What a struggling Disney could learn from Nimona's surprising success

Everyone loves a comeback story. Not so long ago, it seemed like the animated film based on ND Stevenson’s graphic novel Nimona would be an unfortunate casualty of corporate consolidation, a footnote in the story of one major Hollywood studio gobbling up another. Originally in development at Blue Sky Studios, the nearly completed Nimona was considered all but dead when Disney shut down Blue Sky after acquiring the animation studio as part of its 20th Century Fox purchase. Fortunately, that wasn’t the end for Nimona, but rather a new beginning for the ambitious, innovative project.

Indie distributor Annapurna Pictures stepped in to revive the film, with British animation house DNEG taking over the work of completing it. Following a warm reception at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 14, Nimona finally got a chance to reach a wider audience when it premiered on Netflix on June 30.

Set in a world that creatively combines medieval and futuristic aesthetics, Nimona tells the story of Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a former knight-in-training who is framed for murder and vilified throughout the kingdom. His bad reputation attracts the attention of a mischievous shapeshifter named Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), and she attaches herself to him as an aspiring sidekick. Together, they set out to unravel the mystery of who set him up, and in the process uncover even deeper and more dangerous secrets at the heart of the kingdom. The film enhances the graphic novel’s themes of acceptance and inclusion, especially in the representation of queer identity in its lead characters. When we first meet Ballister he’s in a relationship with a fellow knight, and Nimona is genderfluid. She (or he or they, all pronouns apply) spends most of the film in the form of a human girl, but is uncomfortable staying in any one shape for long.

Since its release on Netflix, Nimona has been embraced by critics, animation fans, and especially the LGBTQA+ community. It’s currently rated at 93 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with both critics and audiences. The graphic novel sold out on Amazon the weekend after the film came out on Netflix, and it’s already picking up very early Oscar buzz. There have been lively discussions about it on social media and articles gloating about what Disney missed out on when they canceled the project. Because the only thing people love more than a comeback story is one of comeuppance.

But rather than bashing Disney for its obvious blind spots (as much fun as that can be) we thought we’d be constructive instead. There are valuable lessons the studio could learn from Nimona’s winding journey from page to screen, including how to better connect with audiences, something the studio has had trouble doing of late. Pixar’s most recent film, Elemental, had the lowest opening weekend box-office total in Pixar history, continuing a streak of underperforming titles like Strange World and Lightyear. If things keep going this way, 2023 is on track to be Disney’s first year without having a $1 billion hit since 2014. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Perhaps with a change of course Disney might be able to write a comeback story of its own; it wouldn’t be the first time.

Out with the same old

Nimona has a bold and innovative visual style—it doesn’t look like any other animated film you’ve seen lately. Audiences are clearly craving originality; witness the enthusiastic response to Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse compared to the disappointing box-office showing by generic CG fare like Elemental and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. What felt fresh and new a decade ago now seems stale and ordinary.

In its current corporate incarnation, Disney has been hesitant to challenge audiences with anything that strays too far from its established brand. That may make business sense, considering the ballooning budgets of animated films these days, but it’s a creative dead end. Even when a film like Strange World attempts to do something a little different, the studio cannot figure out how to market it to the general public. Nothing in the ad campaign for that film gave any hint of how weird and imaginative its visuals really were. Would that have made a difference at the box office? Who knows. But we do know that Disney’s generic approach didn’t work.

There’s so much more that can be done in animation when creators and artists are given the freedom to push the envelope. Why limit them to the same old formulaic approach? Trust moviegoers to accept the unexpected—like a castle in the middle of a busy urban city center, or knights in armor on floating motor scooters, or a jailbreak on the back of a giant pink rhino (yes, Nimona has all of that).

New characters for a new generation

Character design is another area where innovation is vital. The dynamic characters in Nimona wouldn’t fit into any world but their own. Their faces are expressive, diverse, and not always pretty. Those perfect imperfections are striking because Disney would never allow them. They don’t fit the studio’s template, or its high standards of beauty.

There’s a term artists use when they get into a rut, drawing similar features on their characters over and over again—same-face syndrome. This term has recently been applied to Disney’s modern digital characters too. You could take a character from one film and drop them in another and they wouldn’t stand out (as they literally did with a Rapunzel cameo in Frozen). Disney’s female characters tend to have big, bright eyes, delicate noses, and narrow lips (the few exceptions are mainly non-white supporting characters), while the males have either bulbous or pointy noses, big eyes or beady eyes, rarely anything in between. At least the guys get more variation in their body types. With the notable exception of Encanto’s Luisa (who became a fan-favorite breakout character, despite pushback from Disney executives), most of Disney’s women and girl characters are similar in size, on the slender side, with tiny waists and gentle curves.

Nimona, in her girl form, isn’t built like a Disney princess, that’s for sure. She’s got a short, stocky, athletic body. Unlike your typical Disney ingénue, she’s allowed to make ugly, even monstrous, faces. It doesn’t take anything away from the character. In fact, it makes her that much more interesting.

It’s okay to make it gay

The closure of Blue Sky Studios was a major factor in the delay of Nimona, but it certainly wasn’t the only one. The pandemic slowed things down, of course, and then there were the notes from Disney executives overseeing the film. According to a report published by Insider, sources inside the production said that their Disney bosses raised concerns over the unvarnished queer themes and a same-sex kiss between Ballister and his boyfriend, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). “Nimona had faced other hiccups through its development process, notably delays,” Insider reported. “But it was still a project Blue Sky staffers were enthusiastic about, and felt it could be a step forward for the studio. Now, it’s unlikely to see the light of day.” And yet, a little more than a year later, here we are.

That was in the spring of 2021, a year before the company stepped into a quagmire over its response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In an attempt at damage control, then-CEO Bob Chapek released a now infamous statement in March 2022 that ended with: “I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse community organizations we support.” That was news to the creatives who had worked on Nimona while it was at Blue Sky and experienced first-hand pressure to tone down the queer content in their film.

Disney doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to LGBTQA+ content on screen, and its attempts to correct that so far have been seen as half-hearted by the community. Releasing a film like Nimona in its current unapologetic form without pressure or meddling could do a lot to turn that perception around and earn back some of the trust the studio has lost.

Don’t be afraid to take risks

All of this advice comes down to one simple lesson: take more risks. Walt Disney himself didn’t become a success by playing it safe. The company he started with a “suitcase and a dream” has grown into a massive media empire, but it’s seemingly lost some of the original spirit of experimentation and adventure along the way.

With the cost of making films constantly rising, it makes sense that Disney, and every other major studio, has become risk averse. The justification is that sticking to a proven formula pays off because audiences know what they’re getting before they head to the theater. That’s obviously the reason why so many studios continue to exploit their well-known intellectual properties. But that IP-heavy approach can only be sustained for so long before it starts backfiring, and the reverse becomes true. Audiences will stay away from something they feel like they’ve already seen too many times before.

This may not be obvious to the bean counters, but there are other ways of measuring success than raw numbers. The tendency to simplify everything in terms of “line goes up” or “line goes down” doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. To put it into corporate speak, a title could simply add value to a brand. It could improve consumer confidence. A film that connects with a niche audience could be a loss leader, an investment in the future. Nimona is doing all of these things for Annapurna, which created an entire animation division after taking on the film, but it could have been doing that for Disney instead. We sincerely hope the Mouse House is paying attention.