In February 2021, a little under two years after Disney officially acquired 21st Century Fox, the Mouse House announced it was shutting down Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio behind the Ice Age film series, the Rio movies and The Peanuts Movie, among other flicks. At the time Blue Sky’s doors were shut, the studio was approximately 75% finished with the LGBTQ+ animated movie Nimona, an adaptation of the same-named graphic novel by ND Stevenson. Well, there’s good news for the people out there who’ve been wanting to see Nimona: Netflix is reviving it.
Rather than be doomed to sit on the proverbial shelf at Disney never to be finished, Nimona is now being brought into the library of Netflix movies. This news comes straight from the streaming service, which shared the following information about Nimona and a still from the movie that you can look at below:
Nimona is coming to Netflix! In a future medieval land, shapeshifter Nimona @ChloeGMoretz bursts into the lives of heroic knights @rizwanahmed + @EugeneLeeYang and blows up everything they believe in. An epic animated film adapted from the groundbreaking comic by @Gingerhazing pic.twitter.com/VVzQhkH3lSApril 11, 2022
Talk about a pleasant update to kick off a Monday! For over a year now, we’ve assumed that Nimona would never see the light of day since Disney didn’t allot any resources for its creative talent to complete it, but that’s no longer the case. Per an official statement from Netflix, it partnered with Annapurna Pictures “when production began early last year” to deliver Nimona to its subscribers sometime in 2023, with DNEG Animation handling the animation. That kind of wording indicates that the Nimona Netflix subscribers will get to watch next year may look different than the one the now-defunct Blue Sky Studios had planned to deliver, but hey, at least now this film adaptation is on the way… again!
For those unfamiliar with Nimona, it was originally a webcomic that ND Stevenson published between 2012 and 2014, and in 2015, HarperCollins published it as a graphic novel. The story’s eponymous character is a shapeshifter who joins the villain Ballister Blackheart in trying to destroy the Institution, for which he once fought as a knight. While Blackheart wishes to accomplish his mission of vengeance within his code of ethics, Nimona has no trouble killing people along the way. Along with being praised for its depiction of queerness and identity fluidity, Nimona’s many accolades include winning an Eisner Award in 2016 for Best Graphic Album — Reprint, as well as being nominated in the Best Digital/Webcomic category the year prior.
The announcement of Netflix releasing Nimona arrives a month after it was reported that back when Disney was overseeing the Blue Sky’s Studios version of the project, the company supposedly had an issue with the story’s LGBTQ+ elements, specifically a same-sex kiss. According to anonymous Blue Sky animators, they felt “pressure” from Disney to remove the kiss, and the company’s reaction to Nimona’s queer themes “caused a weird atmosphere” at Blue Sky. Something tells me we won’t have to worry about these issues now that Nimona has been set up at Netflix, but we’ll just have to see how the movie compares to the original source material when it comes out next year.
While we wait for more news about Nimona’s Netflix release, take a look through the 2022 Netflix movie schedule to learn what the platform will release to its subscribers later in the year.
