Paramount-Warner Bros. movie slate needs animation to rival Disney,

When Paramount Skydance combines with the Warner Bros. film studio, it’ll have a deep bench of marquee franchises and established prestige. What the powerhouse duo will be missing is an animated film slate that could rival Hollywood giants like Disney and Universal.

The combined entity, which is still awaiting regulatory approval, has a stacked slate of tentpoles including DC superhero fare, a Minecraft sequel, another Sonic the Hedgehog film and new entrants from The Lord of the Rings universe. Not to mention, Warner Bros. just tied the record for the most Academy Award wins for a single studio earlier this month.

But it’s been kid-friendly animated content that is increasingly driving families to the theater — and neither studio has excelled in this area in the last decade.

Since 2016, Paramount and Warner Bros. have each released eight animated features on the big screen, with Paramount generating $1.1 billion in total global ticket sales from the category and Warner Bros. tallying $1.3 billion, according to data from Comscore.

During that time, only one Paramount animated film has generated more than $200 million globally — 2023’s “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie” — and only one Warner Bros. animated title has scored more than $300 million globally — 2017’s “Lego Batman.”

For comparison, in the last decade Disney released 21 theatrical animated features, collecting $14.1 billion from the films; Universal released 23 animated movies to the tune of $10.7 billion; and Sony released 16, bringing in $4.6 billion in ticket sales.

Disney has seen seven animated features generate more than $1 billion globally during that time, and Universal has seen two.

These figures do not include live-action films with animated elements like Paramount’s Sonic franchise, Universal’s “Gabby’s Dollhouse,” or Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which the studio considers a live-action film. They also don’t include animated films released to streaming during the pandemic that were later brought to theaters like Disney’s “Soul,” “Luca” and “Turning Red.”

“When the moviegoing world is operating at or near peak efficiency, it’s virtually always because of a diverse release slate that includes one or more movies catering heavily to kids and families,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “Animation, in most cases, directly serves that audience while providing an anchor for studios and cinema owners to rely on.”

Together, Paramount and Warner Bros. accounted for 27% of the domestic box office in 2025, just shy of the 28% market share held by Disney.

“As Paramount and Warner Bros. merge, it becomes even more essential for their combined resources to be strategically directed toward developing a robust animated film portfolio,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

“Animated film releases are crucial for any movie studio, requiring a well-thought-out strategy…