Why original animated films are no riskier—and just as rewarding—as live action flicks

With the unfortunate collapse of Pixar’s “Elio” at the box office, the industry was quick to declare the death of the original animated feature. “Audiences aren’t interested,” goes the refrain. They’re expensive, hard to make, and nobody shows up.

Really? My gosh, what was the last original animated film to make a splash? ”Encanto?” And that only really caught fire on streaming. What’s going on?

Nothing new, I’m happy to report.

The Safe Bet Mentality
Studios love a sure thing — reboots, remakes, sequels, spin-offs. That’s not a new phenomenon; it’s as old as Hollywood. (Hey, Chaplin! Make another one of those Little Tramp shorts and be quick about it!)

Every so often, they’ll greenlight something “risky,” like “The Bad Guys,” with an $80 million budget. But even there, the comfort blanket was that it’s based on Aaron Blabey’s best-selling kids’ books. And hey, it worked — the film made $250 million worldwide.

That kind of success makes “The Bad Guys 2” inevitable. Sure enough, it opened solidly this year, and don’t be surprised if “Bad Guys 3” and “4” are already pencilled into a release calendar somewhere. Disney’s Bob Iger said it best: they just want to make great (read: hit) films — and if that means a few more “pointless but profitable” live-action remakes of animated classics, so be it.

Franchises Dominate — in Animation Too
Here’s the first reality check: original animated films aren’t being squeezed out by some mysterious shift in audience tastes. They’re being crowded out by a wall of sequels, prequels, remakes, and spinoffs — just like live action.

From 2013 to 2024 (excluding the pandemic years), roughly three out of every four Top 50 films at the domestic box office were based on existing IP — be it a book, comic, toy, video game, or a previous film. Animation matches that ratio almost exactly.

And it’s not just about what gets made — it’s about how often it gets made. In any given year, you can count the number of original animated films in the Top 50 on one hand. Often, you’ll only need one finger. This isn’t a “the audience doesn’t want them” story — it’s a “studios don’t make them” story. And when they do? Well…

The 10-Year Track Record
This is where the data gets very interesting. When an original animated film is made, its odds of being a hit are extraordinary.

Of the 81 animated films to crack the Top 50 between 2013 and 2024:

• 67 were hits. That’s an 83% success rate — something the rest of the film industry would kill for.
• Of the 19 originals, 15 were hits. That’s nearly 80%.

Animated films aren’t just popular — they’re consistently profitable. From 2013 to 2024, 85% of all animated films were hits, and 80% of original animated films succeeded — numbers most live-action genres can only dream about. The year-by-year fluctuation is minimal, even through the pandemic years, showing the stability of the animation market. In other words: if you make an animated film, the odds are strongly in your favor.

Yes, original animated films succeed at almost exactly the same rate as all animated films — most of which are sequels or adaptations. If four out of every five original live-action films worked this well, Hollywood would greenlight them until the cows came home.

And this isn’t cherry-picking: the pattern holds across the decade, before and after the pandemic disruption.

Case Study: The Last Three Years
Let’s zoom in on 2022–2024 — the years pundits often point to as proof that “everything has changed.”

2024: Not a single original animated film first released in 2024 made the Top 50. The only one that appeared — “Migration” — debuted in December 2023 and went on to gross $300M worldwide on a $72M budget. That’s a solid hit and sequel bait if ever there was one. Everything else? Franchise titles.

2023: Two originals made noise: Pixar’s “Elemental,” which opened softly but showed remarkable legs to reach nearly $500M, and Disney’s “Wish,” which underperformed. Throw in “Migration’s” holiday release, and you’ve got two hits, one flop.

2022: One original animated film — “Strange World.” A flop.

Over three years, that’s just four original animated films in the Top 50. Two hits, two flops. Batting .500 — which, in baseball terms, is Hall of Fame territory.

The point here is not that every original animated film will succeed — no category in Hollywood works like that. (Except for low budget horror films; even with this year’s glut, they keep delivering.) The point is that when studios actually produce them, their odds are at least as good as franchise titles. The data simply doesn’t support the “audience rejection” narrative.

The Pipeline Problem
So why aren’t major movie studios making more originals? The reasons are less mysterious than they are mundane:

• Big budgets mean big stakes, and studio execs default to the familiar when nervous.
• Known IP is easier to market — and easier to justify to shareholders.
• Animation’s long production timelines make it harder to pivot to something new midstream.
• Pandemic delays and cancellations disrupted the pipeline, leaving fewer originals ready to go.

The Bottom Line for Studios and Exhibitors
If someone tells you “audiences just aren’t interested in original animated films anymore,” ask yourself: what plausible reason would there be for that? I can’t think of one.

The people who loved “Coco,” “Moana,” and “Encanto” are lining up for their sequels — and for the next great original. Remember when pundits declared the rom-com dead? Then “Materialists” and “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” proved otherwise. Westerns? Dead — except for TV’s “Yellowstone.”

Animation is no different. Make them. Promote them. Play them. Audiences will come.

If you’ve only got $5M, make a horror film.

If you’ve got $150M? Make an animated film.

Th-th-th-that’s all folks!

Notes:
Definitions: “Original” is tricky to define. “The Mule,” based on a news article, counts as original because few were aware of that piece. “The Lego Movie”? Loosely inspired by a toy, so we count it too. I’ve tried not to put my thumb on the scale.

Scope: Top 50 domestic grossers only. Even “low budget” animated films are expensive, so including smaller releases doesn’t alter the trends. I also looked at the Top 100 for outliers; it doesn’t change the data or our analysis.

Hit Rule: I use the common standard that a film needs to gross 2.5x its budget at the box office alone to be considered a hit.

Appendix: The Year-by-Year Receipts
For those who like to see the homework, here’s the complete year-by-year breakdown of every animated film in the Top 50 from 2013–2024, with reported budgets, worldwide grosses, and whether they were originals. It’s the data behind all the charts and arguments above — the hits, the flops, and the in-betweens. If you’ve ever wondered what a decade of animated box office looks like laid out in cold, hard numbers, here it is.