skye, one of the six original pups. Why did you decide to go with her as your central character?
DODGE So many reasons. First of all, Skye is one of the most popular pups — she’s in the top two, top three all the time, and it is across gender. She’s the number one favorite of almost every girl and she’s still the second or third for most boys. She’s a great character. I think as well back in 2010 and 2011 when we were developing this property, as I said, it was a much more gendered toy aisle, gendered content philosophy. So we created lots of boy pups and only a few girl pups. Skye and then Everest were introduced. But we really want to serve our audience in every way, and we felt like there was a desire — and the great thing about social is you can see parents are talking — to get deeper into some of our female characters and to really serve that audience. And we do know boys like Skye. It’s a very old-fashioned idea that boys don’t like to watch girl characters, and that I think, has been debunked over the years. But it was something that 10 years ago was certainly a popular opinion, or a not-so-popular opinion. We also love how badass she is. With flyng and Skye’s jet, you can tell a really cool story. It’s a superhero theme that’s broadly appealing. This choice was about one of our most popular pups and serving an audience that had maybe been underserved in the Paw universe, but that we felt was so broadly appealing in every way. We also have an extraordinary female villain in the second movie, played by Taraji P. Henson, so we’re pretty excited about that as well.
You are celebrating your official 10-year anniversary this year. When you launched in 2013, it was a different world for kids programming. What are the things that have most changed and impacted your work and the process of producing your franchise since you launched?
DODGE Literally, everything has changed. I feel like 2013 wasn’t 10 years ago, it was like 100 years ago, when you think about the evolution of content, both in great ways and in more difficult ways. The most challenging is just finding our audience everywhere that we can. Streaming, of course, has upended everything. When we debuted in 2013, if you were on a linear preschool network like Nickelodeon or Disney, in the U.S.; you had every family, you had every kid. Now, it doesn’t matter whether you go streaming first, whether you’re linear first, you only have a piece of the pie. So you have to be everywhere all the time. From a strategy standpoint with our partners at Nickelodeon and Paramount, it has been about globally making sure we’re on linear channels, we’re on streaming. So globally, we’re on Netflix, where there was no P+, and in the U.S., we’re on P+ and we’re on Nick. It was also one of the major impetuses for making a movie. How do we get that kind of broad audience all at once? A movie is a great way to do that. We also have a very active community on YouTube with our Paw and Friends YouTube page, and we have social.
In our 10-year anniversary celebration, we have our second movie, and we have the spinoff, but we also have an incredible app coming that’s going to be a whole other way for kids and families to enter the Paw universe. Strategically, that’s what’s changed over the years. I think, creatively, whether it’s writers rooms, casting, whether it’s characters, one of the things that I think has changed for the better or just overall in content is a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, and making sure that every kid can see themselves onscreen. Whether that’s in our human characters, which I don’t think we did as well in early seasons, and certainly have really tried to improve our processes that way. You see that really shows up in movie one and movie two with the amazing, diverse cast that we have. Or also with pups that we brought in. Rex, who is our most popular guest pup, is in a wheelchair. The great thing about these characters that Keith created is that pups do real jobs, so it’s a very easy connection. There are fire pups and Coast Guard pups and pups that have artificial limbs and wheelchairs. We’re able to bring that in and I think that’s one of the best things about how content has changed over the last 10 years.
You’ve got a massive global presence for Paw Patrol. How do you and Paramount, Nickelodeon and your other partners approach that similarly or differently for your young international audience?
DODGE So Paramount, Nickelodeon, Viacom — I always call them all three because it’s been a journey — are our global partners and they handle the global distribution of the series. So we are on every Nick Jr., Paramount kids platform globally and have been since the beginning. Then they also distribute to linear partners in different territories as well. In the U.K., we’re on a preschool channel called Milkshake! In Germany, we’re on a preschool channel called Super RTL, and in France we’re on TF1. We’re airing in close to 180 countries and are in 30 different languages. And when you think about someplace like the U.K., they actually don’t have the same voices as the pups in the U.S.
CHAPMAN The kids in the U.S. are reading the script and giving their performance, but the other kids are kind of dubbing it, so they’re having to match the picture.
