After multiple international adaptions, the first-ever Moomin feature film to be produced in the United States has engaged Rebecca Sugar as its writer-director.

The new Moomin film is the first Hollywood adaptation of Tove Jansson’s stories about the Moomin family and their friends, Moomin Characters announced in a recent press release.

The new Moomin film will be created by the entertainment company Annapurna’s animation division, founded by former Disney executives Robert Baird and Andrew Millstein, and produced by Julia Pistor (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie). The upcoming film’s writer-director Rebecca Sugar has received eight prime time Emmy nominations for the animation series Steven Universe and Adventure Time.

“We are thrilled to partner with the talented Rebecca Sugar as well as Annapurna for this milestone new film. We are excited to see how this accomplished team will reinterpret the beloved Moomin stories, and for them to be discovered and rediscovered by old and new fans alike,” said Roleff Kråkström, CEO of Moomin Characters.

Tove Jansson created the Moomins in 1945 with her book “The Moomins and the Great Flood”. Later she expanded the universe with novels, picture books and comic strips made in collaboration with her brother Lars Jansson. The siblings came from a Swedish-speaking Finnish family. Thus, the Moomin stories were originally written in Swedish.

The history of Moomin TV animations dates all the way back to the 1950s. The first-ever Moomin animation was a West German puppet show, Die Muminfamilie.

In 1969, Swedish-speaking Finn Vivica Bandler directed Moomintroll (Mumintrollet), a Swedish live-action TV series for SVT with Lasse Pöysti as Moomintroll and scripts written by Tove and Lars Jansson.

During the 1970s, the Oscar-winning Polish studio Se-Ma-For created a series of stop-motion Moomin films, some of which were later restored and re-edited by Swedish-speaking Finn Tom Carpelan, producer and CEO of Filmkompaniet.

The 2D Finnish-Japanese animated series from the 1990s, Adventures from Moominvalley (Tanoshii Muumin Ikka), remains a nostalgic favourite for many Finns born in the 1980s and 1990s.

More recently, Finnish producer Hanna Hemilä (Handle Productions) and French director Xavier Picard reimagined Jansson’s universe in the hand-drawn feature film Moomins on the Riviera (Muumit Rivieralla, 2014), based on the original comic strips.

The latest adaptation, Moominvalley (Muumilaakso, 2019), was produced by Finnish Gutsy Animations with Marika Makaroff as the series’ Creative Director/Executive Producer. The 3D animated series that became Finland’s most watched TV show in 2019 has earned two International Emmy nominations.

These are some examples of the many beloved adaptions. With Rebecca Sugar’s Moomin film taking shape in Hollywood, Tove Jansson’s gentle and philosophical trolls are once again set to find new audiences.