There’s no question that the experience of moviegoing is changing. But one thing that isn’t is the power of kid-friendly IPs to drive ticket sales. Blockbusters Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, both deeply rooted in the world of play, were 2023’s highest-earning feature films of the year. And although they didn’t crack into the global top 10, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem also posted nine-figure numbers at the box office on eight-figure budgets.
Now, in the wake of dual Hollywood strikes and cutbacks by major US studios, the kids and family movie industry is evolving again—which could create opportunities for indie releases and international animated exports.
Features in focus
If there’s one word that encapsulates the nature of the kids and family movie biz in 2023, it would be “pivotal.”
According to UK-based research firm Ampere Analysis, families with children returned to theaters last year in the highest numbers since the beginning of the pandemic, which forced studios to reassess the value of the theatrical window.
This turnaround began last spring with Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. After the CG-animated film broke global box-office records, streamer-invested studios including Disney and Warner Bros. pivoted back to theatrical-first releases for their kids features—a shift from SVOD-first or day-and-date premieres, which worked better
during the height of the pandemic, when kids and families were stuck watching content at home.
“With more family-skewing audiences going back [to theaters], kids titles were a major driver of theatrical box-office business last year,” says Peter Ingram, a senior analyst at Ampere.
Studios like Disney also began widening their theatrical-to-streaming windows from 30 to 45 days to almost four months, ensuring that movies received maximum theatrical exposure to generate revenue before being ordered to SVOD platform subscribers.
The strategy paid off immensely. Three months after Disney and Pixar’s Elemental earned US$495 million worldwide in theaters, it became the most-watched animated movie premiere on Disney+ in its first five days of streaming (with 26.4 million views, according to Disney) since Pixar’s straight-to-streaming Turning Red in March 2022.
In another example, Disney reboot The Little Mermaid did US$570 million at the global box office last summer, and then became the most-watched Disney live-action premiere on Disney+ since Hocus Pocus 2, generating 16 million views in its first five days of streaming.
Looking at The Little Mermaid, Warner Bros. phenom Barbie, Sony hit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Universal’s Mario combined, these four movies alone collected more than US$4 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
“The runaway success of movies like Mario goes hand in hand with studios rethinking the value of the theatrical window as a whole,” says Ampere senior analyst Alice Thorpe. “They want to maximize revenues going forward, so returning to a more traditional windowing release strategy makes sense.”
It’s a logical shift, especially if a studio is lucky enough (and has pockets deep enough) to produce a movie from a well-known IP that can draw in parents while providing a unique angle for their kids, too—which all four of these movies did with aplomb.
“The biggest challenge for studios is finding properties that strike the right balance between being sufficiently fresh for kids, but also nostalgic enough for parents,” adds Thorpe.
Where do streamers stand?
Surprisingly, both Apple and Amazon are also plotting to take advantage of theatrical growth. Apple is reportedly planning to invest US$1 billion annually to make exclusive theatrical films, while Amazon is looking to spend roughly the same amount on 12 to 15 new theatrical movies each year.

Apple’s first original Peanuts feature, produced by WildBrain Studios, will see Snoopy and the gang head to the big city
While it’s still unknown how much money (if any) these techcos will spend on movies for kids, streamer Apple TV+ did recently order its first original CG-animated Peanuts film through its partnership with WildBrain and Peanuts Worldwide. This move signals that Apple is at least still committed to the animated feature film business after
letting its deal with Skydance Animation expire last October.
The flip side to this positive windowing turnaround is that the industry is still struggling in an unfavorable macroeconomic landscape where production costs (especially in animation) are rising, TV and film slates are still depleted in the wake of the now-resolved writers and actors strikes, and fewer kids movies overall are being greenlit.
Looking at the combined effects of US commissioning cutbacks and the recent strikes, Ampere found that the Big Five studios (Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony and Universal) and Netflix, Amazon and Apple announced almost half as many new kid-friendly movies (30) in 2023 as they did in 2022 (59). This decline doesn’t bode well for 2024, which could see the major players take fewer risks on originals and focus more on sure bets.
“Studios and bigger distributors will want the reassurance of properties with existing appeal,” says Thorpe. “This is where they will be most comfortable in terms of targeting their theatrical releases.”
Doing more with less
To hasten its push for profitability and recover from the 2023 strikes, Disney plans to spend US$25 billion on content this year, down US$2 billion from US$27 billion in 2023 (which was, in turn, down US$3billion from US$30 billion in 2022).
Although it’s spending less, part of Disney’s recovery strategy for this year involves re-releasing a trio of direct-to-streaming Pixar flicks in North American theaters for the first time so audiences can experience the films “the way they were meant to be seen,” according to a Disney release. Soul (2020) opened on January 12, and will be followed by 2022’s Turning Red on February 9 and 2021’s Luca on March 22. The move was made to fill a gap in Disney’s Q1 theatrical schedule after Pixar’s Elio got pushed to 2025 as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Meanwhile, Netflix intends to spend approximately US$17 billion on content this year, a portion of which will include more investment in feature animation, said the streamer’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in December. He noted that animated movies are some of the most re-watched content on the platform, adding that there’s “plenty of appetite for more than the few [animated] films a year that we’re
currently doing.”
