Cartoon Brew’s 2024 U.S. Animation Power List

Meledandri’s company Illumination has had a streak of accomplishments over the last decade that is nothing short of extraordinary. Launch two original animated films in the same year that gross over $600 million global each? Piece of cake! Produce the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time? A cinch! Oversee the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time? Been there, done that!

But Meledandri’s biggest insight was to rethink the American feature animation model, much to the chagrin of domestic animation crews. When he built out a production studio in Paris, it cut production costs by over half compared to the other majors. Other studios now want to replicate that model, and being copied is always the surest sign of success in Hollywood.

Meledandri is an unusually hands-on executive who keeps a tight rein over the entire Illumination universe. He oversees creation of content for marketing campaigns, mobile platforms, consumer goods, social media, and theme parks. (Illumination characters anchor over twenty marquee attractions and over sixty activations at all five of Universal’s theme parks.)

This summer, Illumination released Despicable Me 4, which to no one’s surprise has turned into another big win in Meledandri’s long-running exclusive financing and distribution partnership with Universal Pictures. The latest film pushed the Despicable Me/Minions franchise across the $5 billion mark in global box office, making it the first animation franchise to ever reach the milestone. He also serves as an outside director on Nintendo’s board and is a creative partner with Universal’s sister animation studio, DreamWorks Animation, where he is producing Shrek 5.

Lord and Miller are the Oscar-winning multi-hyphenate duo behind some of today’s most successful animation franchises including Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. They have also brought their fresh and unexpected perspectives to TV animation (they recently executive produced the reboot of their classic series Clone High for Max and took the same role on Fox’s Bless the Harts) and live-action features (the 21 Jump Street franchise).

Titles alone don’t explain their impact though, nor does the fact that their work is successful. Starting with Cloudy and then The Lego Movie, they showed a different and more adventurous path forward for CG animation. Then, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) they upended the entire industry. Graphically, the film was not an evolution, but a revolution that opened new avenues for artistic expression in CG filmmaking. If other studios had been previously cautious to allow artists to push their craft, after Spider-Verse, it became the only path forward.

The duo was richly rewarded for Into the Spider-Verse, not only at the box office, but with an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature, along with seven Annie Awards and over 20 Best Animated Feature awards by various critics’ groups including the coveted Broadcast Film Critics Association and Los Angeles and New York critic groups.

Again, with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), the duo oversaw a production that blazed new trails for American feature animation and set up a new exciting era for superhero animation. Audiences came out to the tune of $690 million in global box office.

With the eagerly awaited final installment of their Spider-Verse film series set to release next year, there are no doubt more surprises in store from this duo who continue to defy expectations and elevate animation as a medium.

What do subscribers watch when they open up Netflix? For years, it was a mystery unshared with industry observers and audiences. Then, in 2023, when Netflix released its first Engagement Report, it was revealed that there’s a lot of animation being viewed, and it’s not just the kid stuff, but also adult animation originals and anime acquisitions.

One of the main architects of that ascendance is Derderian, Netflix’s chief of animated series. An 11-year veteran of the company – a lifetime in Netflix years – Derderian was an early member of the streamer’s Local Language Originals team and later became the Vice President for Japan, Anime, and Chinese content. His success, particularly with anime, led to his current position (since 2021) directing the streamer’s overall catalog of animated series.

Across demographics, from preschool to adult, Derderian has emphasized an audience-first approach of “meeting the audience where they are.” His unit oversees innovative and successful series across all categories including preschool (Gabby’s Dollhouse, CoComelon Lane), kids (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Sonic Prime), kids’ comedy (The Boss Baby: Back in Business, The Cuphead Show!), adult (Arcane, Blue Eye Samurai), and adult comedy (Big Mouth, Exploding Kittens). He also oversees all Kids & Family licensing and live action co-productions (Surviving Summer, Geek Girl).

Derderian’s ability to look beyond domestic titles, and hone in on hits that exist in gaming, anime, manga, and existing IP has helped Netflix become one of the most exciting outlets for series animation, offering consistent surprises while expanding the audience for animation.

Coming from a tech background, Purini joined anime distributor Funimation as chief technology officer in 2015. Four years later, he was promoted to the company’s chief operating officer. When the outfit’s parent company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, merged Funimation and fellow anime subsidiary Crunchyroll in 2022, Purini was named president of the combined group and has served in that capacity ever since. During his time in charge, Crunchyroll has been at the forefront of a monumental boom in the mainstream popularity of anime.

Under Purini’s vision and leadership, Crunchyroll surpassed 14 million subscribers (through July 2024), growing double digits in just two years. Purini also led his team on two new platform partnerships to expand anime’s reach with the launch of Crunchyroll on Amazon Prime Video and through Crunchyroll’s multi-partner ad-supported linear channel.

The company’s flywheel growth extends far beyond its library of 46,000 episodes. Crunchyroll has added 3,200 music videos and concerts from Sony Music Entertainment Japan to the Crunchyroll library, expanded its Crunchyroll Games brand including the recently-launched One Punch Man: World, and grown the Crunchyroll Store through an acquisition of online retailer Right Stuf. Its Crunchyroll Anime Awards, which garnered over 34 million votes from fans, were held in Tokyo for the first time in 2023. Attendees and presenters at this year’s edition included Megan Thee Stallion, Japanese singer-songwriter LiSA, actress Iman Vellani, Phil Lord & Chris Miller, Indian actor Rashmika Mandanna, and Parasite director Bong Joon-ho.

Notably, the company has redefined anime in the U.S. theatrical marketplace. Whereas anime was once a niche product at the box office, Crunchyroll’s releases, including Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Jujutsu Kaisen 0, and Suzume, now routinely gross over $10 million.

Being the President of The Animation Guild (TAG), IATSE Local 839, is always an important role in the American animation industry, but never has the role been more consequential than 2024, when the Guild will negotiate a new three-year contract. It is happening at a time when there is an atmosphere of anxiousness over how artificial intelligence will be applied in the animation industry. Moreno King is at the forefront of the issue and traveled to Washington D.C. last November to meet with legislators and make clear that artists need to remain in the discussion and have control over how the tool is used in animation production.

Moreno King’s strength is giving a human face to the role of artists in the industry. A Latina mother who is a veteran TV series director, she understands the challenges and struggles of rank-and-file artists who work in the industry as well as anyone.

