From anime to stop-motion, original stories to sequels, every animated film coming in 2020 has something unique to offer audiences. PIXAR, Disney Animation, DreamWorks Animation and other animation studios adhering to an annual release schedule means one can expect a bumper crop of new animated movies each year.
Animation is a medium of expression rather than a genre, and there’s far from just one way of making an animated movie. That means there’s more than just titles from those aforementioned American studios on the horizon for animation movies in 2020. While the requisite computer-animation storytelling titans will be around to deliver both original tentpoles as well as sequels to some of their most lucrative titles, there is also a slew of more unorthodox feature-length projects on the way for 2020 that inhabit other artforms of animation like stop-motion animation and hand-drawn animation.
The following year will see the release of some highly-anticipated sequels from respected studios, as well as some refreshing new ideas from lesser-knowns. The chronological slate of animated movies either officially scheduled for domestic release in 2020 or given a tentative release slot in a season in 2020 begins with a foreign-language film that has a January theatrical release date.
Weathering with You
While the specific domestic release plans for most foreign-language animated titles remain a mystery this early into the year, Weathering with You is one notable exception. A new feature from director Makoto Shinkai, the filmmaker behind Your Name, Weathering with You drops into a number of theatrical locations this coming Friday, January 17th. A film about the friendship developed between a boy and a girl who appears to have special abilities related to controlling the weather, this widely-acclaimed motion picture will be screened in both its original Japanese audio and a newly-made English dub.
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Over the last twenty years, Aardman has had trouble replicating the domestic box office success of their first feature film Chicken Run. Since that poultry picture, the box office grosses of their titles have only gotten smaller, culminating in their 2018 movie topping out with a domestic gross of only $8.2 million. Given that, it’s no surprise their newest movie, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, will be bypassing a domestic theatrical release altogether and making its domestic debut on Netflix on February 14th. A sequel to the 2015 Aardman title Shaun the Sheep Movie, Farmageddon has the titular sheep encountering a space alien and getting into all kinds of dialogue-free antics with the creature.
Onward
The next PIXAR Animation Studios release is Onward, the studio’s first original release since Coco in November 2017. Monsters University director Dan Scanlon helms this tale about two elf brothers (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) whose attempt to use a spell to bring their deceased father back to life for 24 hours results in disastrous consequences. Specifically, only their dad’s legs come back to life. So begins an adventure set in a modern version of a mystical fantasy world where an average convenience store and pixies live side-by-side. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Octavia Spencer co-star in this new PIXAR comedy which will arrive theatrically on March 6, the same first-weekend-of-March release slot fellow Disney animated feature Zootopia opened on before going on to massive success.
Trolls: World Tour
Those brightly colored and musically-inclined Trolls are back in Trolls: World Tour, a sequel to the 2016 DreamWorks Animation feature Trolls. This time around, previously-established lead characters Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) must venture out into an assortment of new realms each inhabited by a strain Trolls fixated on one specific type of music (Techno, Country, Classical, etc.). Such a quest is necessitated by the nefarious plans of Barb (Rachel Bloom), a Hard Rock Troll bent on wiping out all other forms of music.
The trailers for this new Trolls adventure (which hits theaters on April 10) make it clear that its maintaining the first movie’s bright color palette while also adding a bevy of big-name voice actors (chiefly Sam Rockwell and Ozzy Osbourne) as new characters.
The Willoughbys
Netflix’s second-ever original in-house animated movie (following Klaus) arrives on an unspecified release date in the Spring of 2020. An adaptation of a children’s book of the same name by Lois Lowery, the story centers on a quarter of orphaned children who’re distraught about being left behind by their parents. However, they begin to rediscover the exciting possibilities of the outside world thanks to an exuberant nanny. This project features a voice cast that includes Will Forte, Terry Crews, Maya Rudolph and Ricky Gervais playing the role of the film’s feline narrator.
Scoob!
Sixteen years after the last theatrically-released Scooby-Doo movie Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the fully-animated Scoob! will arrive in theaters on May 15 and attempt to revive this mystery-solving canine’s big-screen viability by tackling a whole myriad of plotlines. On the one hand, Scoob! will provide an origin story for how Shaggy Jones (Will Forte), Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) and the other three members of the Mystery Inc. gang met in the first place. In addition to that, Scoob! will apparently have Scooby and company rubbing shoulders with a number of other Hanna-Barbara characters like Captain Caveman (Tracy Morgan) and Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) as part of a larger plan to foil the plans of Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs).
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run
Speaking of origin stories, the third theatrically released SpongeBob motion picture, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (dropping May 22), will apparently provide the story behind how SpongeBob SquarePants and his pet snail Gary met. Beyond that origin story, the primary plot for Sponge on the Run concerns SpongeBob and Patrick going on an extensive search to find Gary, who’s gone missing. Such a hunt will lead them to the surface world as well as see SpongeBob and friends rendered entirely in computer-animation for the very first time.
