A man sneezes and what pours forth from him looks like tiny marines rarin’ to take a beach on

D-Day. This is the brainchild of David Hamburg of Montreal’s Germ Productions, producer of Germs, one of the winners of a Market Simulation slot at Banff.

Germs, an animated comedy TV series (26 x 30) is budgeted at $300,000 an episode. Written by Hamburg and his writing partner Mitch Goldsmith, the project has finished the development stage. Hamburg is now looking for a broadcaster ‘and to put some final pieces into the puzzle.’

The series already has a coproduction deal with Shanghai Film Animation of China and Megafun Productions of Montreal.

Germs’ main characters are two men, Sonny and Charles, who are ‘struggling to make it in a cold hard world’ when, while working as janitors in a laboratory, they are injured and transformed into ‘half-men, half-supergerms – and they’re contagious.’

‘They’re the ultimate outsiders, even more so as defined by their physical condition,’ says Hamburg. ‘Their main problem is that wherever they go they’re liable to leave the people they come in contact with contagious. This contagion is not usually a permanent condition. They’re very innocent types of infection that are usually fleeting.’ The passing of the contagion is illustrated with the exit of some of the thousands of ‘little germlets’ living inside their bodies.

Hamburg feels a significant hook for the series is the fact that it is a buddy show – a classic comedy genre thin on the ground these days.

‘It’s about two outsiders. One of them is the classic glib schemer [Charles], the other, the best way to describe him is like a naif.

‘If you want to get to the core of it, it’s about two hopeless characters trying to get by in the world, but their condition will always remain the same. They are the ultimate outsiders. There is a comedic history to these characters: the Honeymooners, The Flintstones, The Blues Brothers, Abbot and Costello. Today a lot of buddy [partnerhsips] are more like Dumb and Dumber; the relationships don’t run as deep. That’s why I thought there was a need for it. There is a lack of comedy buddies. Germs is a neo-modern take on the classic buddy comedic duo.’

Hamburg envisions the show as a ‘Ghostbusters-type production’ with the same goofy comedy and special effects that will appeal to a family audience.

‘Imagine [Sonny’s and Charles’] bodies are frat houses, home to hundreds of restless germlets just itching to infect people. Like frat house guys, they like to play pranks on people, they like to have fun, they’re very restless. They’re living inside these two guys and if one happens to sneeze these germlets fly out and infect people, but do it in a funny way. Like they might get into their heads and start spinning their eyeballs,’ says Hamburg.

‘The germlets might dress up or might appear as an army or the Marines landing on someone, and then once inside the guys head they’ll start acting like it’s the Starship Enterprise. They’re also very protective of the main characters, if one of the main characters is in a tight situation, in peril, they might take matters into their own hands.’ *