When the brand was under Educational Insights, a very aggressive licensing campaign was underway in the early 2000s. While most of those agreements brought us many interesting Sea-Monkey licensed products during that period, others never saw the light of day.
In June 2006, we received the news that Empire Pictures—founded in 1996 by producer Michael Birnbaum—had acquired the rights for a future Sea-Monkeys franchise. The press release used Finding Nemo and Shark Tale as examples of successful ocean-themed films, with the underwater world of Sea-Monkeys having the potential to provide something new to audiences.
After that announcement—which was mostly filled with PR fluff—nothing ever materialized.
While there have been similarly named companies around, this specific Empire Pictures didn’t leave a significant footprint in its industry; the 2001 film Bandits was the only film where it’s credited among six other production companies that were involved in that project. Since 2010, the production company has been listed as suspended.
It would be interesting to know more details about how this deal came to be, but we’ll probably never know. We can only presume this was a case of the Sea-Monkey brand being seen as a low-hanging fruit for an overly ambitious company.
While we would love to watch Sea-Monkeys make a debut on the silver screen, realistically, the cost to produce something of acceptable quality would be too much for anyone to take the risk.
