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12/31/2025

We bid farewell this year to many talented women and men who devoted their lives to creating inspiring animation and stunning visual effects. We honor their legacy, celebrate their numerous accomplishments and are forever grateful to them for creating art that moved, entertained and inspired us and proved once again that nothing can replace human creativity and imagination in our world.

As always, we are grateful to Tom Sito and Yvette Kaplan for hosting the annual Afternoon of Remembrance on Saturday, March 7, at noon, to celebrate their achievements and honoring their memories. It will be a hybrid event with some participating at the Animation Guild Hall in Burbank and some via Zoom. (For more info, visit animationguild.org.)

Britt Alcroft.
#2025 (Jacobous)Hoedeman

We remember the animation and visual effects industry greats who passed away in 2025 in this special In Memoriam feature.

12/30/2025

One of our favorite animation auteurs, the two time-Emmy-winning director Jorge R. Gutiérrez (The Book of Life, El Tigre, Maya and the Three) is experimenting with alternative ways of launching a new project. On Monday, he posted a 40-minute work-in-progress pilot for his fresh, adult animated series, El Guapo vs. the Narco Vampires on YouTube. The piece includes three-minutes of fully animated content (produced by Anima Estudios). The high-energy and hilarious project has already generated over 30,590 views in its first 18 hours of release online.

“This pilot, created with the help of an incredible cast and crew from both side of the US/Mexican border, is one of my ultimate dream projects!” Gutierrez tells Animation Magazine. “I had this crazy and super personal idea since my CalArts days, back in the mid ’90s). I grew up in my beloved and chaotic Tijuana in that era and things were pretty wild.

Jorge R. Gutierrez has launched his new adult animated series "El Guapo vs. the Narco Vampires" online to generate interest.

12/30/2025

Find out which animated movies are waiting in the aisles for us in 2026.

A look forward at over two dozen animated movies from around the world coming to theaters in the year 2026.

12/30/2025

Malaysian animated feature Papa Zola The Movie, which has made over RM 43 million ($10.6 million) in its first 18 days of release and beaten imports such as Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire & Ash to become one of the country’s highest grossing animated pics.

MONSTA, the producer of the CG-animated movie, announced today that the film will launch its global release on Jan. 23 in Indonesia, before moving on to Saudi Arabia in April, followed by the GCC countries; Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait in May, alongside premieres in Turkey and India. The movie will be dubbed in Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, Hindi, Tamil and English to accommodate international audiences.

Directed, written and voiced by Nizam Zarak, Papa Zola The Movie tells the story of a hardworking father who works as a food delivery driver and several other part-time job to support his family.

Malaysian animated blockbuster by MONSTA titled Papa Zola The Movie plans a 13-country release in early 2026.

12/29/2025

It seems like it was just yesterday when we first heard that undeniably catchy "Baby Shark" theme song. But in fact, it was ten years ago when The Pinkfong company introduced us to the global preschool phenomenon. Now, just in time for your New Year's Eve party, we have a preschool musical collab to help celebrate the tenth birthday of the property. Our sources tell us that Hasbro’s Peppa Pig and The Pinkfong Company’s Baby Shark are making a big splash with a new music mash-up video. Yes, you too can now brighten your sad winter day with the musical majesty that is the new “Baby Shark X Peppa Pig (Dance Remix)!"

The new animated music video lets families experience a vibrant underwater adventure, where Peppa and her family board a submarine, dive beneath the waves, and meet Baby Shark and his family in a mystical celebration of friendship, music, and play.

Hasbro's Peppa Pig and The Pinkfong Company's Baby Shark mark the latter's 10th anniversary with a festival musical mash-up video.

12/28/2025

On Sunday, Kyoto Animation announced that it’s working on an animated TV series based on Masaoki Shino’s RuridDragon manga. The studio revealed the news in a “thank you” video on its website. The announcement was timed to coincide with the manga’s titular character Ruri's birthday on December 28. The video's description caption states: "Sounds like they're making an anime. The broadcast is still a long way off."

The manga was first published by Viz Media and MANGA Plus in English in 2022. The off-beat story is described as a slice-of-life manga about a high school girl, Ruri Aoki, who discovers she's a human-dragon hybrid after waking up with horns, leading to funny situations as she navigates school life, friendships, and her new draconic abilities such as breathing fire and discharging electricity.

