In a earnings call last month, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sat on his couch with his arms crossed and casually mentioned that, oh, by the way, among the company’s many ambitions, he also wants to dethrone Disney from its long-standing global leader in animation.
“We are very excited to capture them in family animation,” said Hastings. “Maybe eventually going through them. We’ll see.”
Netflix today announced its biggest move towards the dream of defeating Disney in what it does best. The company acquired the rights to all 22 books of Redwall, the award-winning children’s fantasy series by English writer Brian Jacques about the adventures of a group of anthropomorphic animals. Netflix will produce an animated film based on the first book in the series, as well as developing an “event series” (also animated) about the character Martin, the Warrior, a heroic mouse.
Published from 1986 until the death of Jacques in 2011, Redwall has sold over 30 million copies and has been translated into 20 languages, delighting several generations of children around the world. It’s long been at the top of wish lists to be adapted into a big-budget Hollywood movie or TV series, and now Netflix will have a chance at it.
The news comes at a time when Netflix quickly builds its still-emerging animation unit to cut Disney’s lead in space. Now she plans to release six animated films a year – far more than the two that major Disney animation studios (Pixar and Walt Disney Animation) release each year.
For a company primarily in the global subscription growth business, animation helps make families more loyal customers. One way to increase the chances of families not only becoming Netflix families, but also staying that way, is to offer content that appeals to all members of that family – especially as subscription prices increase. Netflix said its data program shows that children watch the same animated movies over and over.
The genre also represents a chance to undermine Disney’s continued growth around the world. Disney has been producing animated films since the 1930s and has remained a steamroller in space, always at the top of the box office with films like Frozenand Toys Story. In 2019, two of the three highest grossing films in the world, Frozen II and the Lion King remake, were Disney animated films. While other challengers have emerged in the past few decades, no other studio has made a serious dent in Disney’s animation domain. Disney bought the only studio that came close – Pixar.
Therefore, developing a robust animation list can help Netflix meet Disney’s streaming challenge. To some extent, it can be a mere show of strength – one last hill for Netflix to conquer after being able to succeed almost anywhere else.
In addition to making more animated originals, Netflix is strengthening its licensed list of animated titles. Last year, it acquired the international rights to 21 films from Studio Ghibli, the famous Japanese animation studio responsible for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. (In the United States, the Studio Ghibli catalog is available on HBO Max.) Netflix is developing a series of animated co-productions with other studios as well, including the stop-motion horror comedy. Wendell and Wild, co-written by and starring Jordan Peele.
Netflix recognizes that dethroning Disney will not happen overnight, or ever. “This is going to take a while,” Hastings told the Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, they are very good at that.” But the fact that the company intends to make that happen is another clear sign of its limitless ambition.
Meanwhile, yesterday Disney closed Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio that made the Ice Age and River series of films, and one of the last vestiges of its 2019 acquisition of Fox’s entertainment empire. Citing the financial pinch caused by the pandemic, Disney no longer has the desire (or means) to operate a third animation division. According to Deadline, Disney will absorb Blue Sky’s remaining intellectual property (and help put some of its employees in other company studios) – perhaps to prevent Netflix from doing so.