TAG has grown faster than ever before under her leadership. It recently started to organize production workers, in addition to artists, and has also expanded from a Los Angeles County-only union to national jurisdiction, with organizing wins in New York, Texas, Virginia, and Puerto Rico.

Moreno King will have to deal with a largely discontented union membership. Animation workers, who upheld Hollywood during the pandemic when live action shut down, are burnt out and feel underappreciated. Macro economic issues like inflation have made the job of being a working artist more difficult, but so have changes within the animation industry, such as abridged production schedules and studio trickery like hiring artists for a single season but then releasing the work as multiple seasons.

Cohn oversees Dreamworks Animation, one of the last remaining L.A.-based studios to produce at least some of its animation in-house. This year, which marks the 30th anniversary of Dreamworks, the Cohn-led studio is delivering two theatrical animated features – Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot – as well as its first direct-to-streaming feature, the Charlie Kaufman-written Orion and the Dark. With KFP4′s box office success – over $540 million global – Dreamworks Animation now has the most animated franchises to cross the $2 billion mark at the global box office (the other two franchises to achieve that distinction are Shrek and Madagascar).

Cohn originally came to Dreamworks from Nickelodeon in 2013 to build its television animation division, which she also continues to oversee. The unit that she helped build from the ground up has recently wrapped Eli Roth’s Fright Krewe and John Krasinski’s Curses! in addition to expanding the Universal Jurassic  franchise with Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory.  One of the studio’s biggest series, Gabby’s Dollhouse for Netflix, is expanding as a full-length feature in 2025.

She is also working to grow Dreamworks’ presence at its parent company’s theme parks. In June, a new Dreamworks-themed land opened at Universal Orlando, and a How to Train Your Dragon land will be part of Universal’s Epic Universe theme park opening in 2025.

With Moana 2 being produced in part at Disney’s Vancouver studios, Emeryville, California-based Pixar is the last major American animation studio to produce every single one of its features entirely in-house. The head of that house is three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out, Monsters, Inc.), who took over after John Lasseter left the company.

When former Disney CEO Bob Chapek sent three consecutive Pixar films to streaming (including Docter’s own Soul), it set a precedent that sent the Disney division spiraling. In 2022, Lightyear was the first Pixar film to head back to cinemas, where it bombed in dramatic fashion. Last year, the studio released Elemental, which started its run more weakly than expected, before strong word of mouth helped it recover at the box office.

The studio’s grim narrative, however, changed dramatically this summer with the release of the Kelsey Mann-directed Inside Out 2, which was based on Docter’s original film. It is a global smash unlike any Pixar has had before, setting box office records all over the globe and becoming the studio’s highest-grossing film ever, with over $1.5 billion as this is being written.

Prior to the film’s release, Docter had said that everything was riding on this film, and that if it didn’t do well, “we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.” Such fears proved to be unfounded as the Pixar brand has proven to be resilient.

Though the studio has since pulled back on series production, it will also debut its first-ever long-form series, Win or Lose, on Disney+ later in 2024. For now, the studio is refocusing on features, including both originals (Elio in 2025) and franchise films (Toy Story 5 in 2026).

Running one studio is challenging enough, but since 2021, Naito has been president of two studios: Nickelodeon Animation and Paramount Animation, where she oversees all of the groups’ operations from development through theatrical release. An executive with a creator-friendly approach, Naito is also the rare TV exec who comes from a fine arts background (her MFA from Cal Arts was focused on sound installation).

For SpongeBob SquarePants’ 25th anniversary this year, Naito is overseeing a series of specially produced all-new anniversary-themed episodes and specials, with Easter eggs and nods to fan-favorite moments. Her involvement with the franchise dates back 20 years to when she produced the first SpongeBob theatrical. The fourth feature film will bow in 2025, while the direct-to-streaming Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie debuts on Netflix this year.

She has aggressively expanded Nickelodeon Animation’s pipeline, bringing dozens of projects and creators to the studio, while navigating shifting viewing patterns and the decline of cable. Recent Nickelodeon highlights include the Annie Award-nominated series Rock Paper Scissors, which came out of the Intergalactic Shorts Program that she launched in 2019, as well as this year’s new CG reboot of preschool icon Dora the Explorer.

Paramount Animation is plenty busy too, as Naito oversees features starring iconic characters like the Smurfs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paw Patrol, Transformers, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and of course, SpongeBob. “We also want all of our movies to look and feel very different,” Naito says. “We do not want to have a house style.” The division also has a slate of originals in development to complement the IP-driven films.

Belson’s almost decade long tenure as President at Sony Pictures Animation has seen the studio rise in stature as one of the industry’s havens for creative expression and inventive explorations of computer-animation visual styles.

The studio’s rise can largely be attributed to a single film – 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – which pushed the aesthetics of computer animation with ingenious techniques and industry-defying art direction. Spider-Verse proved to the industry and other studio heads that 1) superhero films could feel fresh again if creators were allowed to tell stories their way, and 2) that a radical rethinking of computer animation techniques would be entirely embraced by audiences who were ready to see something different from the medium.

But unique to SPA are Belson’s choices for subject-matter, greenlighting features and shorts showcasing diverse leads and underrepresented artists behind the scenes. Wish Dragon opened up a pipeline to produce animated films for Chinese audiences and Vivo was the studio’s first feature embracing Latino characters and culture. Matthew A. Cherry’s short film, Hair Love, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and paved the way to the Max series, Young Love.

In that same vein of thinking, Belson has greenlit K-Pop: Demon Hunters (working title), a musical action adventure that follows the story of a world-renowned K-Pop girl group, to be directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, and GOAT, an original sports comedy with the NBA’s support, directed by Tyree Dillihay. Other announced projects in development are Tut, an Afro-futurist coming-of-age take on the story of ancient Egypt’s boy king Tutankhamun from Matthew A. Cherry, and a fantasy-adventure feature to be directed by Matt Braly about a young boy who goes on an emotional journey to a fantastical world of Thai spirits.

The originator of U.S. long-form theatrical feature animation, today’s Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) is still chugging at 101 years old under the leadership team of Lee and Spencer. Though the studio’s recent output – Strange World, Wish – hasn’t exactly resonated at the box office, it’s never a good idea to bet against this animation titan.

Per overall corporate directives, the studio’s near-future slate is IP-heavy. Coming next: Moana 2 in theaters this November and Zootopia 2 in November 2025, as well as two more installments in what is Lee’s standout creative legacy, the Frozen saga. A series based on The Princess and the Frog, Tiana, is being produced for Disney+.

