| LazyTown | |
|---|---|
| Format | Children's television series |
| Created by | Magnús Scheving |
| Starring | Magnús Scheving Julianna Rose Mauriello Stefán Karl Stefánsson |
| Country of origin | Iceland |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 52 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Nickelodeon Viacom International LazyTown Entertainment |
| Distributor | Nickelodeon |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Sjónvarpið, RÚV (Iceland) CBeebies (United Kingdom) Nickelodeon PBS Kids Sprout V-me (United States) |
| Picture format | HDTV |
| Original run | 16 August 2004 – 5 April 2007 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
LazyTown (Icelandic: Latibær) is a children's television program that was produced in Iceland with a cast and crew from Iceland, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was created by Magnús Scheving, a gymnastics champion and CEO of LazyTown Entertainment, who also stars in the show. The show has been highly successful, airing in over 100 countries in more than a dozen languages.[1]
A total of 52 episodes of LazyTown were produced.
As of 2009, LazyTown continues to generate spin-off projects, including LazyTown Live! (touring stage productions) and a TV series for younger children called LazyTown Extra.
Contents |
The main character is Stephanie (Julianna Rose Mauriello), who arrives in town and urges her new friends Ziggy, Trixie, Stingy, and Pixel to go outside and be active, instead of staying inside and playing video games all day. Her uncle, the bumbling Mayor Milford Meanswell, enlists the help of Sportacus 10 (Magnús Scheving), a self-described "slightly-above-average hero". It is Sportacus' job to inspire the kids to play outside, and to help solve low-key emergencies that occur from time to time. However, all this does not sit well with Robbie Rotten (Stefán Karl Stefánsson), a lazy man who lives in an underground lair hidden just on the edge of town. Most of the episodes involve Robbie Rotten dressing up in one of his numerous costumes and trying to make Sportacus and Stephanie leave town forever so he can encourage the kids to be lazy again.
LazyTown is part live action, part puppetry, and part CGI animation. The show was filmed and produced entirely at 380 Studios, a purpose-built studio near Reykjavík equipped with high-end HDTV production facilities and one of the biggest green screens in the world. The production floor area is 1,800 square meters (almost 20,000 square feet).[2][3] The budget for each episode was approximately ISK 70,000,000 (1 million US dollars), or about five times the average cost for a children's television programme at the time, making it "the most expensive children’s show in the world", according to Scheving.[4][5]
LazyTown's virtual sets were generated with an Unreal Engine 3-based framework, created by Raymond P. Le Gué, known as XRGen4. According to Le Gué, “We start with the live actors and puppets on a physical set with a green screen behind them as a backdrop. The green screen is replaced in real time with the sets created in XRGen4 using UE3. As we move the camera and actors around the physical set, the backdrop scene also moves in real time in complete synchronization with the movements of the real camera. All of this is recorded, and the director can watch the resulting composition in real time."[6]
Stephanie, Sportacus, and Robbie Rotten were the only human characters on the show until episode 32 ("Dancing Duel"), which was the first to include a fourth live actor to play the role of Rottenella. She was played by Mauriello's stunt double, Kristjana Ólafsdóttir. Later episodes, including "Little Sportacus" and "The Lazy Genie", also extended the live cast. The rest of the characters are depicted as puppets. The show's puppets were made by the Neal Scanlan Studio and Wit Puppets.
The original series first appeared on August 16, 2004 in the U.S. on Nick Jr. (when it was a children's block on the U.S. Nickelodeon channel).[7] The series' second season debuted in the U.S. on Nick Jr. on May 15, 2006.[8] It aired again in the U.S. on CBS from September 18, 2004 to September 9, 2006. It began airing in the US as a part of Nickelodeon's Nick's Play Date block on February 2, 2009 but ended on June 26, 2009. As of September 2011[update], LazyTown is seen in the United States on Nick Jr., and now has [PBS Kids Sprout]], and a Spanish-dubbed version on V-me.
Marathon Media Group distributed the French dubbed version.
Played by Magnús Scheving, Sportacus is the super-healthy hero of the show, hailing from "an island in the North Sea" (a reference to Iceland, LazyTown's country of origin) and the main protagonist of the series. Sportacus encourages the kids of LazyTown to eat "sports candy" (his term for fruits and vegetables), and to play outside instead of just sitting around indoors playing video games or eating junk food. He wants to make sure that the citizens of LazyTown are happy, and knows that they have to be healthy and fit to be so.
Sportacus is constantly engaged in physical activity, and even does gymnastics just to get from place to place. Sportacus is always saving people. His crystal beeps to let him know that someone needs his help. The character is patient and understanding. Sportacus doesn't think of himself as a Superhero, but rather, a Slightly-Above-Average Hero. His weakness is that if he ever eats sugary candy, he will have a "sugar meltdown", which makes him lose all of his energy until he eats something healthy.
