The streaming service Netflix announced the launching of five new animated series for kids and renewed Kong: King of Apes for a second season.   The quintet of kid-targeting animated series include a Skylanders Academy show based on the popular video game, a Hilda cartoon based on the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel by Luke Pearson, an adaptation of Anna Dewdney’s series of Llama Llama picture books, plus series based on the live-action Spy Kids series and the Oscar nominated Dreamworks animated feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Skylanders Academy, which landed a two-season commitment from Netflix, will be the first production from Activision and Blizzard Entertainment’s in-house production studio, Activision Blizzard Studios (see “Activision/Blizzard Launches TV/Movie Studio”).  Futurama writer Eric Rogers is the showrunner for the Skylanders Academy, which is based on the toy/game hybrid that has generated over $3 billion in sales with over 250 million toys sold as of 2015.  The first 13 Skylanders Academy episodes are due this fall with a second season slated for release in late 2017.  Tabletop fans should note that Activision has announced a digitally-enhanced strategic battle card game, Skylanders Battlecast (see “Activision’s Skylanders CCG-Style Card Game”).

Silvergate Media, which produced the British children’s TV series The Octonauts for the BBC, will produce the animated adaptation of Luke Pearson’s Hilda for Netflix.  Pearson, who has storyboarded episodes of Adventure Time for the Cartoon Network, is an English cartoonist, whose Eisner Award-nominated Hilda comics about a blue-haired girl who leaves her home in the enchanted countryside and journeys to Trolberg are published by Nobrow.  Fans will have to wait until 2018 to stream episodes of Hilda on Netflix.

Debuting on Netflix in 2017 will be the Dreamworks Animation-produced series Spirit Riding Free, which is based on the 2002 Dreamworks animated feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron about a wild mustang, who will prance and gallop through the episodes of Spirit Riding Free starting next year, and a series aimed at younger children based on the picture books of Anne Dewdney’s Llama Llama, all of which have been New York Times bestsellers.

The animated series based on the Weinstein Company’s Spy Kids franchise will debut on Netflix in 2018 and will feature all the central characters and villains of the live-action Spy Kids movies.