While the previous SpongeBob title saw the underwater characters rendered in CGI when on land, this go-around, SpongeBob’s world will be entirely CGI, though in a style that’s heavily influenced by the visual aesthetic of his TV show’s hand-drawn animation.
Soul
2020 will be only the third year in history to see two PIXAR Animation Studios movies released in the same year. For their second 2020 effort, Inside Out and Up director Pete Doctor teams up with director Kemp Powers to helm Soul. Debuting in theaters on June 19, his animated film is about a middle-school teacher named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), who nurses ambitions of being a prolific jazz performer. Just as it looks like he has a chance of pursuing his dreams, Joe experiences a catastrophe that ends with his body and his soul being detached from one another. Now his soul must team up with jaded soul 22 (Tina Fey) to go on a journey to return to his body. Even in broad narrative terms, Soul appears to be continuing the intimate emotional sensibilities and hefty themes found in Doctor’s prior works while the character designs of the souls heavily echo the designs of the emotions in Inside Out.
Minions: The Rise of Gru
Arriving July 3, the second entry in the stand-alone Minions series and the fifth overall movie in the Despicable Me franchise, not much is known about the exact storyline for Minions: The Rise of Gru. However, the title makes clear that it’ll be following up on the ending of the first Minions, which saw those yellow helpers meeting the child version of their eventual supervillain boss Gru. Steve Carell is returning to voice the young version of Gru for this installment, though no other casting news is known at this time. Though the project is currently shrouded in a high level of mystery, with The Rise of Gru being a Minions movie, one can expect plenty of slapstick and bathroom humor, the two comedic hallmarks of this series.
Bob’s Burgers Movie
So far the only adult-skewed American animated title scheduled for domestic theatrical release in 2020, Bob’s Burgers Movie takes the beloved animated FOX sitcom to the big screen on July 17. Details are scarce on this highly-anticipated title beyond the fact that it’ll apparently be a musical that delves into the origin story behind the “ears” main character Louise (Kristen Schaal) has worn for the entire run of the show. One thing’s for sure though: audiences can expect plenty of punny burger names.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
The newest title from Sony Pictures Animation is also the latest collaboration between the animation studio and Phil Lord and Chris Miller following their work together on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Lord and Miller are the producers of this new animated project (set for release on September 18) that sees a technology-obsessed family dealing with all their gadgets and gizmos uprising against humanity. It’s a premise that sounds like it’s straight out of a family-friendly version of Black Mirror. No voice cast has been announced for the project yet, though apparently the cast of characters in the movie includes the family’s pet, a particularly portly pug.
Raya and the Last Dragon
Walt Disney Animation Studios returns to the Thanksgiving corridor where they’ve had some of their biggest hits for the first original film since Moana in 2016. Raya and the Last Dragon (set for November 25) follows the titular protagonist Raya (Cassie Steele) who is on the hunt for the last dragon in all of existence. Turns out, that dragon is Sisu, a water dragon voiced by Awkwafina. Heavily utilizing elements specific to Southeast Asian culture, Raya and the Last Dragon will serve as the feature-film directorial debuts for longtime Disney Animation artists Paul Briggs and Dean Willens.
The Croods 2
The Croods 2 has had a rough journey to the silver screen. Once set for a September 2017 release, the project was cancelled in November 2016. That seemed to put this caveman family firmly into the “extinct” column until it was suddenly revived exactly a year later. Though it’s had a tremendously difficult time getting out of development, The Croods 2 appears poised to finally return to movie theaters on December 23. Despite the project going through all kinds of turmoil, the central story of the sequel (the Croods encounter a new, more advanced, family) has stayed the same, with Leslie Mann consistently being set to play the Matriarch of this family. Peter Dinklage and Kelly Marie Tran are also set to play members of this family while the cast of the first film, which included Emma Stone, Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, will all be returning for this new Croods adventure.
Over the Moon
Another Netflix original animated movie currently set for an unspecified release date in 2020, Over the Moon is the feature film directorial debut of Glen Keane. A master Disney animator, Keane was supposed to make his directorial debut on an early version of Tangled well over a decade ago. He’ll now get to finally step into the director’s chair on a motion picture, and he’ll do so with a musical about a young girl who wants to meet a Moon Goddess. How does she intend to accomplish that goal? By building her own rocket ship. This project’s animation will be done by Pearl Animation, the studio responsible for the animation on Abominable.
Next: There Are Too Many Animated Kids Films About Yetis: What Is Hollywood Doing?
