Headed for the TV.
The Cartoon Network has decided to do a deal with the Annoying Orange, the smart-alecky Web series that attracted over 800 million views on YouTube.
It’s a win for the Collective, a newish Hollywood management company with a focus on Web conten. Rather than pursue the normal path to TV — selling the idea to a channel, which in turn makes a pilot — the Collective tried it in reverse: self-financing a pilot and then shopping the finished product.
The goal was to maintain creative control and prove to skeptical TV executives that a Web idea could work in a traditional format.
The half-hour series, created by Dane Boedigheimer and starring, well, an irritating animated orange, will make its TV debut next year. The premise: Orange and his buddies will travel through time in a magical fruit cart, dropping into adventures from which they must “squeeze their way out,” Cartoon Network said.
Terms for the deal were not disclosed.