Why Aren't More Animated Films Released in December?

 

An image from Delgo, a movie hack fraud James Cameron shamelessly stole from for Avatar

On the same day Avatar: Fire and Ash* hit theaters, a pair of animated family movies debuted hoping to work as counterprogramming against this mighty James Cameron directorial effort. The Christian kid's film David and the TV show adaptation The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for SquarePants were both given heavy promotional campaigns in the hopes of becoming the final animated film hits of 2025. Undoubtedly, the people behind these projects are also hoping they follow in the footsteps of other animated December moneymakers, like Sing, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Migration.

In an age of multiple animated films opening on the same December date, it's hard to remember a time when animated features in this month were scarce. For eons, though, that was the status quo. Before 2016, there had never been an animated film that cracked $105+ million at the domestic box office. Furthermore, studios rarely launched their big animated motion pictures in the Christmastime corridor. What happened here? Why was

Animated cinema has never exclusively been Disney's domain. From the very beginning, Lotte Reninger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed preceded Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the first animated film by over a decade! Feature-length Japanese animated cinema dates back to 1945's Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, while Russia, Italy, and China were also producing animated cinema in the 40s. This medium of creative expressions has spanned every country on the planet and names as eclectic as Satoshi Kon, Ralph Bashki, Marjane Satrapi, Naoki Yamada, René Laloux, Nick Park, Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, and so many more.

In mainstream America, though, animated movies have often been referred to as just "Disney," the same way all search engines become "Google" or all streaming services are "Netflix." That dominance and scarcity of major pre-1986 non-Disney animated hits already explains why December is so devoid of animated blockbusters. Hollywood's been producing post-Jaws summer blockbusters longer than all the major studios have had their own animation companies.

Only occasionally (like in the year 2006) have there been a plethora of major animated movies hitting theaters. Super recent year 2012 only had seven new animated films hitting North American movie theaters. Three of them were concentrated in one six-week span across summer 2012. Two more were launched in November. 2015 had only eight major new animated movies (one of them was Strange Magic) and three of them either opened in the summertime or November. The relative scarcity of these movies means, pre-2016, Hollywood wasn't even "forced" to try opening in December. There were other lucrative dates to choose from.

Instead, animated films from Disney and its various competitors typically prefer the Thanksgiving slot over Christmas. An American Tail opened over this November holiday in 1986. Subsequently, Steven Spielberg-produced animated titles for Universal would opt for this launchpad even if new Disney Animation Studios works like Oliver & Company and Beauty & the Beast were simultaneously hitting the marketplace. That's how coveted Thanksgiving was for family movies. In an age of films playing for months in theaters, this late November space was critical. The right title could soar at the box office over Thanksgiving and then leg out through the end of December festivities. In other words, you'd get two holidays to make money from...so long as you didn't instantly bomb over Thanksgiving like The Rescuers Down Under.

Plus, Christmas was often home to a major live-action family movie blockbuster, like 1991's Hook or 1993's Beethoven's 2nd. The latter December housed a rare 20th-century non-Disney animated film, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Today critically revered, it bombed in its initial fleeting theatrical run. Two years later, Universal released Balto in late December. This Spielberg-produced film opted to avoid Thanksgiving after Spielberg's last two Amblimation animated features, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, flopped over their respective Thanksgiving frames. A shift in the calendar didn't help, and Balto only grossed $11.35 million. Who would want to open an animated film in a month with this dreary of a box office track record?

The answer: former Disney Animation head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg and his new studio DreamWorks SKG. Their big hand-drawn animated epic The Prince of Egypt debuted on December 18, 1998, albeit more out of necessity than love for the timeframe. Katzenberg originally planned to launch Egypt in the Thanksgiving slot, where so many Disney titles had excelled. Disney scheduling A Bug's Life for Thanksgiving 1998 inspired a month-long postponement. Prince of Egypt narrowly cleared $100 million domestically, but after that, Christmas went right back to housing live-action family films like Stuart Little, Cheaper by the Dozen, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Only the occasional Emperor's New Groove or Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius even dared to open in this month before the late 2000s.

The month's standing didn't get any better when Delgo dropped December 12, 2008 and scored the worst wide release opening weekend ever. What is Delgo? Well, it inspired an unintentionally humorous behind-the-scenes featurette (see below). A year later, The Princess and the Frog didn't quite meet financial expectations with a December 11, 2009 drop that ensured it had to contend with Avatar and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel for family moviegoing dollars. Was this month truly cursed for animated fare?

So what changed to give us a world where Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Migration, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants are all bowing in December? The same element that pushed Katzenberg to drop Prince of Egypt at Christmastime: necessity. There are a lot more animated films being made in America than there were in 1986. They couldn't all debut over Thanksgiving or the most bustling corners of the summer moviegoing season. Thus, in December 2016, hitmaker Illumination launched Sing over Christmas 2016 just five days after Rogue One. With the studio also dropping The Secret Life of Pets five months earlier, there was nowhere else on the calendar to go.

No matter: Sing made over $260 million in North America alone. It even outgrossed Moana domestically, with that film debuting over the Thanksgiving frame. Sing's eye-popping box office haul was a tremendous reminder of one universal truth: movies that audiences want to see can thrive anywhere. Memorial Day weekend couldn't make Tomorrowland into a hit, while audiences shelled out $200+ million to see Bad Boys for Life in January. Similarly, the crowdpleaser movie Sing excelled in a month usually dominated by Balto and Delgo.

Two years later, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse reaffirmed Sing was no fluke with a mighty $191 million domestic cume. The fourth biggest domestic gross** for an animated movie not owned by either Disney or Universal, December was now ripe territory for animated hits. In 2021, a year marked by studios slowly getting back into releasing any theatrical movies, Universal launched Sing 2 over the same Christmastime domain its predecessor dominated. The studio would return to December for the next two years with The Last Wish and Migration, both of which reinforced the month's enduring box office appeal even with COVID turmoil.

That brings us to the modern world. Mufasa: The Lion King in 2024 became the latest animated film to succeed in this month, with its $254 million domestic total only coming in slightly behind Sing as the biggest animated December film ever in North America. In this current December, David opened to $22 million and will probably end its domestic run in the $85-90 million range. Those are strong numbers for something smaller in scale and another indicator that animated cinema is no longer persona non grata in the December box office.

Why weren't more animated films released in December before now if $85+ million performers in this month are now so common? It's a combination of there being fewer animated features in the past and simply Hollywood clinging to silly "rules" for what does and doesn't make a hit. There weren't any non-Prince of Egypt examples of notable animated December moneymakers before 2016. Thus, the film industry thought animated family movies couldn't work here. With Sing and Into the Spider-Verse, though, Hollywood isn't abandoning this month again anytime soon.

The Angry Birds Movie 3 is already scheduled for December 2026. Surely some animation studio will schedule a Sing 3 or some other equivalent project for December 2027. Everything in Hollywood is permanent until it's not. The existence of December animated movie hits is a vibrant reminder of this reality. Not even a flop like Delgo could keep Hollywood from wringing out moneymakers in the "most wonderful time of the year."

* = Yes, it's extra weird that Hollywood has long thought December is a no-go spot for animated movie hits given that James Cameron's Avatar films, which are essentially animated motion pictures, are so lucrative in this month. Hollywood and the general public bizarrely consider them live-action movies, though, so it took until Sing for the stigma around December animated cinema to vanish.

**= Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The LEGO Movie, and Happy Feet are the only three bigger titles.