October’s Biggest Stories From The World Of Animation

October saw some truly historic news stories come from the animation and gaming industries. Dreamworks made a fundamental change to the way it will produce animated features in the future, Microsoft finalized the biggest gaming acquisition of all time, the CEO of Unity resigned, and Skydance Animation ended its feature film distribution deal with Apple.

Here are ten topics that stood out from a jam-packed October.

1) Dreamworks Shakeup: Our biggest story of the month, and one of our biggest of the year, came after we learned that Dreamworks Animation is shifting away from fully producing its titles in-house at its Glendale, California studio and will outsource a significant amount of work to third-party studios. The plan, shared with employees by chief operating officer Randy Lake, will take effect in 2025. It is a blow to the L.A. animation industry and leaves Walt Disney Animation Studios as the only company to fully-produce animated features in Los Angeles.

2) Gaming: After months of legal challenges, the largest deal in video gaming history was finally closed when Microsoft finalized its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In another huge shakeup, Unity CEO John Riccitiello retired after the company came under fire for changing its pricing model.

3) Business: Skydance Animation, run by former creative chief of Pixar and Disney, John Lasseter, ended its distribution deal with Apple and signed a new one with Netflix, which will release its future films. Motion capture animation software company Move AI raised $10 million in a seed funding round. Indie kids and family producer Studio 100 Media acquired a stake in Spanish animation company 3 Doubles Producciones.

4) Distribution: We spoke with My Love Affair with Marriage director Signe Baumane and distributor Jon Reiss about their plan to get the indie gem in front of audiences. Paramount put its animated feature Under the Boardwalk in an undisclosed number of theaters for a very muted theatrical run. Netflix announced an interesting new marketing ploy to put Adam Sandler’s animated feature Leo in 150 theaters for free before it starts streaming. GKIDS picked up U.S. theatrical rights to the French sci-fi feature Mars Express and will give the film a theatrical run in 2024.

5) Artist Rights: Walt Disney Pictures vfx workers unanimously voted to unionize with IATSE, joining their colleagues at Marvel Studios. In Canada, IATSE is working with employees at DNEG toward unionizing. Workers at Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red began organizing a union in Poland.

6) Oscar Frenzy: Two more countries selected animated films to represent them in the international feature Oscar race. Poland chose The Peasants from Loving Vincent filmmakers DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, and the Philippines picked The Missing from Carl Joseph Papa. Our series of Oscar-qualified short film profiles continued in October with Rosemary A.D., Letter to a Pig, Electra, 27, Humo, Miserable Miracle, Doubt, and Carne de Dios. And we asked seven questions about this year’s animated feature Oscars race.

7) Streaming: Rooster Teeth removed many of its most popular videos from its Youtube channel in a maneuver designed to increase ad revenue. Ivan Li, whose short film Fruit was deleted from Vimeo for being too sexually stimulating, shared a compelling argument that the platform’s rules aren’t fairly imposed on all films and hurt indie filmmakers.

8) Box Office: Paramount’s PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie premiered on top of the domestic box office in its first week with $22.8 million in ticket sales. The film has performed well since and looks like a real threat to pass Paramount’s other big 2023 release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, as the year’s sixth-highest-grossing animated feature, in terms of global box office revenue. And celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, The Nightmare Before Christmas got a theatrical re-release, finishing its domestic opening weekend in fifth place.

9) Festivals: Armenia’s Reanimania celebrated its 15th anniversary this year, and founder-director Vrej Kassouny spoke with us about the region’s burgeoning animation scene. The city of Annecy, which hosts the world’s biggest animation festival, revealed plans to construct a $27.5 million international hub dedicated to the world of animation. Animation is Film, an L.A.-based festival organized by Annecy, GKIDS, and Variety, wrapped with Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach’s Chicken for Linda! sweeping the major feature awards.

10) Behind the Scenes: Several artists and filmmakers shared some incredible behind-the-scenes artwork with us in October. We exclusively launched a Nimona art of book and talked with the film’s production designer and book’s author Aidan Sugano. Pixar veteran Andrew Gordon shared a ton of development art from his new series Good Morning Kevin. Warner Bros. Discovery director of original production and development for kids in Asia Pacific, Carlene Tan, spoke to us about a new set of Tom & Jerry shorts. The team at Green Street Pictures discussed the worldbuilding process for their Max adult animation series Scavengers Reign. Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow director Julio Soto and character designer Max Kostenko explained what went into creating their film’s multi-limbed cast. And Gooseworx talked to us about creating one of the year’s most viral animated pilots, The Amazing Digital Circus.

On the Move: Directors Alfredo Torres, Victor Maldonado, and Pete Candeland are developing animated features at Laika; Sony Pictures Imageworks promoted Michelle Grady to studio president.