Now 13 years into her Disney career, Lee maintains creative oversight of all WDAS films, series, shorts, and associated projects. Creatively, she continues to script films like co-writing Wish and both new Frozen chapters. Spencer has spent over three decades at Disney, coming up through the business side and shifting into the role of president of WDAS in 2019. He also has producer titles on some of the studio’s most beloved films including Lilo & Stitch, Zootopia, and Encanto.

For all of the studio’s recent stumbles, it is still a potent, innovative, and iconic brand. Moana (2016) recently crossed over a billion hours watched on Disney+ and was the #1 most watched film of 2023 across all streaming services. The studio also released the Nigeria-set Iwájú on Disney+, which was WDAS’ first-ever longform series. The studio’s bespoke 100th anniversary short, Once Upon a Studio — championed by Lee to a greenlight — is a potent reminder of their incredible bench of characters, the emotional weight they still have with audiences of every generation, and the passionate storytellers that remain within their halls.

There was a time when Lasseter would have been in or near the top spot of an animation power list in any given year. But after an inglorious fall from grace, the former Pixar and Disney creative chief has had to rebuild his image and his status as a power player. Now, due to his connection with Skydance founder (and Oracle scion) David Ellison, Lasseter has emerged as a central figure in the year’s biggest Hollywood story: Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount. If the deal goes through, Lasseter could soon have Paramount Animation (and more) under his control. A press release by Paramount said as much, with a statement that Lasseter-led Skydance Animation “will expand Paramount’s animation capabilities.” Even if the Skydance-Paramount merger were not to happen, Skydance Animation currently enjoys a multi-year output deal with Netflix, where Lasseter is overseeing a group of all-star directors including Vicky Jenson, Nathan Greno, Brad Bird, Rich Moore, and Don Hall.

Register is a true company man. He began working at Cartoon Network in 1994 and has slowly accumulated oversight of a massive animation operation that includes iconic franchises such as Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera, DC, as well Adventure Time, The Powerpuff Girls, and The Amazing World of Gumball. The three studios he currently oversees have over 30 projects in active production and over 50 more in development. Warner Bros. Animation, which has largely focused on TV and direct-to-video, will release the theatrical anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim this December through WB Pictures/New Line Cinema. Upcoming series premieres include Batman: Caped Crusader, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, Creature Commandos, and Invincible Fight Girl, not to mention Teen Titans Go!, the longest-running series in Cartoon Network history, which will reach its 400th episode milestone this fall.

Lin is Netflix’s recently appointed head of film, and although his resume is mostly stocked with live-action titles, he also produced The Lego Movie and its spinoff, The Lego Batman Movie. Lin has expressed a keen interest in the feature animation division since taking charge earlier this year, and has already shaken up the unit by replacing division chief Karen Toliver with Hannah Minghella. A key task for Lin will be to figure out how Netflix can produce more animated crowd-pleasers. At his own production company Rideback, Lin did plenty of that in the live-action sphere, producing hits like It, Sherlock Holmes, and Disney’s remake of Aladdin.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of MacFarlane’s seminal animated series Family Guy, one of the most consequential adult animated series in the history of broadcast TV. In January, MacFarlane released the hybrid series Ted, spun off from his successful feature film franchise of the same name, which quickly became Peacock’s most-watched original title to date and was renewed for a second season. Then there’s American Dad!, which recently finished airing season 18 (per internal bookkeeping). MacFarlane, who runs the production company Fuzzy Door with President Erica Huggins, recently launched Fuzzy Door Tech, a technology arm that is making a big contribution to the animation and VFX industries in the form of ViewScreen, a new suite of on-set real-time production visualization tools. ViewScreen, which MacFarlane has used on his own projects like Ted and The Orville, allows filmmakers and camera operators to visualize and animate CG assets in real-time across multiple cameras.

Girardi technically answers to Sam Register at the studio, but he is given broad power to run his own show and oversee the fast-growing adult animation slate at Warner Bros. Animation. One of his trump cards is access to the DC superhero library, for which he is the key creative executive. Big premieres in 2024 include the Harley Quinn spinoff series, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, and Creature Commandos, where he works closely with James Gunn and the DC Studios team to tie into the new overarching canon being developed for Warner Bros. Girardi is also ushering in the much-anticipated Bruce Timm series, Batman: Caped Crusader, alongside executive producers J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves.

After a stellar 13-season run of their King of the Hill animated series through the aughts, creators Judge and Daniels circled up in 2019 to form their own independent animation studio with Davis, the former head of comedy at YouTube Originals. The timing of the company’s formation was perfectly aligned with the pandemic when animation production boomed and Bandera was able to place over two dozen shows into development across different platforms. Bandera Entertainment is currently co-producing the revival season of King of the Hill, but also has a broader mission of facilitating and developing new voices in adult series animation. In that capacity, they’ve already co-produced some delightfully weird series in Praise Petey for Freeform and Peacock’s stop-motion hybrid In the Know. New shows in 2024 include Exploding Kittens (Netflix) and Common Side Effects (Adult Swim). The trio has a nimble approach to development and the company isn’t top-heavy, allowing Bandera to develop projects at their own pace and partner with production studios at a later stage in the process.

A singular graphic artist and storyteller in the U.S. feature animation industry, Sanders built an illustrious career at Disney during the company’s 1990s renaissance, capped off when he wrote, directed, and voice acted in Lilo & Stitch. He later delivered multiple hits for DreamWorks, co-writing and co-directing How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. After a brief sojourn into live action – 2020’s The Call of the Wild – he is making a triumphant return to animation in 2024 with DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, a graphically original and emotionally resonant animated feature based on Peter Brown’s bestselling illustrated novel of the same name. Sanders is also lined up to reprise the role of Stitch in the Disney+ live-action adaptation of Lilo & Stitch.

Bush is one of the fast-rising stars at Walt Disney Animation Studios and his name is attached to some of the studio’s biggest hits of the last decade. He was co-writer/co-director of Zootopia (2016) and the screenwriter of Moana. He received the Academy Award in 2022 for his role as director/writer on Encanto. The success of Bush’s projects has positioned him as a core creative voice at the studio, helping to guide many of the studio’s non-Frozen related projects. Currently, he is writing Moana 2 along with Dana Ledoux Miller, as well as directing and writing Zootopia 2, releasing in November 2025.

