There was only one heroic team that could take down “Deadpool & Wolverine” at the summer box office, and it was a bunch of spritely emotions inside a teenage girl’s head. But the $1.69 billion global box office haul of “Inside Out 2,” enough to make it the highest grossing animated film of all time, wasn’t an anomaly. In fact, there were six animated features in the global box office top 20 this year, with four titles in the top 10 as Universal/Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4,” Disney’s “Moana 2” and Universal/DreamWorks’ “Kung Fu Panda 4” joined “Inside Out 2” in feeling joy.
Even smaller films are finding success in this banner year for animation – “Flow,” from Janus and Sideshow, has made almost $5 million worldwide against a budget of less than $4 million in just a couple weeks of release, with $1.3 million of that tally coming from America.
And a 15th anniversary re-release of Laika’s “Coraline” made a whopping $33.6 million in America and more than $52 million worldwide.
“Without animated films, we wouldn’t be talking about beating $8 billion, let alone getting close to the $8.9 billion last year,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at ComScore, told TheWrap of animation’s share of the box office. Indeed, animated films account for over $4.6 billion of the worldwide box office in 2024 so far, which is over half of the projected $8.5 billion where most think the box office will end up for the year.
Fueled by well-timed sequels, acclaimed originals and a diversity of style and storytelling, 2024 was the biggest year for animation ever. Major studios like Disney and Universal were buoyed by massive profits from their animated franchises, which became box office behemoths thanks to the popularity of past films in those series on streaming services like Disney+ and Peacock, all despite the fact that filmmakers had to rush to finish some of the year’s biggest hits after the strikes ended. But acclaim for smaller, more adult-oriented animated films also drove success across the medium, making it a year for animation unlike any other.
Dergarabedian agreed that streaming was what allowed for the big animated sequels of the year (and, most of them were sequels) to soar so high, fueled by constant streams of films like “Inside Out” and “Moana” on Disney+.
“People during the pandemic, and even now, will just park their kids in front of their TVs and tablets and let them watch these films all day long. Eventually, they become an infomercial for the next big installment on the big screen. Streaming allows the franchises to feed on themselves.”
As one animation director bemoaned to TheWrap, “Audiences seem more interested in reheated leftovers.”
“The Wild Robot,” the one theatrical smash that wasn’t a sequel or spinoff, was based on a beloved book series by Peter Brown. Since it debuted in late September, it has hung around the top 10 and only recent fell out of the top 20, making more than $320 million worldwide on a budget that was reportedly less than $80 million.
And it wasn’t just theatrical hits that made 2024 such a benchmark year for animation, as animated films on streaming were huge too. Netflix had “Ultraman: Rising,” “Spellbound” (the first film as part of their deal with Skydance Animation), the Japanese film “The Imaginary,” DreamWorks Animation’s “Orion and the Dark” and “That Christmas” as animated films accounted for 18 of the 50 most-watched films in the first half of 2024 on Netflix. The streaming giant even had its own “SpongeBob SquarePants” movie, “Saving Bikini Bottom.”
This year is unique because of the types of movies that made inroads this year. “Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2” could not be more sophisticated, visually-speaking, with smooth, bright computer-animation that was brought to life through hundreds of highly skilled artists. (“Moana 2” was the creation of two separate studios – Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank and a satellite studio in Canada.) And then there’s something like “Flow,” which was worked on by a few dozen people and was animated on Blender, a free-to-use, consumer-friendly software.
“I’ve really got a sense of where animation is and I think it is in this transitional phase,” Adam Elliot, director of the stop-motion animated “Memoir of a Snail,” told TheWrap. “And a lot of people would agree, because I think there’s been a lot of very safe, formulaic feature animations being made, and audiences are getting a bit bored with that sameness.”
He continued: “There’s so many sequels, and there’s so much franchising going on that people are looking for stuff that’s a bit different. Films like ‘Flow,’ a beautiful film from Latvia, that’s such an original way of making a CGI film. And even the big studios, like ‘Inside Out 2,’ dealing with teenage puberty. ‘The Wild Robot’ was such a beautiful film. It’s so emotive. It’s a very diverse year. It’s a wonderful year. And, of course, animated films are what’s keeping Hollywood paying the rent.”
It’s true – even the big movies looked completely different from one another. Netflix’s “Ultraman: Rising” had a graphic style inspired by anime and Japanese manga (and, naturally, the original 1960s television series); “Transformers One” had an nostalgic, 1980s lunchbox aesthetic; “Flow,” with its minimal style and long takes, felt like a warm middle ground between films and video games; and “The Wild Robot,” with its painterly approach, was even more exaggerated than DreamWorks’ own “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.”
