David Neumann’s Newmation Signs Malenga Mulendema, Creator Of Netflix’s First African Animated Series ‘Supa Team 4’

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: David Neumann’s management company Newmation, for animation creators in film and TV, on Thursday announced its signing of Malenga Mulendema, the creator of Supa Team 4 — Netflix’s first-ever original animated series out of Africa, which debuts on the platform on July 20th.

Formerly titled Mama K’s Team 4, the show follows four teenage girls living in futuristic Lusaka, Zambia, as they’re recruited to save the world by a retired secret agent.

Providing animation for it is Superprod, the French company behind the Oscar-nominated Song of the Sea. Producing Supa Team 4 were South Africa’s Triggerfish Studio, which most recently debuted the Afrofuturist animated anthology series Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire on Disney+, and London-based kids producer Cake (Angry Birds: Summer Madness).

A Native of Zambia, Mulendema came to make the series after being named as one of eight winners of the Triggerfish Story Lab, a pan-African talent search backed by the Cape Town-based animation studio and The Walt Disney Company, in 2015. “I am thrilled to welcome Malenga to Newmation,” said the company’s CEO Neumann in a statement to Deadline. “She is a visionary and impressive creator and having seen her, for her first time, write, develop and create an inventive and SUPA FUN series with fresh African allure and enchantment, I think she is quite remarkable!