For almost two decades, Thorn excelled in original programming development, first at 20th Century Fox TV and for the last seven years as president of scripted programming for Fox Entertainment. He remains a big proponent of Fox’s enduring animated series legacy and continues to deepen the strength of their Animation Domination Sunday block with new programs, like Krapopolis and Grimsburg, from their Bento Box Entertainment studio. At the end of March, Thorn was picked to lead the whole network, managing the channel’s scripted, unscripted, and casting teams. From this position, he’s likely to continue to keep animation a core focus of the network’s overall programming strategy with new series like the upcoming Universal Basic Guys, while also remaining a member of the Bento Box Entertainment Steering Committee.

Ouweleen has deep roots at Cartoon Network and Adult Swim (the latter of which he helped launch decades ago). Under Ouweleen, the iconic animation network has had to navigate the decline of children’s cable viewership by leaning into Adult Swim, which posted more growth in primetime among adults 18-49 than any other top cable network in the fourth quarter of 2023. Adult Swim also finished out the year as a top 5 cable network among adults 18-34 and 18-49. The block’s new shows – Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, My Adventures with Superman, Royal Crackers – were the top three new animated series on cable in 2023, and season seven of Rick and Morty was the #2 cable comedy in key adult demos. Another highlight: Adult Swim’s expanded schedule now includes “Checkered Past,” a retro-programming block that has delivered big ratings increases among adult viewers.

Over her thirteen-year tenure at Pixar, Shi has worked her way up the ranks of the iconic Northern California studio, from story intern to VP of Creative. In her new management role, she helps guide the creative direction for Pixar’s upcoming slate of films. Her fresh creative voice that draws upon her upbringing as a Chinese emigrant in Canada is an example of the growing diversity of voices at Pixar. She made a strong impression with her highly personal short Bao, which won the Oscar, before delivering the original Turning Red, which made her the first solo woman director of a Pixar feature. She is currently developing a follow-up feature at Pixar, which she has confirmed will be “very much inspired by my background, my culture, and the themes and ideas that I love talking about.” Do not be surprised to see her in the director’s chair again soon.

The founder of specialty animation distributor/producer GKIDS, Beckman’s visionary company finally scored an Oscar win this year for Best Animated Feature – after 12 previous nominations! – with Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. The company has transformed the distribution game for international animated films in the United States, but didn’t truly hit its stride until sharpening its focus on anime. Its latest Oscar win (as well as its profitable annual touring Studio Ghibli Fest) confirms the value of its North American distribution deal with the famed Japanese animation producer, while its L.A.-based Animation is Film festival continues to grow the stateside stature of international animation.

This powerhouse industry trio was most recently responsible for recommending the creation of a distinct Animation Branch for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as befitting the needs of the 700 Academy members working in the animation industry. (Previously, the animation branch was integrated with live-action short film.) Arnold, the longest-serving governor of the trio, was at the forefront of the push for a new branch, but all three worked together to conduct virtual branch town halls and consult with members to gather feedback and ensure a majority was in favor of a final proposal. The new solution is a big win for the animation community, resulting in proper representation at the Oscars and ensuring integrity and fairness for the highest profile short film and feature animation awards in the United States. Arnold, whose producing credits include Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon, is terming out of the governorship due to Academy bylaws, while BAFTA winner and Oscar-nominated producer Gotoh (Klaus, The Little Prince) and Walt Disney Animation Studios visual effects supervisor West will take point in representing the Animation Branch at the Academy.

Minghella replaced Karen Toliver in this key Netflix role only in June, which instantly makes her a power player in the animation industry. She joins from Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, where she was President of Motion Pictures, but she is no stranger to the animation industry, having also spent time as President of Production at Sony Pictures Animation, where she oversaw such movies as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, and The Smurfs, as well as multiple Aardman titles. A filmmaker-friendly executive, Minghella is being tasked by Netflix film chief Dan Lin to “deepen our efforts to bring variety and quality” to the company’s feature animation slate. The streamer has had no shortage of critical and audience hits, including Leo, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Sea Beast, and Nimona, but it has also expended plenty of time and resources on films that under-delivered or never got made. Perhaps that’s to be expected for a company that produces more animated features than any other American studio.

Increasingly, Verve talent agency is becoming synonymous with representing the cream of the crop in animation talent. Co-founder Besser has actively sought to make clients of some of the biggest names in animation including Jane Wu (Blue Eye Samurai), Shannon Tindle (Ultraman: Rising), and Jill Culton (Abominable), among many others. In fact, three of the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2024 had talent represented by Verve: Troy Quane (Nimona), Justin K. Thompson (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and Brenda Hsueh (Elemental). The agency says it is deeply committed to animation as a medium and has taken a strong stance on its potential in the entertainment space. It says: “We’re captivated by the worlds animation allows us to explore, the stories it enables us to tell, and the limitless potential it holds. … From the outset, we’ve recognized the profound impact animation has on storytelling, viewing it not merely as a separate entity from traditional cinema, but as an essential component of the cinematic experience.”

When it comes to promoting the art form of animation, few filmmakers are more outspoken than three-time Oscar-winner del Toro. Sure, it’s been more than a year since his last animated production won the animated feature Academy Award, but his presence in animation helped to awaken his live-action Hollywood peers to the fact that animation is indeed cinema, and a medium that should be treated with respect and dignity. Del Toro, who started his filmmaking career in animation, isn’t planning to leave the medium either. He has said that after he makes a “couple more live-action movies,” he wants to focus exclusively on animation. The recent launch of Taller del Chucho, a state-of-the-art stop-motion studio in Guadalajara, Mexico, that he founded, is a clear signal of his long-term interest in the art form.

Veteran producer and executive Dean oversees all animation production at Skybound Entertainment, the company founded by The Walking Dead co-creator Robert Kirkman, which produces Prime Video’s hit hour-long animation drama Invincible. Key tasks ahead include growing the pool of creative animation talent and deepening relationships across Asia for future projects, including Skybound’s Japan expansion. Beyond the studio, Dean has been lauded for revamping the non-profit advocacy group Women in Animation, which she has led for the last decade. Under her leadership, WIA has grown from 120 members to over 11,000, and the group remains firm in its commitment to advancing gender equity in the animation, VFX, and gaming industries.

