Netflix Animation Upfront: Over 30 New Series And Features Teased For 2024 And 2025

This morning at Netflix’s headquarters in Hollywood, the streamer hosted its first-ever “Next on Netflix: Animation,” an upfront presentation for media focused on its upcoming series and feature slate.

Considering the company’s prodigious animation output, perhaps the most remarkable part of today’s event was that they’ve never hosted a dedicated animation upfront before. The event, which was packed with what seemed like the entirety of L.A. entertainment media, reaffirmed the streamer’s continued commitment to animation.

Also remarkable: the breadth and diversity of the streamer’s upcoming projects. Netflix presented at least 18 series and 12 features, all due to be released in the next year-and-a-half. The projects ranged the gamut from preschool and family series to adult animation, the latter of which is a burgeoning area of focus for many American animation producers.

The streamer has good reason to continue investing in animation. Over 130 million Netflix households watch animation every month, while anime generated one billion views in 2023. The streamer’s biggest preschool hits – Cocomelon, Cocomelon Lane, and Gabby’s Dollhouse – had over 650 million views in 2023, while the Adam Sandler feature Leo had 118 million views in its first three months.

This teaser gives a sense of the projects that were previewed today:

On the feature side, Netflix firmed up its line-up for the remainder of 2024 and through 2025. Titles still be released in 2024 are:

• June 14:Ultraman: Rising (dir. Shannon Tindle, ILM)
• July 5:The Imaginary (dir. Yoshiyuki Momose, Studio Ponoc)
• August 2:Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie (dir. Liza Johnson, Paramount Animation)
• August 22:Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos The Movie (dir. Tomoya Takahashi, Toei Animation/Studio Deen)
• November 22:Spellbound (dir. Vicky Jenson, Skydance)
• December:That Christmas (dir. Simon Otto, Locksmith Animation)

The 2025 slate isn’t dated yet, but Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which features the return of Feathers McGraw from The Wrong Trousers, is dated for this winter, so it will be among the first titles released next year:

• In Your Dreams (dir. Alex Woo)
• K-Pop Demon Hunters (working title, dirs. Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, Sony Pictures Animation)
• Plankton: The Movie (dir. Dave Needham, Paramount Animation)
• Pookoo (dir. Nathan Greno, Skydance)
• The Twits (dir. Phil Johnston)
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (dirs. Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham, Aardman Animations)

On the series side, Netflix announced a slew of new series. Among the highlights:

• Season two of Arcane will return in November 2024.
• Sony Pictures Animation is developing multiple new projects for Netflix including Motel Transylvania (set to launch in 2025) and a Ghostbusters animated series targeted for family audiences.
• Netflix and Mojang Studios are developing a cg series based on Minecraft. It will feature an original story and new characters. Wildbrain, the studio behind Sonic Prime, Ninjago: Dragons Rising, and Carmen Sandiego, is also involved in the production.
• Premiering later this year, Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld is a new series from creator Echo Wu. The show follows Jentry Chau (voiced by Ali Wong, who is also executive producer), a Chinese-American teen living in a small Texas town, who finds out a demon king is hunting her for the supernatural powers she’s been working her whole life to repress.

  

• Terminator Zero will premiere August 29. The series is executive produced by Skydance and stars Timothy Olyphant as the Terminator. Mattson Tomlin (Project Power, The Batman II) is showrunner, while Masashi Kudo directs for Production IG. Synopsis:
  

  2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity. Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.

  

• The Undervale is an animated series created by Matt Roller and executive produced by Dan Harmon. Titmouse is the animation studio. The logline: “A single mother of two who struggles to run a haunted hotel with the help of her estranged brother, who is now one of the ghosts haunting the hotel and thinks the other ghosts have some pretty good ideas.”

  

• Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will debut on October 10. The series picks up after the events of the Tomb Raider Survivor video game trilogy. The series is overseen by showrunner Tasha Huo and produced by Powerhouse Animation (Castlevania, Master of the Universe: Revelation).
• Twilight of the Gods from Zack Snyder, Jay Oliva, and Eric Carrasco, will debut this fall. The Norse mythology series is produced by Stone Quarry Animation and France’s Xilam Animation (I Lost My Body). Snyder directs the first and last episodes of the first season.

  

• Wolf King, based on the Wereworld books by Curtis Jobling, will debut in 2025. The series is directed by Tom Brass for Jellyfish Pictures, the studio which is also producing Netflix’s upcoming Roald Dahl adaptation of The Twits.