LAFM’s Animation Today sidebar returns with a six-film lineup spotlighting global indie animation, including the West Coast premiere of Don Hertzfeldt’s 'Paper Trail.' www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/lo...

'Mario Galaxy' opened with a super $372.5 million global tally, slightly behind its 2023 predecessor but still good for the biggest debut of 2026 and one of the top animated launches ever. www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-r...

Today’s Cartoon Brew Pick is Takashi Ohashi’s 'Wildest Flower,' a jaunty music video that channels chronophotography into a striking meditation on time, memory, and identity. www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew...

Rodeo FX is consolidating its Paris operations and integrating the recently acquired Mikros Animation into a new 40,000 sq ft studio, bringing VFX, animation, and commercial teams under one roof as it establishes a unified European production hub. www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/rode...

'Antz' and ' Over the Hedge' director Tim Johnson is launching Underneath the Umbrella Productions with Goodman Pictures, and will helm a 'Wizard of Id' feature, having also acquired rights to Johnny Hart and Brant Parker’s other iconic strip, 'B.C.' www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Exclusive: WildBrain has responded to backlash over AI-updated 'Super Mario Bros. Super Show!' episodes, telling us it uses “human-led, AI-assisted processes” and is “actively reviewing the episodes” to correct distortions noticed by audiences. www.cartoonbrew.com/artificial-i...

Oscar-winning 'Parasite' director Bong Joon Ho has unveiled a first look at 'Ally,' his upcoming animated feature debut about a piglet squid, set for a 2027 release.

These live-action remakes are getting out of control. And you thought the 'Moana' trailer looked rough?

'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' opened with a stellar $34.5 million on day one, the biggest debut of 2026 so far, and a record for an April Wednesday launch. www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-r...

The return of '89s 'The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!' should have been a nostalgic win for WildBrain and MeTV Toons, but its apparent AI-upscaled visuals are drawing backlash thanks to unpopular tech, warped characters, and a loss of the original’s charm. www.cartoonbrew.com/artificial-i...

Skydance Animation and Netflix have released the first trailer for 'Swapped,' a body-swapping comedy from director Nathan Greno about two natural enemies forced to survive in each other’s bodies. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Annecy has unveiled some of this year's special screenings: 'Lysistrata': Three-time Oscar-winner Richard Williams wrote, adapted, and animated this short film, a sequel to 'Prologue', drawing on Aristophanes' famous comedy.

Gonna be, gonna be Golden Arches. McDonald’s is now offering 'KPop Demon Hunters' grown-up happy meals in a fandom-driven collab that turns a hit animated film into a major marketing push. www.cartoonbrew.com/advertising/...

Kidscreen Summit is shutting down after 30 years, but the bigger story is what it says about an industry reshaped by consolidation, shrinking budgets, and fewer buyers. www.cartoonbrew.com/markets/kids...

'A New Dawn,' the debut feature from Japanese painter Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, is bound to be one of the year's most visually striking animated features. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Barry Caldwell, veteran storyboard artist and director whose credits included 'Animaniacs,' 'He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,' 'Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers,' and 'Osmosis Jones,' has died at 68. www.cartoonbrew.com/rip/barry-ca...

'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' is tracking for an out-of-this-world opening, with $160M+ domestic and around $350M globally. Another box office win looks likely for Nintendo and Illumination over the upcoming holiday weekend. www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-r...

Come on! It's time to go do the Mario! Ahead of this weekend’s 'Mario Galaxy' movie release, MeTV Toons has added 'The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!' to its broadcast lineup, tapping into renewed hype around the iconic Nintendo franchise. www.cartoonbrew.com/series/super...

Rafillo's '3, 2, 1… Chachipistachi' is Adult Swim's first Spanish-language Small entry. It’s loud, chaotic, and built around a very unreliable “educator.” www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/adult...

Pictoplasma Conference Berlin 2026 has announced its program, with 20+ speakers, 80 films, and a full lineup of talks, screenings, and industry events all heavily focused on character design running May 7–10. www.cartoonbrew.com/events/picto...

For International Day of Multilingualism, our Pick of the Day is 'The Untranslatable Forest,' which turns an airport into a surreal landscape, exploring words that can’t be directly translated, only experienced. www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew...

Sony is shutting down Pixomondo, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning VFX studio, just four years after acquiring it. Hundreds of jobs are expected to be impacted as work is shifted to Imageworks. www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/pixomond...

Italian director Stefano Bertelli’s 'Spacetime Chronicles' is a brilliantly animated stop-motion feature that explores memory, identity, and uncertainty through a fragile paper-built world. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

"My characters are alive... they go to the toilets, they poo, they die, they get old.” 'A Magnificent Life' director Sylvain Chomet talks about rethinking the biopic and making characters feel truly alive ahead of the film's U.S. release on Friday. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Doubling down on day-and-date releases, Crunchyroll will launch 'Witch Hat Atelier' with two episodes and simultaneous dubs in multiple languages. www.cartoonbrew.com/distribution...

Stuttgart 2026 has unveiled its program highlights, featuring a lineup ranging from Lotte Reiniger to 'Rick and Morty,' alongside competitions, open-air screenings, and industry events throughout the city. www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/st...

