Work has started on the very first co-production from Nickelodeon International and Nickelodeon India, the half-hour animated children’s program The Twisted Timeline of Sammy & Raj, via a report from Variety. The projected premiere date is in 2021, where the show will be broadcast across multiple Nickelodeon International channels, although whether or not it will air on Nickelodeon in the U.S. remains undetermined. Storyboards are already being drawn up in India, the casting process is starting in the U.S., and script development is taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.
The writing team for The Twisted Timeline of Sammy & Raj is led by Jordan Gershowitz, a writer on the 50th season of Sesame Street. Gershowitz retweeted the Variety piece and composed a Twitter thread naming many of the members of his development team for The Twisted Timeline of Sammy & Raj.
The writer’s roster for The Twisted Timeline of Sammy & Raj features familiar names from the world of children’s entertainment. Nina Bargiel co-wrote the fan-favorite Lizzie McGuire episode “Between Bra and a Hard Place.” Jeff Trammell leads the writing team for Cartoon Network’s Craig of the Creek, and, like fellow Sammy & Raj writer Julia Prescott, wrote scripts for Archibald’s Next Big Thing on Netflix. Geetika Lizardi currently writes on the Disney Junior show Mira, Royal Detective. Dushant Kirpalani, meanwhile, wrote for a different Disney Junior program, Puppy Dog Pals.
Other names Gershowitz mentions in his thread may be less familiar as TV writers. Sandeep Parikh, for instance, had a breakout role in the award-winning web series The Guild. Dilpreet Kaur Walia has been puppeteer on Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and the British Sesame Street spin-off The Furchester Hotel. Kelly Lynne D’Angelo is one half of the musical theater writing duo Dahan & D’Angelo (The Count of Monte Cristo, Starry). D’Angelo’s musical theater work allegedly informs the content of her episodes, per an interaction between Gershowitz and D’Angelo under the main thread.
According to Variety, Nickelodeon International’s senior VP of production and development Nina Hahn claims that “the idea for this series was developed in collaboration with the team in India as we sought a way to fuse Western and Eastern storytelling elements” and that “Indian culture is very much a part of this series’ DNA.”
There’s no way of telling if The Twisted Timeline of Sammy & Raj will lead the way for future international co-productions from Nickelodeon Studios, but, as Variety reports, ViacomCBS Networks International Kids & Family executive VP Jules Borkent says that “Nickelodeon is focused on meeting the rising demands for diverse, creative stories for a global audience.”