DODGE Yeah, it’s harder to do. But I do think it’s about meeting your audience. If you’re a preschooler, you understand and relate to your own accent better, so that was always the rule that we had. British kids do voices for the U.K., which means even within English, we’re very localized. Now, if you look, you also see content coming from different English-speaking territories that’s not dubbed. We’ve learned our audiences can handle a different accent a little more than they could 10 years ago. But it is all a part of trying to meet kids where they are so they feel like it’s their community that they’re a part of. Even when we chose the dog breeds, we’d research what were the most popular dog breeds both in North America and in the U.K. We do try to make sure we cover what the most popular pups around the world are and make sure there’s something for everyone.
You’re working in an astonishing number of mediums. How do you craft Paw stories for the theme park experience versus the stage, and how has that been similar or different to the TV or film experience?
DODGE It’s about having area expertise. At Spin Master, we have three creative centers: entertainment, which I lead, toys and digital games. We’ve always understood our toys, play and story are intertwined in a child’s life. That they take a story that they see on the screen and then fit it with their toys — whether it’s a pup toy, a mixture of pup toys or other toys they have — to play out stories and make up their own rescue. But with our digital games division, we have that expertise in-house with Creative Center, that we can work with every day. Our story teams, our creative executives, producers, showrunners work directly with the digital games group, and we have our franchise management team that makes sure everybody’s talking, and we’re all singing from the same song page. It can be infinitely rewarding for creatives, no matter their medium, to work with someone in a different medium. You see the writers on the TV side’s excitement and how they light up at the toy designs. Probably some of Keith’s most exciting moments were seeing some of the toy things come to life.
CHAPMAN Yeah.
DODGE Then when you have someone who’s in digital games working directly with someone who’s on the TV side, that is also a magical connection of putting creatives together. We also with Paramount and our live show have people from Spin Master and Nickelodeon vetting those stories that we’re working with area experts on. We’re the experts in our characters, in our brand and in our stories, so we embed ourselves into every single part of that. Then Paramount and Nickelodeon run the theme park. How we manage the franchise together is that creatives from the series are touching every single offshoot. It’s the same core team and some of us have been there since the beginning across those areas of the business. So there’s a lot of caretakers of the brand who really understand it well. Then when you do something like a spinoff with Rubble, we have a new showrunner who never worked on the Paw series, but knows it so well and knows preschool so well. So what Bradly [Zweig] brought I think so beautifully to the table on Rubble & Crew, is that it quintessentially feels like Paw Patrol, but it’s also different, it’s fresh and it has a little bit of a unique voice. It’s trusting those creative experts and having the best and then also being really careful caretakers of the characters in the stories at the same time.
CHAPMAN I think whatever medium the show goes into, it always has heart. All these characters have such great heart in their relationship with Ryder. It doesn’t matter if you’re seeing a theater show onstage or playing a game or watching on TV or seeing a movie, or doing a meet and greet with characters at shopping malls. The kids actually genuinely love the characters, you can see it. I went to a couple of stage shows, one in London and one in Nice [France], and I couldn’t believe it. It was like some sort of rock concert. There were thousands of kids and they were all going mad when they saw the characters. It’s like they’re going to see a big, massive rock star. They’re seeing their heroes come to life.
You mentioned the pandemic. Can you talk about whether the industry feels different after the pandemic, and did it have any impact on Paw?
DODGE I think it is different. What you noticed before the pandemic was that when kids were watching Paw Patrol, their parents probably weren’t in the room. They were putting it on. I always joke, we’ve given many people a chance to empty the dishwasher or get a shower, maybe have a glass of wine, over the years. But what happened during the pandemic was that parents and children watched TV, movies, content together more than they ever have historically. Because that was what you could do together. There weren’t a lot of options. I think what we’re seeing from that is a lot of stories and shows about family and that time spent together resonating. This generation of preschoolers didn’t really go to nursery school and daycare. They had been home with their parents. Family has always been important to a 4-year-old, but now that’s their whole ecosystem. Hopefully, their ecosystems are starting to grow as we start to move out of this, but it did kind of change that dynamic. So I do think parents have seen more episodes of preschool programming over the last three years. And, you know, when your kid loves something, you’ll go to that for everything. In the early days of the discussion about the first movie, we said there will be parents who don’t want to go see Paw Patrol, but it almost doesn’t matter how you feel about it as a parent. You’ll watch it at home, go to the movie theater, you’ll buy the dress-up clothes, or take them to the live show. I think the pandemic solidified that even more.
