‘SpongeBob’ spinoffs are coming to Nickelodeon. Here are the other new shows the network has planned

Feb 15, 2019

By Ari Rees

The world of Bikini Bottom will be getting a little bit bigger over the next few years.

What happened: Brian Robbins, president of Nickelodeon, told Variety that Nickelodeon is planning on producing “first ever character spin-offs” of the hit show “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Robbins told Variety that the show will continue to run on the network and that he sees ample room to tell the stories of other characters in show spinoffs.
Among the options Nickelodeon is considering are to “tell an original story about SpongeBob and Patrick, or maybe tell a Sandy Cheeks stand-alone story, or can Plankton have his own? … I think the fans are clamoring for it.”
“SpongeBob SquarePants” has been running on the network since 1999, and Robbins considers it Nickelodeon’s version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to Variety, with lots of room for expansion.

Nickelodeon is also planning several other new projects, according to Comic Book and Variety, including:

A “Lego City” TV series
A “Paddington” series
An “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” reboot with John Cena
An “All That” reboot
“The Substitute,” a prank show where celebrities go undercover as substitute teachers
“Santiago of the Seas,” an interactive adventure series featuring a Spanish-language and Latino-Caribbean culture curriculum

According to Robbins, the success of streaming services has caused the network to re-examine their strategy.

”The cable model was a rinse-and-repeat model. Today we live in a binge-viewing world. Give me a fresh show. Give me another fresh show. I want to watch it, eat it up and go on to the next show,” Robbins told Variety. “I think today we need to make a volume of quality franchises, but not necessarily feed a million episodes of those shows. We need to keep a constant number of new shows coming, and not necessarily make one show with 80 episodes.”