Seriously, Reel FX Reunite for New ‘Best Fiends’ Short, ‘Fort of Hard Knocks’

 

Venice, CA and Helsinki, Finland-based mobile entertainment company Seriously has announced the world premiere of Fort of Hard Knocks, the third original animated short within the Best Fiends franchise. This latest short film further demonstrates Seriously’s vision of creating an IP, Best Fiends, as a mobile game first, and building it out to animations, videos, and more.

“We have so many wonderful stories to tell in the Best Fiends universe, and we can’t wait to share our latest animation ‘Fort of Hard Knocks’ with our community of players and fans,” said Andrew Stalbow, CEO and Co-Founder, Seriously. “It’s so much fun extending out the brand beyond our games and we’re lucky to live in an age where we, as creators, get to distribute our content direct to our audience on mobile. Both our brand and our direct connection have the potential to be a significant competitive advantage and point of differentiation for us going forward.”

The feature film-quality animation was produced by Golden Globe-nominated Reel FX Animation Studios, the animation studio known for Book of Life and its work on Despicable Me, Ice Age, and Looney Toons. Fort of Hard Knocks stars a Hollywood talent voice cast of 2018 Emmy-nominee Pamela Adlon (Better Things, Californication), Kate Walsh (13 Reasons Why, Grey’s Anatomy), Mark Hamill (Star Wars), David Herman (Office Space), and Maurice LaMarche (Futurama, Zootopia).

The cinematic short was directed by Augusto Schillaci. Produced by Emmy-nominated producer Claudia De La Roca (Futurama) and music composed by Heitor Pereira (Despicable Me), the animation is supported by top industry talent.

 

“The Best Fiends franchise continues to be an amazing experience,” Schillaci notes. “Fort of Hard Knocks pushed our creative collaboration to a new level in character animation, story, comedy and visual style and I think fans will really resonate with the final piece.”

In 2017, Seriously launched two animated shorts with Reel FX, Boot Camp and Visit Minutia, that brought the Best Fiends world to life. Through the success of the animations and a comprehensive video strategy, the animations have more than 12.8 million combined views and helped grow the Best Fiends YouTube channel to more than 605,000 subscribers to-date. Players can enjoy the shorts and all Best Fiends social content without leaving the game thanks to Seriously’s in-game Video Center. This has successfully helped drive views across all social platforms.

The Fort of Hard Knocks animated short will be integrated into the Best Fiends game through in-game events and challenges. In honor of the animation, the new challenge is “Minutian Film Festival” themed, where players will collect popcorn boxes and win the Exclusive Fiend Style for Beebert, called Spielbert. Additionally, there will be a mini-game collection challenge around the animation launch.

With 90 million downloads and a passionate audience of as many as 2 million daily active players, Seriously is driving cross-promotion between all products, with the mobile game at the core. Best Fiends fans can watch Fort of Hard Knocks on the Best Fiends YouTube channel or on the Best Fiends in-game Video Center. Seriously’s next Best Fiends animation, will premiere this September 2018, and will be complemented with new in-game content.

 

Source: Seriously

 

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