ASIFA-Hollywood announced nominations today for its 52nd Annie Awards recognizing the year’s best in the field of animation. For a complete list of nominations, please visit www.annieawards.org/nominations. The 52nd Annie Awards is set for Saturday, February 8, 2025 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Pre-reception and Red Carpet begin at 4:30 p.m., followed by the ceremony at […]
David Lowery (director of Pete’s Dragon and Peter Pan & Wendy for Disney) helms the new animated holiday short film An Almost Christmas Story, which premieres this Friday Nov. 15 on Disney+. It’s about an owl named Moon who forms a unique friendship with a girl named Luna in The Big Apple. Lowery shares what […]
Long-awaited, fully animated The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie will receive an awards-qualifying run before the end of 2024, ahead of its official theatrical release on February 28th, 2025. I’ve screened the film and spoke with director Peter Browngardt about this sci-fi action comedy starring beloved characters who are true to […]
Netflix debut the first trailer and announced the release date for the new Aardman new stop-motion animated feature film Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl today. The film will be released on Netflix globally (except in the UK/IE) on January 3rd, 2025 (it will have a limited theatrical run in December to qualify for this […]
Japanese entertainment leader Toho Co., Ltd. announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire a 100% equity share of GKIDS, Inc., the Academy Award-winning North American animation producer and distributor. Financial terms were not disclosed. GKIDS, which maintains offices in New York and Los Angeles, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Los […]
October 9th, 2024 
Jerry Beck Bella Doña, the innovative brand rooted in Chicano and LA culture and co-founded by best friends LaLa Romero and Natalia Durazo, together with leading brand-licensing agency Global Icons and Fleischer Studios, owner of Betty Boop and a number of other classic animated characters, have announced a new licensing collaboration for the beloved Queen of Cartoons with popular apparel and accessories.
October 9th, 2024 Jackson Murphy DreamWorks Mighty Monsterwheelies (a collaboration with Lemon Sky and Doberman) morphs classic movie monsters and monster trucks, creating a fun group of characters and episodes for families as we approach Halloween. It premieres Monday October 14th on Netflix. Kyel White developed the series and serves as story editor. Stephanie Simpson is the four-time Emmy-winning executive producer and showrunner. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Stephanie, your credits include “Arthur” and Dr. Seuss shows. “Octonauts”. I watched “Postcards From Buster” when I was younger. “Hilda”. You have been in children’s entertainment for a long time. What has this aspect of animation and entertainment given you? And now here working on this “Mighty Monsterwheelies” show.
Stephanie Simpson: First of all, I love the kid audience. I think it’s the most important audience because you are definitely entering their imaginations right at the beginning. You feel like they’ll return to the things that they watch that you create for the rest of their lives, hopefully, for inspiration, for remembering things that made them laugh. Fond memories of their childhood and then to share it with their own kids when they get older. And on “Mighty Monsterwheelies”, the thing that’s been so fun is I’m a huge Universal monsters classic movies fan. So I didn’t think I’d ever get to, in the preschool world, honor my love of those monsters, but getting to work with Kyle on this show to bring those monsters to life for a really young audience and be the very first introduction to them was so much fun. And then to do it with all the action and the heart — it was really a joy.
October 8th, 2024 Jackson Murphy One of Nickelodeon’s most popular animated shows, Blaze and the Monster Machines, is celebrating its 10th Anniversary on the air. A special new episode, in which Blaze and his pals recall their first-ever race, debuts Thursday October 24th at 1pm ET & PT. Creators Jeff Borkin and Ellen Martin share what the milestone means to them in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity. Images Courtesy: NICK)
Jackson Murphy: Can you believe it’s been a decade since the first episode aired?
Ellen Martin: No! And yes. Time has flown. We meet teenagers who were megafans ten years ago, and brand-new preschool fans who were just a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when the show first aired. So, ten years is… a lot!
