Sony Pictures TV Signs Toy-Figure Soap Creator Thea Von Engelbrechten
Sony Pictures Television has signed Thea Von Engelbrechten to a multiyear first-look deal, Variety reported on Thursday, Oct. 22. A first-look deal means the studio gets the first chance to develop and produce the creator's next original series.
Von Engelbrechten is the Irish creator behind the Moletown Drama accounts on TikTok and Instagram. Those accounts had 2.5 million TikTok followers and 1 million Instagram followers when the deal was reported. Her videos use Sylvanian Families figurines, known as Calico Critters in the United States, acting out soap-opera storylines. She began posting them during the pandemic, and she works from a room full of toys.
Her first project under the deal is a microdrama called Hazelwood. A microdrama is a short, episodic story made for phones. Hazelwood is a darkly comedic animated microseries, with episodes only a few minutes long. It premieres on YouTube on Friday, Nov. 13.
The show is an animated soap opera set in a woodland town. Its animal residents see their lives come apart through scandal, broken relationships and bleak violence. The characters include Meadow, a recovering alcoholic, her husband Richard, their neighbour Arabella, Pizza Mole and Scar.
Episodes will arrive every Friday on YouTube. Each one then moves to TikTok and Instagram on the following Sunday. That means viewers on all three platforms can watch the same story on a set weekly rhythm.
The series has a legal history. Epoch, the Japan-based company that owns the Sylvanian Families franchise, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Von Engelbrechten. The case was settled out of court. As part of the settlement, her account changed its name from Sylvanian Drama to Moletown Drama. In 2025, she told the New York Times that her soap-style videos are a form of parody.
Sony Pictures Television is inviting creators to look behind the scenes. It has announced a Creator Access Day on Friday, Oct. 23, giving creators access to a range of its shows. The list includes Hazelwood, Universal Basic Guys, S.W.A.T.: Exiles, Doc, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, American Hostage and Shark Tank.
Frank Ochoa, Sony Pictures Television's vice president of adult animation, is working with the creator on the project. Von Engelbrechten is the creator and producer on Hazelwood. Her representative is Evan Cavic at Artemis Entertainment.
For viewers, the change is simple. A phone-sized animated soap that began as a toy-figure account now has a studio behind its next steps. For the people who make it, the deal means a studio committed to developing her work over several years, rather than one project at a time.
