LONDON, September 20. /TASS/. Russian cartoon Masha and The Bear, which holds the Guinness world record for being 'the most viewed family cartoon,' will be shown in cinemas throughout UK and Ireland starting from Friday.

The special family program, headlined "Masha and the Bear on the Big Screen," was created to celebrate the cartoon’s 10th anniversary and will include the latest episodes from the show's Season 3.

"We worked very closely with Vue and Animaccord to make this reality and we as an agency have content distribution capabilities and we have been able to do it in the UK and Ireland and we hope to expand it to other national territories soon," Generation Media director of business development Alex Taylor-Smith told TASS.

"I don’t have access to that data at the moment, all I can say that we with Vue and Animaccord have invested in marketing so we are confident that we will have some good numbers. Hopefully early next week we will have some good indicators as this cinema has performed," he went on, adding that he will be watching Masha and the Bear in a cinema together with his three-year-old son on Saturday.

"Masha and the Bear, which turned 10 years in January, is among the world’s most popular cartoons. The eponymous YouTube channel offering English-language content, has over 6 million subscribers as of now, while its Russian-language counterpart - over 26 million. The "Recipe for disaster" episode, which gathered over 3.3 billion views globally as of early 2019, entered the Guinness Book of Records as 'the most viewed family cartoon' on Youtube in the Guinness World Record's Book in 2019.

Last November, the Times, citing experts, accused the show of being an instrument of Russia’s "soft propaganda." In response, The Russian Embassy in the UK ironically advised London to work out "a very expensive" approach to protect itself from its effects.

"An important issue raised by The Times today: How UK can find salvation from "Masha and the Bear"? Launch an Ant-Cartoon Excellence Centre somewhere in the Baltic? Place all cartoonists on EU sanction list? Clearly a decisive - and a very expensive - approach is needed!" the Russian embassy said.