From your perspectives as creatives who have built this billion-dollar franchise but also with your general history in storytelling for a younger audience, what are the things that preschool viewers are looking for in their entertainment? What did you tap into?
CHAPMAN I think when you’ve had kids you become a bit of an expert on kids. You study them firsthand because you’ve got them right there all day long. I’ve had three boys and recently a daughter, she’s 4 and a half now. It’s been amazing seeing the difference between boys and girls play, for instance. She’s into Frozen and loves all that role play where she can sing and dress up. Boys get to an age where they just want to get a goodie and a baddie and smash each other over the head. So it’s been a real eye-opener to me. But when I was developing Bob [the Builder] with my sons, that was a no-brainer, I suppose, watching how babies sit there and put bricks on top of each other. It’s almost genetic. And constructing was the biggest industry in the world, and I just thought at the time, there isn’t anything out there with building in it. Yet, it’s the biggest thing. Kids see diggers on every street, they see dads building stuff, wallpapering, painting. They see cranes outside, they see steamrollers and diggers going past. So it felt a natural concept to work out.
The thing about Bob the Builder though is that although it was watched by boys and girls, the merchandising was really bought by mostly boys. There were some female toy lines, but it was really 90 percent boys. It was also a smaller and narrower age group we were watching. So the classic preschool age group would be about 2 to 4. Then they progress to 4 and they start finding the older shows and they’re into buying Star Wars characters and Spider-Man. They leave those type of shows quite young. Whereas with Paw Patrol, which was amazing to us all, is I’ve got so many friends with children that start watching at the age of 2 — and even less sometimes — and they go all the way up to 7 or even older. You’ve got this massive age span and, not only that, you’ve got girls equally loving Paw Patrol as much as boys. It is one of these concepts that appeal to boys and girls. They also buy into merchandising in an equal way.
When we first started talking about it, Jen and I loved the nurturing aspect of it, the softness and the pups. The pups were key because they’re the most popular pet in the world. Then the transforming element, the exciting high-tech transforming machines — kennels turning into these incredible vehicles was the other key box that we checked. It just seems to work in every country it plays in because the values are the same for kids all over the world. We started off in series one with storylines more gentle, but now they’re really incredible. It sounds like a simple idea — originally, pups bought by a young boy who’s trained them to be rescue pups to go out and help people. But actually, it’s a big idea in advertising terms because you can do anything with that concept. You can take it into big movie concepts. You can up the stakes of the peril and how the pups are going to try and save the day with Ryder. You can up the stakes with the machinery. Each movie gets new high-tech vehicles. Every series introduces new concepts. You can have them saving an owl in a tree or you can have them defeating some bad guy flying around in a really fast rocket.
DODGE Also, one of the things that was clear in the initial pitch was that it was so empowering. That’s so important for preschoolers — that idea that a little pup can do such a big thing: rescue an owl, save their neighbor, save their town or the world. It’s really empowering to a 3-year-old that even though I’m small, I can do big things, and I can impact the people around me, my family and my community. Back in 2010 when we were first working on it and developing it, the toy aisle and content was very gendered. But Paw Patrol was unique in that it appealed so broadly, surprising everyone. We also always tried to make it as aspirational as possible, like you’re watching your older siblings’ show but in a really safe space. It’s those high-stakes adventures but in a preschool-friendly way. So, I think it’s the empowerment and that aspirational quality, along with the sweet faces of the puppies. That is the heart of what our preschool audience loves.
With 10 years under your belt, do you see Paw Patrol going another 10?
CHAPMAN I can see it running for decades. Why not? Mickey Mouse, how old is he now? Some of the big brands are celebrating 50 to 60 years, like Paddington, and Winnie the Pooh must be 90 years old. I think that Bob the Builder is now coming up to 24 years. Paw Patrol has got a long way to go. It is evergreen and the idea will still be relevant in 10 years’ time. Kids will still vote puppies as their number one pet globally. I don’t see why, as long as the scriptwriters can keep things fresh and incentivized and coming up with brilliant stories, it couldn’t be around. We’ll be celebrating 20 years and maybe more.
DODGE I think our aspiration is for Paw Patrol to be around forever. That when our very first fans from 2013 are having kids, they’re showing Paw Patrol to their children. That it becomes ubiquitous in a way across generations. That’s the true goal.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Source: Hollywood
