Chicken Run’s Latest and Nimona Lead Netflix’s Annecy Slate

Headlining Netflix’s animation slate at Annecy International 2023 are Aardman’s next franchise installment Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and the little movie that could, Nimona.

io9 has extensively followed Nimona’s journey from the defunct Blue Sky Animation studios to getting picked up by Netflix. The film from ND Stevenson (Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power) features a prominent LGBTQIA+ storyline, following a knight who is “framed for a crime he didn’t commit and the only person who can help him prove his innocence is Nimona, a shape-shifting teen who might also be a monster he’s sworn to kill,” according to its official synopsis. “Set in a techno-medieval world unlike anything animation has tackled before, this is a story about the labels we assign to people and the shapeshifter who refuses to be defined by anyone.”

The streamer unveiled its film and series entries to the French animation fest today, detailed by What’s On Netflix, led by the those two big titles. Other films will include Leo, a “jaded 74-year-old lizard Leo has been stuck in the same Florida classroom for decades with his terrarium-mate turtle. When he learns he only has one year left to live, he plans to escape to experience life on the outside but instead gets caught up in the problems of his anxious students – including an impossibly mean substitute teacher” and The Monkey King, which “follows a monkey and his magical fighting Stick as they team up on an epic quest where they must go head to head against gods, demons, dragons, and the greatest enemy of all, Monkey’s own ego!”

On the series side of content, Netflix will be debuting Blue Eye Samurai, the story of a mixed race master of the sword in Edo era Japan, and the highly anticipated adaptation of the hilarious card game Exploding Kittens, which will take the gameplay into an “eternal conflict between Heaven and Hell” which “reaches epic proportions when both God and the Devil are sent to Earth—in the bodies of chunky house cats.” Say no more, count us in!

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival will take place in France from June 11-17 2023. 

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