WITH A PRODUCTION BUDGET exceeding €100.000 per episode, the pre-school property City of Friends is Norway's most lavish children's television production ever. The CG animated series features a unique combination of anthropomorphised vehicles and animals happily living together and interacting with human characters in the City of Friends. The series has been sold to more than 110 countries throughout the world. Nordic TV partners include TV 4 Sweden, TV 2 Norway, TV 2 Denmark and MTV3 Finland. In summer/fall 2010, the series was launched on Minimax in Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Albania and former Yugoslavia. City of Friends is also distributed on DVD in the Nordic region through Walt Disney Home Entertainment.

© CreaCon Entertainment AS / Carl Christian Hamre

City of Friends is originally created by Carl Christian Hamre, a policeman who in 2006 wrote three children's stories featuring a fire engine, a police car and an ambulance. His wife, Anne Stray Hamre, did all the drawings for the books, and the response of the children encouraged the development of a pilot for a television series. In cooperation with an internationally experienced creative consulting and production staff previously working with companies such as HIT/Bob the Builder and the BBC, City of Friends has then been further developed into a CG animated television series.

26 more episodes of City of Friends will be ready for delivery in August 2011, bringing the total number of 10-minute episodes up to 52. The new episodes will put the emergency vehicles of the city at the center of attention - the fire engine, the ambulance, the police car, the helicopter etc. Other planned activities include two animated specials and an upcoming feature film.

Main target group for City of Friends is children 2-6. The series is the biggest children's television project ever in Norway, with a budget exceeding one million NOK (approx. 100 000 euro) per episode. The series is inspired by children's fascination with vehicles and features anthropomorphic fire engines, ambulances and police cars as well as human and animal characters living happily together in the City of Friends. Cooperation, friendship, tolerance, knowledge, activity and fun are key values in the series!

A City of Friends entertainment park is already set for construction outside of the city of Bergen, preliminary planned to open in 2011-12.