Then there were those movies that were really out there – “Ghost Cat Anzu” was a French/Japanese co-production where the filmmakers shot the actors reciting their scenes, occasionally animating over the footage but mostly using it as reference. It’s rare for an audio technique to inform the visuals so much, but it gave the whole thing a loose, unsteady vibe where it felt like anything could happen. There was also “Mars Express,” a movie that premiered at Cannes last year but finally came to America. It features a “Blade Runner”-ish mystery and traditional, 2D animation with 3D environments and characters.
There was also the unlikely return of two beloved franchises – “Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up,” which gets a wide release earlier next year, saw Porky and Daffy return in a sidesplitting new adventure that proves how substantial the characters still are; and “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” from Aardman, which premieres over Christmas in the U.K. and will be on Netflix in early 2025. Not only does it bring back Wallace (now voiced by Ben Whitehead) and Gromit, but it also sees the return of Feathers McGraw, the villainous penguin from the duo’s Oscar-winning 1993 short “The Wrong Trousers.”
What’s interesting about the approach of both films is that they maintain their original formats – “The Day the Earth Blew Up” features 2D animation and “Vengeance Most Fowl” is stop-motion — while aiming to reach modern audiences.
And while, yes, there were a lot of sequels and spinoffs, at least they varied their approach – “Kung Fu Panda 4” added new visual flourishes to what is a largely unheralded franchise, especially for how many risks it has taken before; and “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” the first animated entry in the film franchise started by Peter Jackson’s films, was a really-for-real anime, borrowing more from “Princess Mononoke” than “The Return of the King.”
Shannon Tindle, director of “Ultraman: Rising,” said that 2024 “has been an incredible year for animation. Not only have huge, family-focused features proven once again to be massive box-office draws, but adult animation has found its stride with shows like ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ and ‘Arcane’ [on Netflix]. I hope the continued success of such varied and diverse stories will be the norm and that those who make animated films will finally experience equity with our esteemed colleagues on the live-action side.”
The feat of 2024’s astounding animation lineup is even more impressive when you factor in last year’s months-long actors’ strike, which meant that the filmmakers couldn’t record actors at all as they were trying to complete their films. The strike didn’t end until around Thanksgiving 2023, which led to a mad dash to the finish line.
As “Inside Out 2” director Kelsey Mann told TheWrap, the year’s biggest film almost didn’t make it.
“We recorded a bunch of stuff leading up to the strike happening and then we were able to animate through the production dialogue that we had, but we were running out,” Mann said. “I kept imagining like it was stocking up for the winter, and we were slowly going through our supplies, and we’re like, I think we’re going to run out of food real quick. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to finish on time. Luckily they were able to come to terms, and the strike lifted and we were able to record again.”
Mann and his team recorded 35 actors in three weeks, a record-breaking stint for Pixar. And the hustle quite literally paid off.
“The Wild Robot” writer/director Chris Sanders was similarly concerned, although he did have a leg up on the “Inside Out 2” team.
“One of the lucky breaks that we had is we had a lead character that had no mouth, so we could block shots to a degree and then go back when we got the final dialogue and then nuance them.” There were just as many blocks that came up because of the actors’ busy schedule, in particular Pedro Pascal, who was shooting things back-to-back (including “Gladiator II”). The “Wild Robot” team went up to Vancouver to finish up recording with him.
Still, Sanders said, “I never ran out. But it was definitely time to refill the dialogue tanks.”
The coming year looks a lot like 2024. There are more sequels and follow-ups, like “Zootopia 2,” “Dog Man” (a “Captain Underpants” extension), “The Bad Guys 2,” plus two different “SpongeBob” animated features (one also a Netflix exclusive).
But 2025 will continue to embrace bold, invigorating and diverse animation styles. “The Bad Guys 2” is pushing the comic book stylings of the first movie to new lengths; “Aztec Batman” is a Max Latin America original that borrows the distinctive look of Mexico; and Andy Serkis has a new, wholly animated version of “Animal Farm” that began life as a performance-capture piece but wound up being traditionally animated.
Pixar, meanwhile, has a new original sci-fi animated feature called “Elio,” about a young boy abducted by aliens. It’s been a difficult production with personnel changes and release delays, but now has Domee Shi in the director’s chair, who pushed her own bold aesthetic with Pixar’s 2022 feature “Turning Red.”
And we can’t discount the dozens of smaller titles that will pop out of international film festivals and smaller markets. “Flow” and “Memoir of a Snail” weren’t on anyone’s radar this time last year, but they’re all anybody can talk about now.
The post What Made 2024 the Biggest Year for Animation Ever | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.
