Bubble Guppies (found pitch pilot of Nick Jr. CGI animated series; 2006)

The pilot's logo.

Status: Found

Date found: 20 Jun 2023

Found by: Doria

Bubble Guppies is an animated series on Nick Jr. created by Robert Scull and Jonny Belt and produced by WildBrain Entertainment. The series revolves around six fish-tailed children learning about various preschool subjects throughout each episode by their teacher, Mr. Grouper. It premiered around 2011 and became a success, with episodes still being produced up to this day. A pilot episode was produced and pitched to Nickelodeon, though it was greenlit, the pilot went lost for many years and fell into obscurity.

Development

The series was produced at Guru Studio and Nick Digital in 2006. In January 2007, an episode known as "Happy Clam Day" was finished and ready to be produced. Many of the characters didn't have the same voice actors and the animation is drastically different from the final product.

Guru Studio and Nickelodeon had the series due to air around the late 2000s for their first season, but only 10 episodes were produced at the time. Around five months after the tenth episode was finished, Viacom laid off approximately 720 staff members from their company, including the employees for Guru Studio and Nick.

The show's producers decided to give up hope after the mass firing until WildBrain heard about the series and decided to pick it up. Adjustments were made and the series was in competition with Team Umizoomi, but both shows ended up getting produced.^[1] On January 24th, 2011, the series made its debut and had 20 episodes ready to air.

Availability

The plot of the pilot was unknown, as what had resurfaced didn't give any more information about the pilot. The premise was assumed that the guppies are separated based on information, though this was unconfirmed.

A video known as "Nickkit UberHotmix LOSSLESS-desktop.m4v" was posted on YouTube, showing clips from the pilot and other Nickelodeon pilots, but the video was privatized in 2019 for unknown reasons, before being deleted completely.

An SA reel was discovered on Vimeo which had some footage albeit with audio of Molly talking, overlapped by music.

Prior to June 2023, only one small clip, some 2D images, and a screenshot of the pilot along with a few concept art images had resurfaced.

Discovery

On June 20th, 2023, an anonymous user, 'Doria', shared a Catbox link containing the full unaired pilot. It is currently unknown how the user obtained said Catbox link for the pilot or if any links had been online before Doria's comment. In addition, a pitch document created by the original creators of the series was also shared by the same user.