‘Babyriki. Birthday’ feature shooting period by the Riki Group is over

The premiere of ‘Babyriki. Birthday’ feature  will take place in the fall of 2024. At the moment, Riki Group has started the process of creating animation for the film.

Riki Group and the company “NMG Kinoprokat”, part of the holding National Media Group, announced the end of the shooting period of ‘Babyriki. Birthday’   feature film, which took place in Moscow. Directors of the film are Oksana Bychkova  and Katerina Savchuk. The script was created by the same team that is working on the original series ‘Babyriki’ – Olga Verbitskaya, Svetlana Mardagolimova, Svetlana Malashina and Inga Kirkizh. The producer of the film, as well as the entire Babyriki project, is Anya Korableva.  Elizaveta Boyarskaya (Mom) and Konstantin Khabenskiy (Dad) are starring.

In the story, Mom and Dad have just moved into a new house and are preparing for the first birthday of their baby daughter. Balancing between work and family, Dad buys a gift in an unusual store without even looking into the box. And there are small animated toys – Babyriki. While the parents are preparing for the holiday, the little ones get out of the box and go in search of their own house.

Anya Korableva, ‘Babyriki’ producer:

‘Babyriki turns 8 years old this year. From the first episode, when the viewer was just getting acquainted with the characters, to today we have created a whole universe of Babyriki. We had new characters, we released new seasons, created inclusive series, added locations, grew and developed. And how many beautiful songs were written – more than 250! We have released them in different languages and platforms. Created podcasts for children and parents. And this cool, complex, creative path led us to a big movie with a professional film crew and amazing actors. We would like this picture to become the first full-length film in the baby’s life, the first step on the way to the vast world of beautiful cinema.’

‘Babyriki. Birthday’ is a family musical animated feature, a prequel to the series about Babyriki.

The main idea was shared by the director of the picture Oksana Bychkova:

‘This is a story about how each of us needs a home. Both small and large, even fictional cartoon characters. Although sometimes it seems to me that they are much more real than our adult actors.’

The production of the film involves the technology of combining video and computer animation:

‘It was a very unusual shooting. Moreover, we not only have actors combined with animation, but in addition, there is another full–fledged actor on the site – this is a cat. In general, it was very fun and not boring,” the director of the film shared.

The cat, who lives in the family of the main characters, was played by Morpheus, one of the stars of the “Kuklachev Cat Theater”.