Played by Julianna Rose Mauriello, Stephanie is the character who inspires the citizens (and most importantly, the children) of LazyTown to be active. Her love for being active and playing greatly influences the town. She loves the colour pink; her clothes, hair (presumably dyed, hence the bottle of pink hair dye in her room), and accessories are all pink. She came to town to visit her uncle, the mayor of LazyTown. Stephanie is always encouraging the kids to go outside and play, but on each occasion she must contend with Robbie Rotten's attempts to sabotage her efforts. But when she asked for Sportacus's help, the whole town worked together to make LazyTown the best place to live. Stephanie loves to dance. She dreams of studying dance at a famous dance school.
Played by Stefán Karl Stefánsson, Robbie Rotten is the antagonist of the show. He is always trying to get the kids to eat junk food and get rid of Sportacus and keep him out of LazyTown forever. He wants to make sure LazyTown remains quiet and lazy, as it was before the arrival of Sportacus and Stephanie. He despises sports and anything else to do with exercise. He doesn't like fruits or vegetables (what Sportacus calls "sports candy"). Robbie devises all sorts of plans to achieve this, and sometimes comes very close to succeeding, but in the end is always defeated by Sportacus with the help of Stephanie and her friends. The amount of effort that this champion of inactivity puts into his plots is ironic; he may be the most active person in LazyTown because of it.
Although his actions are those of an evil villain, he refers to himself as "a simple, rotten guy who's just misunderstood." He lives in an underground lair, from which he spies on the children of LazyTown through a periscope. His underground lair is discovered by Sportacus, Stephanie and the kids in the episode "Little Sportacus."
Robbie Rotten frequently dresses up in clever disguises to cause mischief and trouble.
His emotional state rapidly swings from one extreme to another throughout an episode, reflecting his vast determination to inflict laziness on Lazytown despite an embarrassing catalogue of previous failings.
On September 15, 2008, a spin-off television series called LazyTown Extra debuted in the UK on CBeebies. This series, conceived as a "magazine format style show" for 3 to 6-year-olds, features characters from LazyTown in an assortment of short sketches.[9] 26 episodes of LazyTown Extra have been produced, each between 11 and 15 minutes in duration.[10][11] Several characters are voiced by different actors from those who performed in the original LazyTown series. As of February 2011[update], LazyTown Extra has not been broadcast in the United States but is coming to PBS Kids Sprout this fall along with LazyTown.
Prior to producing the LazyTown television series, Magnús Scheving created two theatrical shows in Iceland. Áfram Latibær! ("Onward LazyTown!", produced in 1996) had Scheving as an energetic elf who encouraged the townspeople to exercise and lead healthier lives. The show had a Stephanie-like character who was an out-of-shape dancer, but the Robbie Rotten character did not yet exist. Most of the secondary characters (puppets) seen in the television series also appeared in this show, although in human form. The second show, Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ ("Robbie Rotten in LazyTown", produced in 1999), introduced Stefán Karl Stefánsson playing his Robbie Rotten character, while Scheving's role changed from elf to hero in an airship.
From January 28 to November 29, 2009, a live stage production entitled LazyTown Live! The Pirate Adventure toured throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The live show featured characters and songs from the LazyTown TV series performed by a new cast.[12][13]
A Spanish-speaking version of the live stage show is scheduled to launch in the United States in the first quarter of 2010 and will visit markets across the country, supported by the V-me national broadcast network and local affiliates. The stage production will be the first live family entertainment show to tour the US exclusively in Spanish.[14]
New productions of the LazyTown Live show had their premiere in November 2009 in Portugal and in March 2010 in Spain by producers Lemon Entertainment.
A previous LazyTown Live! stage production toured the UK and Ireland between October 2007 and August 2008. This production introduced a new LazyTown cast to the UK, including Julian Essex-Spurrier as Sportacus.[15][16][4]
A new live show LazyTown in Schools will premiere in Australia in 2012 touring directly into schools to promote healthy eating and fitness for children LazyTown in Schools.
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2006:
2007:
2008:
The soundtracks and songs of LazyTown are composed by Máni Svavarsson, whose history with the company goes back to the original Icelandic theatre plays. The popularity of LazyTown's songs and music has led to the production of soundtrack albums that feature music from the show. These soundtracks have been released in a number of countries and in a number of different languages, including LazyTown in the United States, Líttu inn í Latabæ in Iceland, Los geht's! in Germany, ¡Bienvenidos a LazyTown! in Latin America and LazyTown - The Album in the United Kingdom. A second UK soundtrack, titled LazyTown - The New Album was released on October 15, 2007.
The song "Bing Bang (Time to Dance)" was released as a single in the UK, and peaked at #4 in the UK Singles Chart on December 10, 2006.
In the United States, Fisher-Price has produced a line of toys including an activity mat, and Stephanie and Sportacus items. There is also a soundtrack, along with books and videos.
Over 50 LazyTown DVDs have been released worldwide. For a current list, see LazyTown DVDs.
All the LazyTown DVDs in Region 1 are now discontinued including its soundtrack. There are no plans for releasing the complete seasons on DVD.
In the UK, a monthly magazine launched in March 2007. Each issue boasts a free cover-mounted gift, a large poster inside, along with various ideas for games, comic strips and dance instructions. Many features come with an inset explaining to parents the value of the activities being promoted.
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