The Mainstream Media Is Paying Attention To The Success Of Theatrical Animation In 2024

We’re only a little more than halfway through 2024, but a clear trend is emerging. Not only are animated features performing better than ever before, but they are carrying the entire film industry on their backs. It’s a not unfamiliar position for the animation industry, which also propped up Hollywood through the covid pandemic when live-action production shut down and entertainment companies relied on the continuous production of animation to fill up their slates.

On last Friday’s Cartoon Brew livestream we discussed some remarkable stats that reveal the scale of animation’s dominance through the first half of this year:

3 films this year account for 25% of all U.S. box office grosses. Guess which three they are: pic.twitter.com/NPvhwlr6pV

— cartoonbrew.com – Animation News (@cartoonbrew) July 10, 2024

Animation’s success is of such significance in 2024 that even the mainstream media, which is usually loath to acknowledge the financial importance of the medium, is starting to pick up on what’s happening. Both The Guardian and Vulture recently published pieces about animation’s strength in the theatrical marketplace.

The 2024 story for animation is still being written. Currently, five of the top twelve grossing films globally this year are animated, and there are still plenty of significant titles to release, including Dreamworks Animation’s The Wild Robot, Disney’s Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King, and Paramount’s Transformers One. There are also specialty titles that could end up surprising at the box office including Warner Bros.’s anime The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and Universal’s Piece by Piece.

Variety’s Peter Debruge, who might be the sharpest writer covering animation for the mainstream trades, also delivered a piece on animation today that is well worth reading. He took a different approach by urging the rest of Hollywood to not overlook animation in all its many forms, and in addition to theatrical releases, highlighted some of Netflix’s upcoming streaming titles, including Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, That Christmas, and Spellbound, as well as indie releases like Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail.

As Debruge concluded:

While movies like Memoir of a Snail and Chicken for Linda! won’t move the box office needle the way four-quadrant sequels to hit toon franchises can, they demonstrate how animators are using the medium to accomplish what old-school techniques can’t — namely, to hit emotional notes that live-action is sometimes inadequate to convey. That’s a big part of the appeal for a computer-animated blockbuster like Inside Out 2, which currently stands as the highest-grossing film of 2024.