IATSE Pickets Live-Action ‘CoComelon’ Series, ‘The Melon Patch’
IATSE is striking the second season of the live-action YouTube series CoComelon: The Melon Patch as the show’s crew members endeavor to persuade the production to sign a union contract.
The crew union announced the picket of the toddler-skewing educational series on Wednesday after an unsuccessful attempt to unionize the production. ”Rather than provide fair wages and benefits to the crew the producer is trying to hire scabs for the production in Sun Valley, Calif,” IATSE alleged on Instagram.
According to the union, 22 crew members who previously worked on the first season returned for the second, where they encountered a decline in working conditions, with a greater workload expected of each crew member.
The strike began on Wednesday, the seventh day of a 16-day shoot, and the union is claiming that the production began attempting to hire replacement workers. One member of Local 80 who was hired subsequently joined the picket line, which is continuing on Thursday.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Candle Media-owned Moonbug Entertainment, which produces CoComelon titles, for comment.
The Melon Patch, which stars Allie Rivera Quiñonez as the preschool teacher Ms. Appleberry, is a spinoff of the original CoComelon channel on YouTube, which became a sensation in the last 2010s. The animated videos are so popular they have sparked such spinoff series, as well as concerns that their animation is too fast-paced and addictive for children. Universal Pictures will release a CoComelon movie in Feb. 2027.
According to IATSE, at least one CoComelon animated series that is currently distributed on Netflix does have a contract with The Animation Guild, itself a Local of IATSE. CoComelon will move to Disney+ in 2027 after Netflix declined to renew its license for the series, even as it will continue to stream its CoComelon spinoffs CoComelon Lane and Blippi.
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