Originally a one-shot, the comic was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump and later moved to the Shōnen Jump+ digital platform.
’sDragonMaid

On Sunday, Kyoto Animation announced that it’s working on an animated TV series based on Masaoki Shino’s RuridDragon manga

12/28/2025

The eye-popping visual effects of Avatar: Fire and Ash and the charms of Disney’s Zootopia 2 proved irresistible to family audiences during the final weekend of the year. James Cameron’s third visit to Pandora planet had a $64 million three-day weekend in U.S. theaters, bringing its two-weekend cume to $217.6 million from $3,800 theaters. The movie is also packing theaters worldwide, with a $760.4 million total tickets sales.

Meanwhile, Jared Bush and Byron Howard’s Zootopia 2 continued its box office domination with a $20 million three-day weekend and a cume of $321.3 million at the No. 2 spot. Worldwide the movie has collected $1.420 billion worldwide, making it the No. 2 most popular movie of the year, right behind Ne Zha, which stands tall in the No. 1 position with $2.150 billion global cume.

Angel’s animated biblical take on the story of David held up strong during its second weekend of release at No.

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash,’ ‘Zootopia 2,’ ‘David’ and ‘The SpongeBob Movie’ Heat Up the Final Weekend B.O. of 2025

12/27/2025

Sylwia Szkiłądź’s imaginative and evocative Autokar is one of the 15 projects shortlisted for the Best Animated Short Academy Awards this year. Set in the 1990s, the short follows a young girl who leaves her Polish homeland behind to take to bus to Belgium by herself. Worried about her solo trip, she writes a letter to her father who has stayed behind in Poland. Autokar has won numerous international awards, including the Gold Hugo at the Chicago Intl. Film Festival, the Special Prize of the Intl. Jury at the Berlin Film Festival and the International Jury Prize at the BIAF in S. Korea. Szkiłądź was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about her acclaimed short via email this week:

Animag: Congratulation on all the accolades for your short. It’s somewhat autobiographical, right? Can you tell us a bit about how the idea for the short come about?

Sylwia Szkiłądź: The idea of distancing myself from this very personal story by fictionalizing it felt liberating.

Director Sylwia Szkiladz on her Oscar-shortlisted Autokar and her experiences as a young Polish immigrant in Belgium.

12/26/2025

You can now watch all 15 of the animated shorts shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards on The Animation Showcase, the free streaming platform for industry members and students. The 15 selected shorts are: Autokar, Butterfly, Cardboard, Éiru, Forevergreen, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Hurikán, I Died in Irpin, The Night Boots, Playing God, The Quinta's Ghost, Retirement Plan, The Shyness of Trees, Snow Bear and The Three Sisters.

“We are thrilled to unveil this year’s Best Animated Short Film Collection, a truly inspiring selection of award-winning shorts from around the world,” says Benoit Berthe Siward, Curator & Founder of The Animation Showcase. “Over the past year, we’ve travelled to the best festivals and leading animation studios to uncover the most powerful and inspiring animated gems of the year. These films represent the very best of contemporary animation — powerful storytelling, artistic innovation, and deeply human perspectives.

You can now watch all 15 of the animated shorts shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards on The Animation Showcase, the free streaming platform for industry members and students. The 15 selected shorts are: Autokar, Butterfly, Cardboard, Éiru, Forevergreen, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Hurikán, I Die...

12/26/2025

South Park continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, even in the final days of 2025. The Washington Post revealed today that the domain names “trumpkennedycenter.org” and “trumpkennedycenter.com” have been bought by Toby Morton, a comedian and former writer for South Park and Mad TV. The foresighted Morton bought the domain names last August, just as Trump began suggesting the idea of renaming The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Art in his own honor.

Morton, whose Instagram page identifies him as a “Creator of Anti-Fascist Websites” and owns 50 other domains that he uses for his comedy, told The Post that he bought the names after Trump “began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year,” He added, “I thought, Yep, that name’s going on the building…The rest followed on schedule. The site will absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment. Lots of surprises.

South Park writer Toby Morton revealsl that he bought the domain names for the Trump Kennedy Center websites in AUgust.

12/26/2025

Watch this insightful documentary about the making of Adult Swim's experimental special "The Elephant!"

Four animation legends. One special. Pendleton Ward, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, and Patrick McHale joined forces for an epic experiment. Each created ...

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