Sarandos highlighted The Sea Beast and Adam Sandler’s Leo as prime examples of original films that found big audiences on the platform last year. The latter had the biggest debut ever for a Netflix animated film in its first six days on the service (34.6 million views). It was also the number-one movie on the streamer’s weekly Global Top
10 list and its most-watched title in its debut week.
Sarandos’ comments are eyebrow-raising, considering that Netflix laid off a third of its feature animation team last November in an effort to scale back on original film production. Nonetheless, part of the streamer’s feature animation growth strategy could involve an increase in acquisitions from third-party producers.
Sarandos noted in a Q3 earnings interview that Netflix’s new distribution partnership with Skydance Animation (Spellbound, pictured at top) will help the streamer keep up with demand for animation. “No single company has ever really successfully launched more than two animated features in a single year, so the deal helps us to complement the work that we’re [already] doing.”
Elsewhere, DreamWorks Animation reduced its workforce by 4% last year as part of an overall cost reduction, but is still committed to releasing two movies a year theatrically—one re-energized franchise film and one original—plus an occasional third lower-cost movie for a more targeted audience. This output doesn’t waver much from the studio’s historical release schedule, but DreamWorks will be implementing some big cost-cutting changes in 2025, when it will reportedly shift away from making movies fully in-house to relying more heavily on third-party studios.
International advantages
As more studios look to refocus their in-house kids divisions, this could open doors for streamers and movie exhibitors to acquire more international kids content, says Thorpe.
“The combined effect of the US production slowdown, coupled with depleted release slates for this year, creates opportunities for indie releases and international exports to break out in both domestic and international markets, especially when it comes to animation, which has traditionally been one of the most portable genres.”

Spanish animated movie Momias (Mummies) by 4 Cats Pictures grossed more than US$54 million worldwide on a US$12-million budget
A notable example is 2023 Spanish animated movie Momias (Mummies), adds Thorpe. Produced by 4 Cats Pictures with aspirations to crack into the English-speaking market, it was greenlit via local player Atresmedia’s distribution partnership with Warner Bros. Entertainment España and was ultimately released in 65 international markets, grossing more than US$54 million worldwide on a US$12-million budget.
Thorpe also points to international sales agent Charades’ recent acquisition of the first-ever feature based on original Japanese toy brand Sylvanian Families (a.k.a. Calico Critters in North America). “I could see [this movie] selling well, given the uptick of interest in toy-based IPs sparked by the success of Barbie,” she says. “It has cross-generational appeal in Japan.”
On the live-action side, she highlights the success of Italian YouTube duo Me contro Te’s same-name movie series, which Warner Bros. also snapped up for local distribution. The fifth movie in the Me contro Te (Me Against You) series topped the local box office when it recently opened in Italy—outperforming even Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which had only been in theaters for a week, says Thorpe. To date, the brand has six movies that have been released theatrically in Italy, as well as two TV series.
Warner Bros. identified gaps in the Spanish and Italian markets that led to the theatrical success of the Momias and Me contro Te properties. “With Momias, Spain is traditionally a strong territory for family films, and while WB Spain has a long history of involvement in local productions across a variety of genres, animated family films had not been fully explored,” says Andrew Cripps, president of international theatrical distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures.
“With Me contro Te, we identified an opportunity to pursue kids and family content in Italy, where there was generally less product in the marketplace with a focus on live action. The YouTube duo has an engaged and loyal fan base on the platform, with incredibly high view counts on their videos. We analyzed different videos on their channel and found a storytelling element in several that we envisioned translating nicely to the big screen.”
Moviegoers want variety
In other opportunities, non-traditional content and event cinema both performed extremely well last year for Cinemark Holdings, accounting for almost 14% of the company’s domestic box-office results in Q3. Cinemark is one of the largest theatrical exhibition companies in the world, with operations spread across 42 US states (315 theaters, 4,370 screens) and 13 countries in South and Central America (192 theaters, 1,395 screens).
President and CEO Sean Gamble pointed to this success in the company’s Q3 earnings call: “A wide range of multicultural titles, anime, faith-based films and concerts delivered impressive results [for Cinemark] last year, which is a trend we expect will continue.”
In another interesting trend, preschool-based event cinema has been growing in Europe over the past few years to help fill a gap in the market for parents with toddlers. Acamar Films, for example, has had considerable success stitching popular episodes of animated series Bing together into films and premiering them as event experiences
that also feature games, meet-and-greets and live performances.
Whatever else is in store for the ever-evolving feature film market, the future of long-form storytelling seen from theater seats appears to be healthy.
“Throughout unprecedented disruption in our industry, consumer enthusiasm for moviegoing and theatrical experiences has held strong,” says Gamble. “The financial and promotional value that a theatrical release provides to content IPs remains significant.”