Jay Ahn, who served as an executive producer on the 2014 animated comedy The Nut Job, has secured the film rights to children’s book Nullaboo Hullabaloo by Fleur Ferris. The project is a tri-party collaboration between the USA, South Korea, and Australia with Ahn producing alongside Tristan Barr and David Gim of Continuance Pictures as well as Ferris.

The book, which was released in 2019, follows Janomi, the fairy that is forbidden to talk to humans, but when her grandfather, the king of the fairy colony, is captured by silver spiders, she desperately needs help. She places her trust in ten-year-old country kid Gemma and tells her she MUST keep the fairies’ existence a secret. But when Gemma’s school rival, Nina, steals the secretly recorded footage of Janomi and uploads it onto YouTube, a media frenzy explodes in sleepy Nullaboo.

“It’s a fun, magical, action-adventure story that shows what could happen if fairies were discovered, but it also so much more. This story shows how dangerous one ill-intended person can be to the masses if they are in a position of influence,” said Ferris.

Ahn, through MBL Media (Korea), brokered the book deal with Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown on behalf of the author. Burbank-based Astro-Nomical Entertainment, co-founded by Chris Henderson and Ahn, specializes in animated series and feature films for family audiences. Astro-Nomical will closely work together as a sister company of MBL Korea with the development and production of the IP.

“There couldn’t be a more timely piece for the world with the current state of affairs,” said Ahn. “Not only from creative and production but from distribution and marketing perspective, I want to bring it up to a different dimension.”

“As the productions of our live-action have slowed with COVID we are excited to be taking a different direction in the safe hands of Jay Ahn,” remarked Barr.

“This is the first of many Korean projects I plan to bring to Australia as there is an untapped market of quality practitioners,” added Gim.