Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years

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Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years
General information
Created by:	Brian Robbins
Executive producer(s):	Marc Ceccarelli Vincent Waller
Genre:	Children's television series
Channel:	Nickelodeon
No. of seasons:	1
No. of episodes:	13
Distributor:	Viacom Media Networks
Picture format:	1080i (16:9 HDTV)
Original run:	July 2020 August 2020

Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years, also known as Kamp Koral for short, is an upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants spin-off prequel series, based on an idea by Brian Robbins. It will introduce a 10-year-old SpongeBob at a summer sleepaway camp.

Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against spin-offs and the idea of aging SpongeBob down. According to an interview with Paul Tibbitt: "Steve would always say to me, 'You know, one of these days, they’re going to want to make SpongeBob Babies. That's when I'm out of here.'"

Hillenburg last visited the Nickelodeon studio in August 2018. He spent his last three months at home with his wife, Karen Hillenburg. In September 2018, Brian Robbins became the president of Nickelodeon. On Robbins' second day at Nickelodeon, he attended a pitch meeting for season 13 of SpongeBob. This inspired him to come up with a variety of his own ideas for spin-off shows and new characters because Robbins disliked that SpongeBob had "always stayed the same." Robbins wanted to start work on Kamp Koral immediately, but was unable to do it right away because of Stephen Hillenburg's rule that no spin-offs be created. This all changed when Stephen Hillenburg died on November 26, 2018. In June 2019, Robbins decided to greenlight Kamp Koral, as it had been six months since Hillenburg's passing.

Premise

SpongeBob and friends spend the summer catching jellyfish, building camp-fires, and swimming in Lake Yuckymuck at Camp Coral, located in the Kelp Forest.

Sandy Cheeks will appear in the spin-off, as a kid with braces. Robbins said, "Sandy is really cute in it." This directly contradicts the season 1 episode "Tea at the Treedome," in which SpongeBob and Sandy meet each other for the first time; Brian Robbins had not watched the episode or skimmed its synopsis. Sandy's basic backstory will also be contradicted and rewritten. In the main series, she lived in Texas for most of her life; in Kamp Koral, she will spend her childhood already underwater.

Characters

The ten main characters from the original series will return for Kamp Koral, along with two new characters: Nobby and Narlene, a pair of narwhals who live in the woods around the campsite.

Main

• SpongeBob SquarePants (voiced by Tom Kenny)
• Patrick Star (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke)
• Squidward Tentacles (voiced by Rodger Bumpass)
• Eugene H. Krabs (voiced by Clancy Brown)
• Pearl Krabs (voiced by Lori Alan)
• Sandy Cheeks (voiced by Carolyn Lawrence)
• Mrs. Puff (voiced by Mary Jo Catlett)
• Sheldon J. Plankton (voiced by Doug Lawrence)
• Karen Plankton (voiced by Jill Talley)
• Gary the Snail (also voiced by Tom Kenny)

Supporting

• Nobby (voiced by Carlos Alazraqui)
• Narlene (voiced by Kate Higgins)

Episodes

Title card	#	Title	Airdate
	TBA	"Pilot (Kamp Koral)"	TBA
	A crazy monster runs amok through camp as SpongeBob tries to stop it.
	TBA	"Cabin of Curiosities" (tr • ga)	TBA
	TBA

Production

Series production

The series is due to commence production in June 2019 and it will be CG-animated. Ramsey Naito, Nickelodeon’s EVP Animation Production and Development, said: "SpongeBob has an incredible universe to expand upon and the greenlight for Kamp Koral is a testament to the strength and longevity of these characters known and loved by generations of fans around the world."

In July 2019, storyboard artist Brian Morante said that he started storyboarding the pilot episode. On August 23, 2019, it was confirmed by Vincent Waller that Andrew Goodman is writing an episode for the spin-off. In September 2019, it was announced that the series will have its UK debut in August 2020. In January 2020, Vincent Waller mentioned on Twitter: "I think we deliver in July, but that has no real correlation to when they will begin airing."

The sketch

On January 16, 2020, John Trabbic posted a storyboard from the episode "Cabin of Curiosities" on his Instagram account.

For the 2020-21 Nickelodeon slate, it was confirmed that SpongeBob and his friends would have the same voice actors as the original series. Carlos Alazraqui and Kate Higgins will also voice two new characters: Nobby and Narlene, who are twin narwhals.

On April 4, 2020, Vincent Waller stated that the series premiere will likely be pushed back to a later date.

Controversy

Upon the Kamp Koral announcement, Paul Tibbitt tweeted that he holds nothing against his colleagues, who are working on the show, saying that they are "good people and talented artists," but also said that Hillenburg would not have approved of a spin-off and considers this to be "greedy, lazy executive-ing". 

On June 5, Rob Renzetti - another former Nickelodeon employee, creator of My Life as a Teenage Robot - said that he disapproved of the spin-off idea. Renzetti also retweeted Tibbitt's statement.

In response to a fan's question and the negative backlash, Vincent Waller asked for fans to not jump to conclusions about the spin-off series. He stated that he hopes the show will speak for itself upon its release.

Fans have attempted to spread an incorrect rumor that Stephen Hillenburg's family is working on Kamp Koral, but this is false. Neither Karen nor Clay (Steve's wife and son) have ever worked on the series and are not even cartoonists or writers. Vincent Waller, the showrunner of Kamp Koral, stated that he has no "first-hand knowledge" of what the Hillenburgs are doing, since they are not working on Kamp Koral. He also said: "I can only guess they are doing their level best to deal with the grief of losing their husband, father, brother and son."

Trivia

General

• This is the first new entry in the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise to be announced after Stephen Hillenburg's passing in November 2018. Stephen was strongly against spin-offs, crossovers, and "aging down" the characters. As such, this has received a lot of negative backlash from a few staff members of the show.
  • In some of the very few interviews with Stephen Hillenburg, he recalled that when he first pitched the show, Nickelodeon executives said that they would only greenlight the show if he made SpongeBob and his friends into kids. He was strongly opposed to this meddling and was about to quit Nickelodeon until he came up with a compromise, which was putting SpongeBob in a boat driving school so he could remain an adult-aged character.
• The third SpongeBob SquarePants feature film, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, serves as the backdoor pilot to this spin-off, featuring the eponymous location in a flashback scene.