Nickelodeon will broadcast a brand new live-action series, Ryan’s Mystery Playdate, starring the seven-year-old YouTube superstar.
Mystery Playdate is created and produced by pocket.watch. The new series follows Ryan, his parents and animated friends Gus the Gummy Gator and Combo Panda as they work together to tackle a series of imaginative, physical challenges and unbox puzzles to reveal the identity of his mystery playdate. The 20-episode series will premiere in the U.S. later this year on Nickelodeon.
“We’re thrilled that our friends at Nickelodeon recognize the power and popularity of Ryan and the characters that inhabit his world with him,” said Albie Hecht, pocket.watch’s chief content creator. “Over the last year pocket.watch launched Ryan’s World books, games and consumer products to great success so a TV show with Nickelodeon is the natural next step in propelling Ryan to true global franchise status.”
Since its inception in 2015, Ryan ToysReview has grown to become one of the world’s largest YouTube channels with videos that feature Ryan and his family playing with toys for kids. The channel, along with other channels featuring Ryan and his friends, averages over one billion views monthly and currently has over 18 million subscribers.
In addition to videos of Ryan playing with toys, Ryan ToysReview also features science experiments, educational content, and videos that document daily life for the family of five, which includes Ryan’s younger twin sisters. Ryan’s World, a companion consumer products line developed by pocket.watch, featuring Ryan and the universe of characters created by Ryan and his parents, launched nationwide last year.
Ryan’s Mystery Playdate will take its place among Nick’s preschool portfolio that will now also include: Blue’s Clues & You!, premiering in November, and Santiago of the Seas (formerly The Swashbuckling Adventures of Capitán Calavera), premiering 2020.
In addition, the company unveiled its entire new content slate ahead of Toy Fair New York, including the return of the popular 90s SNL-style sketch comedy for kids All That, featuring cast members new and old (executive produced by Kenan Thompson); a reimagined version of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader, hosted by John Cena; America’s Most Musical Family (working title), a nationwide talent competition to crown the next big family musical act; The Casagrandes, the animated spinoff from The Loud House, featuring a multigenerational Mexican-American family; an untitled scripted music-based series set in a boarding school for the performing arts, produced by Simon Fuller and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, and featuring original songs and performances in every episode; and ideas in development to spin off the characters from SpongeBob SquarePants into their own stand-alone series, specials, and feature-length movies..