As the Greek Titan Atlas stands resolute with the weight of the world on his shoulders, so too does SpongeBob SquarePants carry the fate of Nickelodeon (and, to a lesser extent, its parent company Paramount) on his invertebrate frame. The SpongeBob empire, which turns 25 this year, is overseen creatively by Waller and Ceccarelli, who are the franchise’s executive producers. Since debuting in 1999, the show has inspired two spin-off series – Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years and The Patrick Star Show – and four feature films, including this year’s Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, which will debut on Netflix. For the last 25 years, the ever-optimistic sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea has been voiced by Kenny, who also voices Gary the Snail and serves as voice director on all three TV series. Twenty-four-year Nick veteran Spinelli, currently Senior Vice President, TV Series Animation, is also the executive in charge of SpongeBob SquarePants, where she not only oversees the show, but has also helped expand the universe to theme park attractions, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, video games, and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, which garnered 12 Tony Award nominations.

A 20-year veteran of Disney, Roberts was elevated to her current role in 2022. In this role, she spearheads the delivery of more than 100 half-hours of animated content across Disney+, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior. Under her leadership, Disney has created a diverse roster of critically acclaimed and fan-favorite series such as Big City Greens, Kiff, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Zombies: The Re-Animated Series short-form series, and Hamster & Gretel, with upcoming projects that include Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation and the hotly-anticipated franchise revival of Phineas and Ferb. Roberts has a deep library of IP to pull from and has been instrumental in introducing classic characters to new generations of kids, including Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Monsters at Work, the latter of which was the first animated original to support the launch of Disney+. She also oversees the Disney Television Animation Writing Program, which has facilitated the placement of over 50 junior writers from underrepresented groups into full-time positions within Disney Television Animation.

In any given year, Tartakovsky, who has proved himself a reliable commercial filmmaker with Sony’s Hotel Transylvania franchise, would be a good shout to make an animation power list, but this year, he is a shoo-in. Who else could convince a major U.S. studio to let them write and direct an R-rated 2D animated feature about a dog’s last day before getting neutered? The film, Fixed, still doesn’t have a release date, but it could have a profound impact on the future of feature animation for adult audiences. The creator of iconic shows like Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory, Tartakovsky hasn’t left series behind either. A third season of his violently original Adult Swim series Primal is currently in production.

A U.S. studio with a subversive streak, Titmouse is a preferred service provider for many animated series for children, teens, and adults. Originally founded as a T-shirt company by Chris and Shannon Prynoski in 2000, the company has grown to become the largest independent animation studio in North America, employing more than 1,000 workers across three studios in Burbank, New York, and Vancouver. Uniquely, for a company of its size, Titmouse rejects a standard house style and instead focuses on the “Titmouse vibe” of “offbeat humor, approachable eccentricity, a cool nerdy charm, and a lighthearted (yet counterculture) sense of fun.” Prynoski, an animation director himself, encourages his crew to experiment and find ways to make each production unique. Celebrated projects by the studio include Big Mouth, Scavengers Reign, Beavis and Butt-Head, The Venture Bros., and Metalocalypse. New projects in 2024 include Angry Birds Mystery Island, Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and an animated series based on the game Among Us.

Medrano has rewritten the rules of how independent creators can launch original IP in the YouTube era and deliver it to a mass audience. She self-produced and distributed the pilot of her dark comedy-musical Hazbin Hotel on YouTube in 2019. It became a viral smash that amassed more than 100 million views and garnered an engaged fanbase. She has been able to build a self-sustaining studio operation by generating revenue through Patreon and merchandise sales. But her pilot also caught the eye of indie production powerhouse A24, who teamed with Bento Box Entertainment to produce a full season for Prime Video. The show is now in production on a second season, while also spawning an indie-produced digital-first spinoff, Helluva Boss, produced through Medrano’s own company SpindleHorse Toons.

Annapurna Animation could hardly have started off any better, with its first animated feature, Nimona, scoring an Oscar nomination at this year’s Academy Awards. Leading the recently launched unit are former Blue Sky Studios Co-Presidents Baird and Millstein. Given their strong resumes – Baird was a screenwriter of Monsters University, Big Hero Six, and Nimona, while Millstein is the former President and General Manager of Walt Disney Animation Studios – they could make good on their desire to have Annapurna become a home for animation filmmakers who want to tell “wildly entertaining, meaningful, and daring stories.” Their new unit aims to produce both feature and episodic, and true to Annapurna’s well-established auteur-driven approach to live action, Baird and Millstein express a desire to collaborate with filmmakers who want to explore new ways of producing animation outside of the standard studio system.

Goldsmith-Vein’s thirty-year-old Gotham Group is the only major management/ production company in Hollywood owned solely by a woman. The company blazed another crucial trail too when it started representing animation talent in the Nineties, at a time when few other management firms were interested in the field. Today, even as the company has expanded to represent names in live-action film and TV, publishing, journalism, and content creation, animation remains a central focus. Key talent represented by Gotham includes Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal (KIFF), Chris and Shane Houghton (Big City Greens), Mike Rubiner (The Loud House), Brandon Auman (The Legend of Vox Machina), Brandon Sawyer (The Boss Baby: Back in Business), Scott Kreamer (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous), Lynn Wang (Thelma the Unicorn), Marc Haimes (Ultraman: Rising), and Anthony Stacchi (The Monkey King). Goldsmith-Vein also produced Henry Selick’s recent stop-motion feature Wendell & Wild for Netflix, among other titles that she has produced (The Spiderwick Chronicles, the Maze Runner film series).

There aren’t many execs these days who can say they’ve spent their entire career at a single studio, but after her college graduation, Proietto started as an assistant at 20th Century Fox TV and has since built a 32-year career around animation. The remarkable longevity of her career owes much to the fact that she’s well liked, as well as her ability to maintain strong relationships with creators, including Matt Groening, Seth MacFarlane, and Loren Bouchard. From her entry point during season six of The Simpsons, Proietto has been involved with over 2,000 episodes of animated shows and now oversees a portfolio of nearly a dozen animated series at Disney-owned 20th Television Animation. Besides The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad!, Bob’s Burgers, Solar Opposites, and The Great North, Proietto is also overseeing the upcoming revival of King of the Hill and a new season of the Futurama reboot.

