Banff: Mae Martin to Narrate Preschool Series ‘Hare of High Park’

Mae Martin Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Mae Martin is to narrate Hare of High Park, a 3D animation and live action preschool school series from Little Engine Moving Pictures and TVOkids, it was announced at the Banff World Media Festival on Monday.

Martin created and stars in the Netflix series Wayward, the thriller-drama revolving around the inner workings and dark secrets of a fictional school for troubled teenagers. Now they is turning to a feel-good preschool series that follows best friends Hare and George and their community of animal friends as they discover nature, friendship and everyday adventures in a setting inspired by Toronto’s High Park.

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Hare of High Park creators Tarun Padmakumar and Joanna Fishbein in a statement timed for the Banff World Media Festival welcomed Martin to the series: “Mae brings warmth, humor, authenticity and a little cheekiness to the series, making them the perfect guide for our young audience.”

Hare of High Park, showrun by Ben Mazzotta, has in its Canadian cast Baeyen Hoffman, Skylaa Balogh, Bruce Dow, Stephany Seki, Isabel Kanaan, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll and Taha Arshad. Martin narrating the series comes as Canadian preschool and kids series have seen a dramatic drop in funding support owing an ad recession for legacy broadcaster and U.S. streamers and social media platforms being in a standoff with the country’s regulators and federal government over being forced subsidize local indie production via the Online Streaming Act.

Financing for Hare of High Park has come from local funders like Knowledge Kids, Canada Media Fund, Ontario Creates, Rocket Fund Canada, National Bank of Canada and TVOkids. After Ottawa caved to U.S. pressure and backed down on its so-called foreign streaming tax, it announced it will provide $600 million annual funding to the country’s media and music sectors.

That new taxpayer support is expected to be divided between traditional funding agencies, go directly into Canadian indie film and TV production and into challenged sectors like kids TV and documentaries.

Also Monday, Canadian pubcaster CBC, the largest investor in local documentaries, announced in Banff $7 million for two new non-fiction programming funds, The CBC Creator Catalyst Fund and the CBC Co-Production Fund, to support emerging producers and international documentary partnerships.