Josh Selig

Josh Selig was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.[4] He began his career as a child actor on Sesame Street during its first two seasons.[5][6] As a teenager, Selig attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied theater and poetry.[7] He returned to Sesame Street in 1988 as a writer.[8] He also worked on the Israeli-Palestinian[9] and Polish[10] adaptations of the show during the 1990s.[11]

In 1998, he conceived the idea for Little Airplane Productions.[12] The company was initially a joint effort between Selig and Lori Sherman.[13] Until 2006, the studio's works were solely live-action. Oobi was the first original series produced by the company; it began as a series of interstitials in 2000 and later ran for two seasons of half-hour episodes.[14] The series was heavily inspired by Selig's time as a Sesame Street writer; he based its puppet characters on a training method used by Muppet performers learning to lip-sync, in which they use their bare hands and a pair of ping pong balls instead of a puppet.[14] In 2003, Selig wrote and directed a short film titled The Time-Out Chair. Written and directed by Selig, the film premiered at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival[15][16] and was later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.[17][18][19] Profits from Oobi allowed Selig to create an animation division at Little Airplane, leading it to shift to an animation-based studio.[20]

Selig created Go, Baby! in 2004 as a series for Playhouse Disney.[21] In 2005, he directed two pilots for the Wonder Pets! series along with Jennifer Oxley.[22] The show premiered in the United States on March 3, 2006.[23][24] Selig opened two new branches of Little Airplane in London and Abu Dhabi in 2007.[25] Josh Selig's first international co-production, 3rd & Bird, debuted on CBeebies in June 2008.[26] He continued to produce short-form series throughout the 2010s. Small Potatoes, commissioned by Disney Junior, spawned a television movie that Selig directed in 2013.[27] In the same year, he pitched a pilot titled The Jo B. & G. Raff Show! to Amazon Studios, which was not picked up.[28][29] He is currently the creator and executive producer of Disney's P. King Duckling and of the South Korean series Super Wings.[30][31]