Jon Stojan
Kulipari: United
Ten years is a long time in children’s entertainment. Viewers grow up, tastes change, and the next obsession is always waiting. Yet for Kulipari: An Army of Frogs, reaching the decade mark has created an unusual opportunity: some of the children who first entered its world of warrior frogs and scorpions are now young adults, just as that world is becoming playable.
That next step arrives this September with Kulipari: United, a new video game for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Rather than simply adding another title to the franchise, the game shifts how audiences can experience it. A universe they previously encountered through books and animation can now become somewhere they explore, fight, and play together.
The move comes as Kulipari approaches a significant anniversary. September 2 marks 10 years since Kulipari: An Army of Frogs debuted on Netflix in 2016. Kulipari: Dream Walker followed in 2018, while Kulipari: A King Rises arrived in 2023 on Hulu and Disney+. A feature film is also in production, giving the property an increasingly unusual footprint across publishing, television, film and now gaming.
That evolution also reflects what has happened to the audience itself. Kulipari was developed largely for middle-grade viewers between roughly 9 and 13. An 11-year-old watching the franchise around its original Netflix debut would be entering their 20s today. Instead of remaining fixed to the childhood audience it originally reached, the property now has an opportunity to reconnect with those viewers while introducing the same world to another generation.
Kulipari: United
Kulipari: United takes that idea of connection literally. The four-player story action-adventure game combines cooperative campaign combat and platforming with a Battle Arena PvP mode. Players can begin together locally and continue online, while new characters, locations and threats expand the existing Kulipari mythology rather than simply recreating episodes from the animated series.
Perhaps the strangest part of the franchise’s journey is that none of it would exist without a lifelong fear of frogs.
Trevor Pryce, creator of Kulipari and owner of Outlook Company and OVFX Studios, spent 14 seasons in the NFL before building a career across writing, producing, and animation. Years ago, while watching Planet Earth, Pryce saw slow-motion footage of a tree frog leaping between trees. As the frog stretched through the air, he didn’t simply see a frog; he saw a superhero flying through the skies. For someone who had been frightened of frogs since childhood, the image unexpectedly became creative fuel. Poisonous frogs led to scorpions, heroes, and eventually an entire fictional world.
Trevor Pryce, creator of Kulipari
“Kulipari came to me almost all at once,” Pryce recalls. “One image quickly became an entire world of characters, conflict and possibilities, and I knew immediately that it was something I had to pursue.”
Turning that flash of inspiration into an enduring property was considerably less instantaneous. The idea first became books before moving toward television. Pryce secured an early opportunity with Cartoon Network that ultimately did not proceed, allowing him to regain control of the IP. Rather than waiting for another company to determine its future, he continued developing the property independently and eventually brought Kulipari to Netflix. Its growing audience subsequently opened other doors, including consumer-product collaborations with Under Armour and Mattel.
Then the entertainment business shifted. Streaming became more fragmented, companies increasingly prioritized their own intellectual property, and the pandemic disrupted production across the industry. Pryce responded by continuing to build from Baltimore, creating the production infrastructure that helped move Kulipari into its next era. The result has been another television chapter on Hulu, a feature film in development, and Kulipari: United through Outlook Company Digital.
Pryce sees those projects not as separate bets, but as pieces of the same ecosystem. His “flywheel” connects television, film, gaming, books, comics and consumer products, allowing one fictional universe to meet audiences in different places without surrendering its independence.
Gaming may be the most participatory expression of that idea yet. Kulipari: United is built around shared play, including the ability for families and friends to start playing together in the same room before carrying that experience online.
“We’ve been hard at work the last several years developing new Kulipari content for those who’ve loved the franchise across the world over the last decade,” Pryce says. With Kulipari: United, he says the aim is simple: create something people can enjoy together.
For a franchise born from a fleeting image of a frog in midair, Kulipari has traveled an unexpectedly long way. Its first decade was about giving audiences a world to discover. As the next one begins, that audience finally gets to step inside it.