The Annecy International Animation Film Festival gets underway this weekend at a time of change, opportunity and retreat for the animation sector as big budget studio fare chases the $1B box office, while indies grapple with funding squeezes, AI and the ever-changing habits of younger audiences. We’ve gathered a few of the talking points as the animation world descends on the lakeside festival.
Minions & Monsters B.O. Challenge
Minions & Monsters makes its world premiere as the opening film on Sunday evening. The honor continues a long relationship between the French festival and those crafty Minions who first hit Annecy in Despicable Me in 2014. The latter landmark screening marked the beginning of a serious success story for the franchise and the Minions spin-offs, which have amassed more than $5.6B at the global box office. According to Deadline’s recent deep dive into ‘The 25 Highest-Grossing Animated Films Of All Time’, the first 2015 Minions movie comes in 8th in the chart with a whopping $1,159,457,503 global box office, followed by Despicable Me 3 in 12th, Despicable Me 4 in 17th and Despicable Me 2, in 18th. Will the latest adventure, taking the army of chaotic yellow underlings back to the Golden Age of Hollywood and featuring a voice cast topped by Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch and Trey Parker, continue the franchise’s seemingly unstoppable B.O. momentum? The Annecy premiere may provide some clues.
U.S. Studios Out In Force
There was much debate at Cannes this year over the absence of the U.S. studios and whether this represents a long-term trend or a blip. The development has not tipped over into Annecy where studios and streamers are out in force. As well as Minions & Monsters, Universal is at the festival with a DreamWorks Animation preview event for Forgotten Island by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish duo Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. Walt Disney Animation Studios will show new footage for upcoming movie Hexed; Warner Bros. Pictures Animation will give sneak peeks of The Cat in the Hat and Cynthia Erivo-voiced Bad Fairies, and Pixar will go behind the scenes of Enrico Casarosa’s Venice-set Gatto. Annecy Artistic Director Marcel Jean says Pixar’s Toy Story 5 would also have made its French premiere at the festival if this year’s edition had not been forced to shift its dates back a week due to the G7 meeting in nearby Évian. “Honestly, we’re seeing the opposite,” he says, when asked whether U.S. studios are staying away. “There are more and more studios coming to Annecy, wanting to be in Annecy.”
AI Convo Gains Nuance
Last year, Deadline reported on “historic” artificial intelligence protests on Annecy’s Le Paquier esplanade opposite the main Bonlieu hub, which saw around 150 representatives of international animation, screenwriters and actors guilds voice fears over the implications of generative AI for their professions. Twelve months on, there is a (mostly) begrudging acceptance that AI is here to stay, with the technology now embedded more than ever in animated processes. While AI is a hot button topic across the film and TV industries, it feels particularly stark in a genre that can lean so heavily on new technology. The halls of the Annecy Imperial Palace will be replete with AI chatter and numerous talks are set to take place at the MIFA industry sidebar about the developing, invasive tech. Meanwhile, new tie-ups stressing ethical AI continue to emerge, with Banijay tying with Canada’s Toon Boom on an intriguing partnership that will see the Mr Bean producer hand over kids content to test the software firm’s AI tools in exchange for gaining early access to the tools. Both parties stressed that Banijay’s content will not be used to train AI models. There may be some convincing still required at Annecy to win over the many naysayers, but it feels as though the AI convo is gaining nuance.
Reimagining IP For The Animated World
The battle for the next big IP is more feverish than ever and very much extends to the world of animation. But with Backrooms, which is based off a Reddit forum, proving to be the talk of the movie world, it will be fascinating to see whether Annecy throws up new examples of IP that comes from outside the box. With audiences maybe tiring of sequels, reboots and spin-offs, creatives are pondering new approaches to IP. Netflix, for example, will be heavily promoting Steps, an animated movie that reimagines Cinderella’s sisters but notably doesn’t have the missing-slippered beau in the title. Enter Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comics, whose Wednesday morning masterclass should provide an intriguing insight into where the next generation of hits could come from. Annecy’s Mifa market has jumped on the trend with a new Cross IP Area bringing together storytelling across immersive experiences, video games, comics books and webtoons. With companies like Webtoon (formerly Wattpad WEBTOON Studios), which generates IP via a new kind of relationship with its fanbase, out in force in the south of France, it’s worth keeping an ear out on the IP conversation.
China Rising
Ever since the second film in China’s animated Ne Zha franchise took a record-breaking $2.26 billion at the global box office in 2025, following in the wake of the $726.1 million gross for the 2019 original, all eyes have been on the country’s burgeoning animation scene. The territory has two films in Annecy’s main competition this year, the 2025 $215m box office hit Nobody by Shui Yu, and Tana, a contemporary tale about a young woman who leaves Shanghai to support her ailing father in Inner Mongolia. Annecy Artistic Director Jeans points to an evolution in Chinese animation of in terms of aesthetics and storylines, with a move away from 3D animation, as seen with Nobody, which is China’s highest grossing 2D animation. “There are also more films addressing contemporary issues… the Chinese have tended to make historical films about great myths, epics,” he says. “Tana is an excellent example of this. It’s a technically, very high-performing 3D animation, but also a story about parent-child relationships, that talks about grief, that shows us something of contemporary China, something we’re not used to seeing in Chinese production.”
The fest runs from June 21 to 26.
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