Paramount Animation To Move Away From Original Animated Features, Focus On Nick IP

In a wide-ranging profile published in Variety, Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins revealed new details about how he’s going to fix the company’s moribund Paramount Animation division.

The timing is opportune: Paramount is about to release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which will almost certainly become the most successful release ever from Paramount Animation.

Not that “most successful Paramount Animation film” is a prestigious competition. Since launching in 2011, the division has produced a handful of dreary projects that are remarkably consistent in their vapidness (Wonder Park, Sherlock Gnomes, Rumble, Monster Trucks), and a couple reasonably successful Spongebob features.

In any case, Robbins appears ready to soak in the glory of TMNT. “It’s not about Disney and Pixar anymore,” he told Variety, citing recent stumbles like Disney-Pixar’s Elemental. Forget the fact that Robbins would kill for an animated stumble like Elemental, which is on its way to $400 million global, far more than any Paramount Animation-produced animated feature has ever grossed.

If it’s not about Disney and Pixar anymore, what is it about then? According to Robbins, he has discovered that “people are looking for animated movies that are irreverent and have a comedic point of view.” It’s a lucky break that he figured this out before any other U.S. animation producer realizes that comedy and irreverence work well in animation.

Robbins’s second big insight is that original animation isn’t worth the investment. “We’re not going to release an expensive original animated movie and just pray people will come,” he said. Forgoing the produce-and-pray approach, Robbins has decided it would simply be easier to eliminate all traces of originality from the studio’s feature pipeline. He reveals that Under the Boardwalk, a formerly theatrical release, is now being quietly shuffled over to Paramount+, while it had previously been announced that Ron Howard’s The Shrinking of Treehorn had been sold to Netflix.

In place of original concepts, Robbins is turning Paramount Animation into a clearinghouse for Nickelodeon IP. First up, the aforementioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The company announced today that it is also developing a sequel to TMNT as well as a Paramount+ spinoff series, titled Tales of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The studio is also working on more Spongebob universe features including Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie (Netflix, 2024) and a series of Avatar: The Last Airbender films. A new Paw Patrol movie will also release this year.

It’s worth noting here that none of Nick’s IP magically appeared out of thin air, as Robbins seems to believe. All of them were original concepts at one point in their history, and they were developed by artists over a period of years. Before they became familiar IP, some animation studio needed to invest in the original idea. Best of luck to Robbins and his all-in-on-Nick strategy. It’s going to look like a brilliant decision in early August after TMNT is released. But I’m guessing a few years from now, he’s going to come to the realization that abandoning original ideas is neither a viable nor smart long-term strategy for any feature animation division.