Netflix announced today that they would be ordering new musical animated series for their platform titled Centaurworld. The children’s series will be led by first-time showrunner Megan Nicole Dong, making her the third woman to become a first-time showrunner at Netflix Animation.
Dong has had significant experience working on animated children’s content. She began her career as a story artist for How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. She also worked on the film Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie before serving as the supervising director on Netflix’s animated show Pinky Malinky. Pinky Malinky is series from Netflix Animation, inspired by past series like Cartoon Network’s Amazing World of Gumball, that follows the story of an optomistic hot dog trying to live in the human world.
Dong’s new series with Netflix animation appears to have a different but similar tone to Pinky Malinky. According to Netflix’s announcement, Centaurworld is about a war horse who finds herself magically transported to a land full of “silly, singing centaurs of all species, shapes, and sizes.” The show will follow the main character as she tries to navigate her new magical world and find her way back home.
Netflix Animation has promised a unique style for this show, noting that “the series will feature a mix of animation styles and each episode will include original songs in a variety of genres.” In addition to Megan Nicole Dong, several other creatives from the animation industry have been announced for this project. Dong’s co-executive producer will be Dominic Bisignano, who formerly served as writer for the Disney Television Animation series Star vs. the Forces of Evil. The story editor for the series will be Meghan McCarthy, who was previously the co-executive producer for the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The series composer will be Toby Chu, who led the composition for the animated short Bao as well as composition for several TV series including the Freeform series Beyond. Netflix has ordered 20 episodes of Centaurworld so far, and no official release date has yet been announced.