Top UK children’s television producer, Coolabi Productions Ltd today announced an exciting rights deal with Joel Gotler of the Hollywood based Intellectual Property Group on behalf of The Viney Agency. The deal covers the dramatic rights for novelist Chris Bradford’s Young Samurai children’s book series.

The first volume in the Young Samurai trilogy, The Way of the Warrior, was published by Puffin in August 2008 and is now in its sixth printing. Disney-Hyperion publish in the US in Spring 2009 while rights to the trilogy have been sold to a further fifteen foreign language territories with deals to several more countries anticipated in 2009.

The Young Samurai series tells the story of an English boy stranded in 17th century Japan who strives to become the first foreign samurai.

Shipwrecked off the coast of Japan, Jack Fletcher is wounded and left for dead when his pilot father and crew are killed by ninja pirates. The future looks bleak for young Jack until he is rescued by the legendry swordmaster Masamoto Takeshi and sent to samurai school. The Way of the Warrior follows Jack’s journey as he learns to become a martial arts master in order to survive the attacks of a deadly ninja known as Dragon Eye.

Julian Scott, Head of Coolabi Children’s programming said: “Announcing another successful and exciting deal for Coolabi is the perfect way to start 2009. The Way of the Warrior is a fantastic adventure story and a truly enthralling tale. We are delighted to be able to include another diverse format in our ever expanding catalogue.”

The Viney Agency’s Charlie Viney added “Coolabi’s bold, exciting vision for developing Young Samurai across several media is the key factor which attracted us to Julian and his team. We believe that the next few years are going to witness an upsurge of interest in martial arts and Young Samurai will be leading that advance.”

Young Samurai has won the 2008 Book of the Year Fighting Spirit Awards and the Great Britain Sasakawa Award and has been nominated for the 2009 CILIP Carnegie Medal.

Coolabi has completed a recent run of successful deals including the commissioning of new animated series Poppy Cat by Nick Jr UK and the signing of a development deal with Disney Channel’s London based Global Original Programming. Coolabi has also announced the production of series two of the hit animation, The Large Family, for Cbeebies in the UK and TF1 in France.