Ottawa-based Funbag Animation has signed a $93.6-million agreement with South Asia’s UTV Toons. The deal calls for a creative and business relationship between the two companies on nine 26-episode original animated children’s series, which will reportedly unspool over the next three years.

According to Funbag, the deal, which apparently had been in the works since early in the year, is one of the largest coventure deals ever signed between Canadian and Indian media companies (UTV Toons is part of the larger UTV Group, based in India.) When the deal has run its course, Funbag and UTV Toons will have coproduced a total of 234 half-hours of content.

‘UTV Toons is a great company with really great people, which helps things along immensely,’ says Funbag’s vp of corporate affairs, Curtis Crawford. ‘They are a coventure partner in For Better or For Worse, our primetime series, and we found the working relationships so positive that we started to talk about a bigger business relationship. It was just a real nice fit.’

UTV Toons is a 10-year-old company with operations in India, Malaysia and Singapore. It has reportedly more than 300 animators under its employ. Crawford says Funbag is glad to have such a major international player as a partner.

‘In the long term, it gives us a reliable partner that we can go forth with in terms of future endeavors, both business-wise and creatively,’ he says. ‘Both companies will bring things to the table and it will give us a stable kind of relationship with an overseas studio, which every [animation] company needs, especially a North American company.’

Crawford says that with the combined resources of Funbag and utv, the partners will be better able to finance shows they otherwise could not.

‘We feel between the two companies we’ve established a good creative base with the things we are doing. Now, with the union, it allows us some flexibility in financing. That will allow us to control more copyright and build the companies,’ says Crawford.

Production on the new shows from Funbag and utv will get under way in June. The first of the series has been slated for delivery in late 2001.