Very recently I and Skundi discussed about the possibility that BRB dissolved the deal with Dracco for Filly becouse the market in Spain became "dead" in the last three years for Filly.
As Skundi found, seems there is very few Filly stuff in Spaign, but I would like ask if somebody can make further research for figure out the situation.
That, for me, could explain the withdraw of BRB from Funtasia. They don't just produced the show, but probably they handled the licensing right for the Spain too, listed under Licensing page: http://www.brb.es/en/licensing/tv-series
Licensing means they sign a deal to be a reseller in their country to other countries for buy a license and use Filly for other stuff (toys, gadgets and such), instead of contact directly the Danish/Chinese company. Is a much deeper deal than just produce a cartoon, and much more wired on how the market goes in a country.
With the Simba deal dissolved, Dracco probably lost the distribution in Spain too, "losing" it as market. And this mean, BRB has no way to sell a license for a toy that isn't sold anymore in Spain (nobody buys it).
Therefore after three years, looking that Filly doesn't sell anymore in their country, they dissolved the deal. That's probably created a lot of bottlenecks also in the production during this time, probably reducing the priorty over other ones of BRB, unsure if Filly could have hold the market or not.
Probaly if the Dracco-Simba problem never arosed, Funtasia could had been already published, I think, last or this year.
Why wait until the MlPCom? Becouse is a fair where new deals are usually firmed. Therefore is possible that Dracco found a new Spanish distributor for its IP, or that the contract ended last month. Whatever is the reason, the timing is not causal: they waited to pass a fair for commercial deal before removing a licensing line, and that can be connected to what I said in this post.
I would NOT give up all the hopes then. The fact Dracco still renew the old Filly toyline IS a sign that they want still go on: http://www.funtasiadaily.com/2016/11/the-next-filly-toyline.html
There is a *thin* possibility that Dracco still searching a new company to finish the show, even if this could require one or two years more. On the blog we have reports that Germany is a declining market, but seems Russia and East Europe remain a stronghold for Filly. I think is possible that a Russian company would be interested to finish Funtasia AND buy the licensing management for Russia, becouse the market is strong here that could justificate the investiment for them.
In any way: while the future is dark, is not told the last word yet. Until Dracco doesn't remove the last Funtasia stuff from their website, we can still hope something could happen, soon or later.
Meanwhile I would ask if somebody has a way to check the Spanish market and look how much could be the Filly presence here, to have more information about.