October 7th, 2024 Lauren Ashton Iconic Animation Characters and Creators Featured in Heritage’s The Art of Anime and Everything Cool…Volume V Signature® Auction
The event, running from October 18-22 in Dallas, Texas, showcases highlights like Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Z, Streamline Pictures’ Akira and Robotech, classic couch gags from The Simpsons, a blue-eyed Grinch, and more.
Among the standout pieces is the Dragon Ball Z “Vegeta’s Pride” Majin Vegeta Production Cel with Key Master Background (Toei Animation, …).
“I often draw in my sleep. That alone made for twice the work … I couldn’t use the weird stuff I drew while dozing off, so I’d end up having to draw it all over again,” said Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball Z.
October 7th, 2024 Jackson Murphy Lara Croft has been played by Oscar winners Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander in movies. She’s also an iconic video game heroine. Now she’s the focus of a new hand-drawn animated series, with the voice of Hayley Atwell, in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. It premieres this Thursday October 10th on Netflix. Showrunner, writer and EP Tasha Huo joins me for this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: How did it feel, as a Lara Croft ‘superfan’ (what you wrote on your socials), to take-on this new show?
Tasha Huo: Incredible. An actual dream come true. It’s been awesome to be able to take all the things I’ve loved about Lara, throw her in a show and play with her in the world.
October 3rd, 2024 Jackson Murphy DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot opened No. 1 at the box office last weekend, with one of the biggest debuts ever for an animated film in the month of September. Four-time Annie-winning director Chris Sanders and Annecy winner Jeff Hermann react to the critical and audience success and reflect on three decades of DreamWorks. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Chris, this is your triumphant return to animation. “Lilo & Stitch”, “How to Train Your Dragon”, “The Croods”, and now No. 1 with “The Wild Robot”. How does it feel?
Chris Sanders: I think we could not be more thrilled because making this film… everybody poured their hearts into this, for real. We all fell in love with this project. We fell in love with the characters, and just the production itself was a bit of a miraculous thing. Just the way it came together. So to see it do well is absolutely thrilling.
September 30th, 2024 Martin Goodman Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois are among the most influential names working in animation today. Their record includes Lilo and Stitch for Disney and the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, with DeBlois directing the last two installments for DreamWorks. They have teamed up again for a highly regarded new film, The Wild Robot.
DreamWorks is again the beneficiary of this exemplary team. Sanders and DeBlois received the resources of the last film that the DreamWorks animation studio would produce (entirely) in-house.
September 28th, 2024 Jerry Beck “Thanks, autism!’ was a key takeaway excerpted directly from the educationally-focused September 26 Jorge Gutierrez one-man show at Victory Theatre Center in Burbank. The audience, comprised of audibly appreciative neurodivergent performing and visual artists from local adult day program Spectrum Laboratory, could not get enough of Gutierrez’s uplifting, autobiographical 450-slide presentation, animation career retrospective, and overall morale boost. In fact, the excitement carried on beyond the proscenium and into voluminous attendee social media posts in the following days.
September 27th, 2024 Jackson Murphy Max’s Gremlins animated series had a successful season one with Secrets of the Mogwai. Season two, Gremlins: The Wild Batch, premieres Thursday October 3rd. Executive Producer and showrunner Tze Chun and fellow EP Brendan Hay preview what fans, including those who love the iconic movies, can look forward to from this fun group of characters and some exciting new ones. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity. Images Courtesy: Max.)
Jackson Murphy: Tze, let me ask you about the reaction to Season 1. How did you feel coming out of that, and what was the approach going into this second season?
Tze Chun: I think Brendan and I were just so overjoyed by the fan reaction and the critical reaction. I guess Gremlins fandom is very non toxic. (laughs) As a fan of the Gremlins movies myself, I was so happy to be able to contribute to the canon, and I think that hopefully with the reaction to season one, people tune in for season two. It’s been so much fun to work on the show.