Netflix drops the trailer for 'Stranger Things: Tales From ’85,' an stylized animated return to Hawkins that will get a rare theatrical run ahead of its streaming debut. www.cartoonbrew.com/series/stran...

Annecy has unveiled its 2026 short film lineup, with new works from Don Hertzfeldt, Georges Schwizgebel, and Hisko Hulsing alongside Oscar-shortlisted and festival standout titles. www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/an...

OpenAI has shut down its genAI video platform Sora, taking its planned $1B Disney partnership down with it. There are lots of looming questions, but the shocking news reinforces just how unstable this space really is. www.cartoonbrew.com/artificial-i...

DreamWorks just dropped the first trailer for Forgotten Island, a neon-soaked fantasy rooted in Filipino folklore about two best friends facing an impossible choice between going home and losing each other. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Japan’s National Film Archive will host an incredible retrospective of Toei Animation features on 35mm this summer, spanning early classics to franchise-era hits. www.cartoonbrew.com/anime/toei-n...

Epic Games is laying off more than 1,000 employees, with CEO Tim Sweeney haughtily framing the cuts as the cost of being an “industry vanguard.” For workers, it’s another round of layoffs dressed up as long-term vision. www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-right...

Festival Diary: A 72-hour dive into Portugal’s Monstra reveals a thriving animation scene, from cutting-edge studios to standout films and new co-production ties. www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/mo...

Now that's how they're getting paid. Leveraging the film's breakout success, 'KPop Demon Hunters' directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans have secured a $10M, 5-year deal, including backend participation. This is how it should be done, done, done. www.cartoonbrew.com/business/kpo...

Exclusive: Fantasy series 'Ewilan’s Quest' is a hit in France, with more than 1 million streams across France.tv, Okoo, and YouTube, and 1.6 million linear viewers on France 4. We take a closer look at the series and its long road to the screen. www.cartoonbrew.com/series/ewila...

Annecy has unveiled its 2026 TV Films and Commissioned Films lineups, spanning hit franchises like 'Star Wars' and 'SpongeBob' to international indies, high-profile music videos, ads, and shorts. Here's the full lineup: www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/an...

GKIDS has picked up U.S. theatrical rights to Alberto Vázquez's 'Decorado,' one of the sharpest recent animated satires of late-stage capitalism and the modern media landscape. It will hit theaters this spring. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

'Hoppers' held strong in its third weekend, with 'GOAT' and 'Pout-Pout Fish' finishing in a soft top 10. Bigger picture: 'Hoppers' is leading all post-Covid Hollywood original animated films after three weeks, although a Mario-shaped cloud is looming. www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-r...

Disney’s 'Short Circuit' continues to be one of its coolest initiatives, giving artists room to take risks and tell personal stories. Heather M. Roberts Russell and Larry Wu take us behind the scenes of their recent entries, available on Disney+ now. www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/disne...

‘Arcane’ producer Thomas Vu is developing an animated ‘The Wheel of Time’ series alongside proposed films and a mobile/PC game, moving the fantasy IP to a medium perhaps better suited to its high-concept fantasy, scale, and scope. www.cartoonbrew.com/series/wheel...

Fipresci, the leading global film critics organization, will send its first official jury to an animation festival when it joins Fredrikstad’s 2026 edition. www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/fr...

California has added TV animation to its tax credit program for the first time. Adult Swim’s 'Rick and Morty' spinoff, 'President Curtis,' and 20th Television Animation's 'Family Guy' spinoff, 'Stewie,' are the first projects to qualify. www.cartoonbrew.com/business/cal...

Aardman goes full creature feature in the first trailer for 'Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom.' The new film hits theaters September 18. www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film...

Nvidia says its new AI tool (DLSS 5) promises better graphics, but at what cost? When generative artificial intelligence changes graphics in real time, the line between tool and author starts to blur, a bit like the images themselves. www.cartoonbrew.com/artificial-i...

Leading African outfit Triggerfish has selected the emerging hub of Bristol to host its new U.K. studio and is teaming up with BBC Ignite to support local emerging animation talent. It's a big move for both the studio and the region’s animation scene. www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/trig...

Matteo Bernardini’s 'The Cat & The Composer' turns a famous 19th-century printing mistake into a fragmented animated short where literature, music, and sketch-like imagery collide. It's our Cartoon Brew pick of the day. www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew...

'SEN' opens like a familiar exercise in “cute robot” storytelling, featuring clean design, expressive eyes, and dialogue-free animation, but it’s deliberately setting up something far more subversive. www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/sen-s...

“Middle Class Matt” pairs mid-century design language with modern economic anxiety, and it’s found an audience of more than 18 million. We look at how its visual approach shapes the series' comedy and tone. www.cartoonbrew.com/series/middl...

Matteo Bernardini’s 'The Cat & The Composer' turns a famous 19th-century printing mistake into a fragmented animated short where literature, music, and sketch-like imagery collide. It's our Cartoon Brew pick of the day. www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew...

Cardiff Animation Festival has unveiled its full 2026 lineup, featuring a Japanese animation focus, expanded games program, live events, and a packed industry program set for next month. www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/ca...