The newly-installed head of the newly-rebranded Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Damaschke faces the Herculean task of revitalizing a feature animation division on life support. A key figure at DreamWorks for many years, Damaschke inherits a group that has been limping along with middle-of-the-road IP-driven features such as Space Jam: A New Legacy, Tom & Jerry, and Scoob! While the group scored a minor hit in 2022 with DC League of Super-Pets, any goodwill earned by the unit was shattered when corporate decided to bury the finished hybrid feature Coyote vs. Acme, which ironically is the best film made by the division in years. Damaschke’s current slate includes a series of Dr. Seuss adaptations, from a deal that predates his arrival, and a first-look deal with Locksmith Animation. His division currently has limited access to the famed DC superhero library, which further complicates the unit’s path forward.

Merging together a combined five decades of computer animation and film production experience, CG veterans Booker and Mullins launched ElectroLeague in 2020 with a vision for a studio that embraces real-time workflows in animated filmmaking. Focused on developing “aged-up animated content” and asset builds that can work across multiple verticals, ElectroLeague uses Unreal Engine to capture performance and camera; its philosophy is to shoot the script on the performance capture stage and integrate editorial into the stage process. So far, it’s working better than they could have dreamed: the studio’s first short film War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko won the Academy Award this year for Best Animated Short Film. The studio’s nimble approach and smaller core crew allows them to communicate with immediacy and focus on results. “Our intent is to remove any process that does not directly contribute to the final pixel,” Booker says. “It is all about iteration. Fail early – iterate often, filmmaking at the speed of thought.”

A 26-year veteran of Pixar Animation Studios, Steve May is pushing their technology forward by investing in R&D for ongoing innovations like building out the Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) ecosystem, solving denoiser problems to preserve fine details in RenderMan, and handling technically challenging tasks demanded by storytelling, like volumetric rendering and simulations for the characters in Elemental. In his broader role as an advocate for the entire computer-animation industry, May’s position as chairperson of the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) means he’s pushing to improve the interoperability of 3D content which in turn opens up cross compatibility and shared creativity for all artists, studios, and creators in animation, visual effects, and metaverse fields.

If your animated film makes $1.36 billion at the global box office, there’s a good chance we’re going to include you on our list of the industry’s top power players. Jelenic and Horvath co-directed The Super Mario Bros. Movie, 2023’s highest-grossing animated feature and the second-highest-grossing theatrical animated film in the post-pandemic era. The duo was also recently confirmed to be returning for a Mario sequel, due to hit theaters in 2026, while also being attached to develop a Flintstones origin movie at Warner Bros. Before taking over cinematic duties for the most famous video game franchise in history, Jelenic and Horvath shared three Primetime Emmy nominations for showrunning one of Cartoon Network’s most popular (not to mention longest-running) series, Teen Titans Go!

The COO for eight years at Illumination, Fischer intimately knows the inner workings of what it takes to operate a successful animation studio. In 2021, she jumped to Locksmith Animation, a new woman-founded British animation studio, where she has steered their course as CEO for the last three years. (She is based out of the company’s satellite office in Los Angeles.) In 2021, they released their first theatrical feature, Ron’s Gone Wrong. Coming this year is the much-anticipated Netflix holiday film, That Christmas, based on Richard Curtis’ book and directed by DreamWorks veteran Simon Otto. The company also has a first-look deal with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. First up as part of that deal is Bad Fairies, a subversive musical comedy set in contemporary London, slated for release in 2027.

The Unreal Engine 5 is taking off as Hollywood’s go-to storytelling tool and a big reason for that is the tireless work of Libreri’s development and proselytizing of the real-time 3D tool. This year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko is the first-ever win for a project created with Unreal Engine. Libreri’s wise collaboration with WetaFX on the spec project Meerkat became an integral proof of concept in showcasing UE5’s applicability to animation. His background in the film and entertainment industry (ILM, Digital Domain, Cinesite) helps him understand the needs of Hollywood and he has adopted feedback into UE5 for better usability to aid animators, including tools like Sequencer and Control Rig. There are more than 800 film and television projects currently using Unreal Engine (up from just 20 in 2019), including director Duncan Jones’ upcoming animated feature Rogue Trooper and the LEGO Ninjago: Dragons Rising series.

Childhood friends from the Bay Area, Bulkley and Campodonico set up their production company ShadowMachine in L.A. twenty-five years ago with the goal of making a splash in Hollywood. A lucky break got them the pilot for the stop-motion series Robot Chicken, which led them down the animation path, and they eventually became the animation studio that produced the first five seasons of the show. Plenty of other TV shows have followed in the years since: Moral Orel, TripTank, BoJack Horseman, Final Space, Tuca & Bertie, and Ten Year Old Tom, among them. Though they work across all mediums – stop motion, digital 2D, CG – it was their stop-motion work that caught the eye of Guillermo del Toro, who enlisted their studio to produce the animation for his Pinocchio adaptation at Netflix. That film, produced at ShadowMachine’s second studio in Portland, which opened in 2015, went on to win the Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe, among over 60 other awards. The studio, which has no set house style, continues to produce a diverse array of projects including recent series like In the Know (Peacock), Clone High (Max), and Strange Planet (Apple TV+). The company is also working with del Toro to develop his next animated feature.

Celebrating a decade at Netflix this year, Yacoubian has aggressively moved up the ladder from initially supporting content acquisition efforts via valuation analysis to global content acquisition for family programming. He then led the Independent Animated Film initiative, which focused on acquiring international feature originals from venerable indie studios like Aardman Animations and Studio Ghibli. Yacoubian was also part of the Tsuburaya Productions deal to expand their Netflix license and use the Ultraman character in the streamer’s first feature film interpretation of the international superhero, Shannon Tindle’s Ultraman: Rising. Now firmly entrenched in the creative side of animated feature development, expect him to continue making an impact on Netflix’s feature animation slate.

If CoComelon is playing on a loop in your home, blame Hickey who helped make the animated series a streaming and YouTube hit with preschoolers. On Netflix, CoComelon was the most-watched children’s show in the second half of 2023. That’s nothing compared to YouTube, where tykes have streamed the cartoons for over sixty billion minutes. Hickey is responsible for overseeing creative for all of the company’s core and premium original IP, from development through delivery, including other titles like Blippi, Little Angel, Little Baby Bum, Morphle, and Oddbods. Hickey also steered the creative department through the company’s acquisition by Candle Media in 2021, when Moonbug was reportedly valued at $3 billion.