September 26th, 2024 Lauren Ashton The 7th annual Animation Is Film (AIF) festival, running from October 18-20 at TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood, has shared its 2024 lineup. Opening the festival is the North American premiere of The Colors Within, directed by Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice) and distributed by GKIDS. Warner Bros. Animation’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie by Pete Browngardt will take the Centerpiece spot, while the festival closes with Memoir of a Snail, the Los Angeles premiere of Adam Elliot’s Annecy Cristal Award-winning feature.
September 23rd, 2024 Jackson Murphy Annie and seven-time Emmy-winning The Simpsons co-showrunner, executive producer and writer Matt Selman joins me for this new Animation Scoop Q&A to discuss Season 36 (which starts this Sunday Sept. 29 at 8pm on FOX) and the first-ever Simpsons panel presentation at New York Comic Con (Saturday Oct. 19 at 11:30am on the Main Stage). This interview was edited for length and clarity. Images Courtesy: FOX.
Jackson Murphy: You’ve been with the show since 1997. How have you seen the evolution of the show in 27 years?
Matt Selman: It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. It’s much easier to get caught up in the trees. There’s always a new tree. You’re always planting trees, growing trees and getting trees ready to be on television. But you also have to be thinking of the next tree, and a tree is not a terrible metaphor because you always have to be think-staggering ahead. You have to be thinking a year ahead cause they take a long time to grow. Solid metaphor. How the show has changed… I don’t know. People could probably speak to that more objectively than I could. I’m just lucky. Lucky is an understatement. I’m shocked and stunned that I’ve had this sort of lottery win of a life experience where I got to personally do every job on the show, starting from staff writer where you’re just there and you’re scared and you’re nervous. “God, if I can just get one joke in today… oh my God, that’d be so great.” You’re so hyper-aware of everything and trying not to be annoying. “If I can just contribute a little bit, that’s so great.” And not be annoying. Always a challenge.
September 20th, 2024 Jackson Murphy Zack Snyder, director of 300, Man of Steel and 2010 animated feature Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, is the creator and executive producer of new adult animated action series Twilight of the Gods, now streaming on Netflix. He joins fellow EPs Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller to talk about the show and the power of animation. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Zack, you directed episodes 1 and 8 of this, as well as “Legends of the Guardians”. What is your approach to animation like vs. your live-action films?
Zack Snyder: Well I don’t really have a different approach. I draw a lot. I do tell a lot of stories in pre-production with drawings, with 2D representations to say, “This is what I want to do.” That style translates really translates easily to animation. And because I have a pretty solid understanding of the animation process, it’s not like I’m ‘behind’. I think that’s really helpful for everybody.
September 19th, 2024 Jerry Beck Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jared Bush has been named Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of Walt Disney Animation Studios effective immediately, reporting to Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman, while Jennifer Lee has decided to return to filmmaking full time to steward the Frozen franchise for the studio. Serving as Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Animation Studios since 2018, Lee will be directing and writing on Frozen 3 and writing Frozen 4 with Marc Smith. Thirty-year Disney veteran Clark Spencer (Oscar-winning producer, “Encanto,” “Zootopia”) continues as President, Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Jared Bush
September 17th, 2024 Lauren Ashton Part canine, part human- all hero.
From the studio behind popular hits like Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Boss Baby comes a thrilling new adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s bestselling Dog Man.
After a brave police dog and his human handler are injured on the job, an unconventional but life-saving surgery combines them into one, resulting in the creation of Dog Man. Now that he’s part dog and part human, he’s committed to upholding law, order, and (of course) fetching, sitting, and rolling over.
September 12th, 2024 Lauren Ashton This morning, Netflix unveiled the key art for the highly anticipated animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, along with the official trailer and key art for Twilight of the Gods. In addition, Netflix announced its Netflix & Chills Halloween programming lineup, featuring new animated kids’ series The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist, Mighty MonsterWheelies, and the second season of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. Here are full details for each project:
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft
Streaming on Netflix starting October 10, 2024.
