Iginio Straffi, Italian animator and creator of the animated series “Winx Club,” says he was surprised when Netflix abruptly cancelled the live-action “Fate: The Winx Saga” series adaptation after two seasons.
He tells Variety that “I still have to hear what Netflix has to say officially. I will be talking to Netflix to fully understand what happened.”
That cancellation means that Straffi, who created the global IP, can now forge ahead with a long-planned live-action “Winx” movie which he says will be budgeted at more than $100 million.
He says it is “probably the most important project of my entire career” and is the culmination of the saga’s journey, saying the series was made with a “more accessible budget”, and he thinks Netflix “got a good return” on it.
After turning down multiple opportunities to make a live-action “Winx” movie on a ‘low budget,’ he says he thinks the time has come to make a big-budget feature with a scale along the lines of “Harry Potter” or a superhero film:
“The audience I’m seeking to tap into comprises those who, just like the audience for the Netflix series, are nostalgic for the original animation series 20 years ago, and also families who want to go to the movies with children aged 10 and up. The Netflix series drew heavily on the existing characters, but also created a mood that is a bit darker.
There will be dark shades, but the mood will be closer to the DNA of the animation series – especially the bad guys, The Trix, [whom] everybody was waiting for in the third installment of the Netflix series.”
Straffi will reportedly hit Los Angeles this coming week to shop the big-budget feature film to U.S. studios which will be entirely separate from the Netflix series. A ninth installment of the “Winx Club” animated TV series, which serves a semi-reboot, is also in the works for a 2024 release.