Bennett, Brooke, Buckelew, and Merrill might sound like a law firm, but it’s actually the most exciting new independent studio in Los Angeles. The company was initially built around the personal work of its founders including commissioned animated shorts for FX’s Cake series. In the past year, their work more broadly landed on the radar of the industry with the critical success of Bennett and Charles Huettner’s original sci-fi animated series, Scavengers Reign, for Max. A much-admired cult hit, the show wasn’t picked up for a second season, but Netflix is now streaming the series on its platform where it could get resurrected. Numerous other projects are currently placed at different companies, but the only one announced at the moment is the Bandera Entertainment comedic thriller series Common Side Effects, created by Bennett and Steve Hely. The big pharma satire will air on Adult Swim next year, and as with all of Green Street’s projects, promises to challenge traditional animation aesthetics and sensibilities.

Knight, heir to the Nike empire, forged his own path in the animation world with the founding of LAIKA, an Oregon-based studio that has consistently elevated the artistry and technology of stop-motion animation. He is currently directing and producing the studio’s sixth feature Wildwood, based on the books by Colin Meloy. The studio has also optioned Susanna Clarke’s fantasy novel Piranesi and is developing The Night Gardener from Ozark creator Bill Dubuque; Knight is attached to direct both. All five of the studio’s previous films have been nominated for an Oscar, including Knight’s directorial debut Kubo and the Two Strings. His 2018 live-action directorial debut Bumblebee grossed $467 million worldwide. He was also recently tapped by Mattel and Amazon MGM to helm a new feature adaptation of the iconic 1980s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise.

Agbaje joined Bad Robot from FX, where he was a key figure on the short-form series Cake, which provided a showcase for indie talent like Sophie Koko Gate, Sara Gunnarsdóttir, Jeron Braxton, Joe Bennett, Réka Bucsi, and Jonathan Djob Nkondo. Agbaje stands apart from other animation executives by being a talented draftsman in his own right and has been lauded by colleagues for his ability to communicate with artists on a creative level. At Bad Robot, he was part of the team that adapted Charlie Mackesy’s book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, earning Academy Award and BAFTA wins, as well as four Annie Awards. Bad Robot’s animation slate includes genres ranging from sci-fi mystery and psychological horror to workplace and coming-of-age comedy. Announced animation projects include a two-season order of Batman: Caped Crusader for Prime Video and a feature adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! with Jon. M. Chu attached to direct for Warners.

Primarily known as a talented live-action comedy writer for most of his career, Rothman’s range got much bigger with the overwhelming success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which he co-directed, as well as co-wrote the screenplay with Phil Lord. That opened the door for Rothman and former MGM executive Adam Rosenberg’s 2019 creation of Modern Magic. A media company focused on the “limitless creative and commercial potential” of the animation medium, Modern Magic currently has projects in development with Billie Eilish and Finneas, Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Junji Ito, Stephen Curry, Pete Candeland, Quinta Brunson, Eric Andre, Neal Stephenson, and Ronald Wimberly, among others. Since its launch, the company has partnered on projects with companies that include Columbia Pictures, Fox, Sony Pictures Animation, Illumination, Interscope, Warner Bros., Netflix, and 20th Television, as well as a network of partner studios including Miyu, The Line, and Madhouse.

If geography was a consideration, Mann would be the obvious choice to direct Inside Out 2; he grew up in Burnsville, Minnesota, just six miles away from the hometown of franchise creator Pete Docter. But his credentials also made him a fine choice. Having worked at Cartoon Network, Warner Bros., and Lucasfilm Animation, prior to joining Pixar in 2009, Mann established himself in the story department at the Emeryville studio by serving as a story supervisor on three earlier Pixar features: Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, and Onward. In his first outing as a feature film director, he crafted not only the year-to-date’s biggest global theatrical hit ($1.4 billion and counting, as of publication), but a cultural touchstone that captures the emotional resonance and mass appeal of Pixar’s finest efforts. It is also the highest-grossing Pixar film of all-time, a remarkable achievement considering the studio’s treasured legacy.

Twenty-three years ago, Smith created the hit Disney Channel animated series, The Proud Family, and has remained the franchise’s primary creative voice to this day. In 2022, he successfully rebooted it for a new generation as The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder now streaming on Disney+. Smith has never shied away from representing the Black experience in animation, and his revival (with co-creator Ralph Farquhar) tackles a range topics that are rare for family TV animation – unhoused people, interracial dating, LGBTQ+, and a much-talked-about episode centered around Juneteenth. This new iteration has won four NAACP Image Awards and has been picked up for a third season. Outside of Disney, Smith co-directed Hair Love, the 2020 Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film, with Matthew A. Cherry and Everett Downing Jr.

Having spent years boarding dynamic action sequences on various Marvel titles, as well as projects like Game of Thrones and Mulan, Wu distilled her prowess in showcasing action choreography into one of the most visually striking animated series in recent memory, Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai. Inspired by her own martial arts background, she was able to imbue a unique authenticity and attitude into the movements of series lead Mizu, and together with creators Amber Noizumi and Michael Green, they upped the ante for R-rated storytelling and graphic action in animation. The show won six Annie Awards and has been nominated for two Emmy Awards and a Peabody, but more importantly the series has put a spotlight on Wu’s formidable talent in what is considered a traditionally male genre. For the show’s upcoming second season, she has been promoted to executive producer, in addition to continuing as supervising director.

In the year since he was promoted to president of Fox Entertainment Studio’s Bento Box Entertainment, Coker has continued to scale up the studio’s dominance in the adult animation space. He is responsible for the day-to-day corporate operations of the studio and its subsidiaries, across four locations in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Australia (in partnership with Princess Bento Studio), and Ireland (vis-à-vis a multi-year production services agreement with Boulder Media). Bento Box is currently, or has recently completed, producing series for Netflix (Mulligan), Apple TV+ (Central Park), Fox (Universal Basic Guys), Tubi (Koala Man), and Prime Video (Hazbin Hotel), along with their Fox Animation Domination series that include Grimsburg, Dan Harmon’s Krapopolis, and the long-running hit Bob’s Burgers.

DiMartino and Konietzko created a modern animation monolith with Avatar: The Last Airbender. Beloved by critics and audiences alike, the three-season series became a cornerstone animated property for Nickelodeon and proved that the kid-centric network could create ambitious action-adventure fare. The show was followed by a well regarded spinoff, The Legend of Korra. In 2021, they launched Avatar Studios for Nickelodeon to develop new series and films within their universe. Perhaps wisely, the pair walked away from the live-action adaptation of Airbender at Netflix due to creative issues, and instead are focused on their first Avatar Studios-produced animated feature, currently in production. This fall, Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert will begin a 100-city global tour, screening fan-favorite moments from the show accompanied by a live orchestra.

As the director and executive producer for Kung Fu Panda 4, Mitchell delivered the second-highest domestic box office earner of the whole franchise (after the original) and it currently rests in the top ten U.S. box office hits of 2024. It also makes him the only director who has directed a film in two different $2-billion animation franchises (the other franchise is Shrek, for which he helmed Shrek Forever After). Mitchell has a reputation for late in the game fixes on films deep into production, and he has a handle on all aspects of animation production from directing and writing to producing and storyboarding. One of Hollywood’s most consistently reliable animation directors, he has delivered entries in The Lego Movie and Alvin and the Chipmunks franchises, and for DreamWorks, helmed the first film in another of the studio’s hit franchises, Trolls. Equally comfortable in live action, Mitchell directed the live-action sequences of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and also created the puppet series The Barbarian and the Troll for Prime Video/Nickelodeon (2021).

Among the largest CG animation studios on the East Coast, Florida-based Steamroller Animation was started a little over a decade ago by veteran artists Meyer, Sadool, and Keith Lackey. The artist-led company was initially formed to self-produce its own video game Curse of the Deadwood, but soon found itself in demand from other game companies as a provider of cinematics and in-game animation, as well as film VFX. The studio has since worked with WetaFX, Guerilla Games, NetherRealm Studios, and Blizzard Entertainment on projects that include Avatar: The Way of Water, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Horizon: Forbidden West, Mortal Kombat 11, Cyberpunk 2077, and Overwatch 2. Steamroller now has its sights set on developing its own IP, including the series Spice Frontier and Jamaal Bradley’s feature Master. Gilman, a veteran animator and supervisor at Weta and DNEG, joined in 2021 and recently assumed the role of CEO. One of Gilman’s key innovations has been a complete rethink of human resources for an animation studio; the implementation of his new system has resulted in a happier workforce and a high retention rate of workers.

This talented trio represent Sony’s commitment to weave diverse voices and perspectives into their animation feature ecosystem. Mining story ideas outside of industry-standard fare and bringing new takes to established franchises, they’re finding fresh inspirations to build films around. Kang’s project is first up with the musical action-adventure K-Pop: Demon Hunters, which she is directing with Chris Appelhans (Wish Dragon). Two-time Emmy-nominated television director Dillihay’s comedic sensibilities from his long run on Bob’s Burgers will come in handy as he shifts gears to GOAT, a sports comedy whose producers include NBA star Stephen Curry and Modern Magic’s Adam Rosenberg and Rodney Rothman. Likewise, Martinez brings his stellar head of story guidance on The Mitchells vs. The Machines into an as-yet unannounced project.

Viva Pictures has a sharp focus on domestic distribution of commercially accessible CG animation from around the globe – and the bet is paying off. Last year, Elizalde’s company snagged $4.5 million in box office from The Amazing Maurice, and will hit $10 million in cumulative box office this year. Theatrical releases for 2024 include Dragonkeeper (China/Spain), 200% Wolf (Australia/Spain), and Scarygirl (Australia). The company is now moving into production with an ownership stake in the Canary Islands’ 3 Doubles Producciones, with plans to produce multiple original theatrical features annually, in addition to the 10-15 acquisitions that the company releases across theatrical, streaming, and VOD. The company also launched the Kiddie Kompanion Pass program with Galaxy Theaters earlier this year, which eases the financial burden for family moviegoing by subsidizing a second children’s movie ticket for every child’s ticket purchased. Another innovation is Viva’s gross royalty off-thetop participation model, an attractive twist on the “net” profit distribution model that often shortchanges producers and investors.

Hertzfeldt serves as a reminder that not all power looks the same. For an artist, the greatest power is being able to do whatever the hell you want and to have a dedicated audience who’s ready to follow you wherever your creative journey takes you. That’s become significantly easier in the age of Youtube, but Hertzfeldt was doing all of this before there was an internet ecosystem, purely through word of mouth. Hertzfeldt’s power has always been on his own terms. He owns all of his films, and with a tiny team, he is orchestrating a national theater tour this year to support his new 22-minute musical short Me. His shorts have garnered much critical acclaim throughout the years; he has twice won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for Short Film, as well as an Annie Award, and two Oscar nominations. He is currently developing an animated feature with the support of Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster. If it moves forward, Hertzfeldt could enjoy the one thing that has thus far eluded him: a real Hollywood budget.

Rickard joined BUCK in 2012 as a producer and rose up the ranks until being named CEO last April. Under her leadership, the global design company has opened new offices in Amsterdam and London, won its second Emmy, and launched its first game Let’s! Revolution! In June, the company announced its certification as a B Corporation, an assurance that the 400+ global staff meets high standards of social and environmental impact and is committed to accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement. The 20-year-old company has long been recognized for its stylish and contemporary commercial work, and it continues to deliver strikingly attractive animated campaigns, such as “Get an Airbnb” for Airbnb and “Tall Tales of True Deliveries” for FedEx. But it has also expanded its footprint in new directions including long-form entertainment, gaming, branding, and AR/ VR. A big win for the studio was working with Sony Pictures Animation on the opening sequence of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Another recent project that attracted attention was its 42-day real-time livestream campaign “Starr Park CCTV” for Supercell’s game Brawl Stars. In addition to creating 18 original narrative scenes, BUCK used Unreal for crowd simulations and generated over 30,000 unique background character variations. The project earned Cannes Lions and D&AD awards, among other honors.

Perhaps the biggest creative swing that Pixar has produced in years, Win or Lose is the studio’s first original long-form scripted series. At nearly 150 minutes, it is also the longest amount of animated content Pixar has ever produced and required a rethink of Pixar’s approach to production. Born of Bob Iger’s 2018 push for all of Walt Disney’s studios to produce content for Disney+, Pixar story artists Hobson and Yates pitched a premise around a bunch of co-ed softball team players heading into their championship game, with each episode told from the perspective of a different character. Hobson, Yates, and producer David Lally are essentially reaching back to what made Pixar so successful, creating an extended character piece that delves into the comedic and emotional places that reflect our humanity.