Warner Bros. Pictures Animation stepped into the global spotlight Monday at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, delivering its most expansive public showcase to date and signaling that the storied studio is entering a genuinely new creative era. Hosted by WBPA president and chief creative officer Bill Damaschke, the ninety-minute presentation pulled back the curtain on a fresh studio logo, the world premiere of a new Looney Tunes theatrical short, and an extended first look at the films that will define the label from 2026 through 2028. For a division that has spent the last few years rebuilding behind the scenes, this was the moment it formally introduced itself to the animation world.
The new logo anchors the rebrand, arriving as the visual signature of what Damaschke described as an artists-first studio. That philosophy was the throughline of the entire presentation. Rather than locking into a single house style the way some animation powerhouses have, WBPA is positioning itself around the idea that every film should feel completely unique, bound together not by a uniform look or technique but by heart, hope, and humor. Damaschke framed the day as the beginning of a new chapter for animation at Warner Bros., crediting the studio’s storytellers as the engine driving its creative direction and calling the assembled filmmakers the artists shaping the future of the medium.
The headline reveal for longtime Looney Tunes fans was the world premiere of Daffy Season, a brand new theatrical short pairing Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. It is the kind of swing that says a lot about where the studio’s head is at, leaning into the characters that built the Warner Bros. animation legacy while treating them as material for fresh theatrical storytelling rather than nostalgia for its own sake. Alongside the short, the studio gave audiences an extended look at The Cat in the Hat, its debut theatrical feature, arriving in theaters November 6, 2026. Written and directed by Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja and based on the beloved Dr. Seuss book, the film promises to transport audiences through a fantastical world powered by the Cat’s signature mischief, magic, and mayhem, with Bill Hader voicing the title character.
From there, Damaschke laid out a slate built to run from 2026 through 2028, spanning seven distinct theatrical features and an original short, each with its own look, style, and tone. The development lineup blends bold new takes on iconic Warner Bros. Discovery properties with fresh original stories, including projects centered on Tom & Jerry, Thundercats, and Meerkats. The studio also revealed new cast members for Bad Fairies, the musical-comedy that pairs Cynthia Erivo and Ncuti Gatwa and is scheduled to reach theaters May 21, 2027.
Perhaps the most talked-about original reveal was Prehistoria, an animated musical from Vivienne Medrano, the independent animation force known online as VivziePop and best known as the creator of the adult animated hits Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Prehistoria marks Medrano’s feature directorial debut and, notably, sits entirely outside her Hellaverse, the shared universe those two shows occupy. Described as a “fossil fantasy” musical set in a vibrant prehistoric world of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures, it represents a major leap for a creator who built a billions-of-views global fanbase from self-funded YouTube pilots. Medrano called the partnership a dream years in the making, framing it as the realization of a feature-film ambition she has carried since the start of her animation journey. Her arrival is a clear signal of WBPA’s interest in courting boundary-pushing creators with deep direct-to-fan followings.
Partnership emerged as the other major theme of the showcase. WBPA made clear that its slate is being built in collaboration with some of the industry’s leading studios and creative shops, a roster that includes DC Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, DNEG, Framestore, Swaybox, 6th & Idaho, Sanrio, New Line Cinema, and Flynn Picture Company. Among the most significant of these is Locksmith Animation, the UK-based studio founded by Elisabeth Murdoch and Julie Lockhart in 2014, which is behind both Bad Fairies and The Lunar Chronicles, the latter an adaptation of Marissa Meyer’s best-selling book series. The breadth of that partner list underscores how much the studio is betting on a collaborative, filmmaker-driven model rather than a single in-house pipeline.
The Annecy presentation built on the studio’s pre-Annecy open house in Burbank back in May, but Monday’s showcase was clearly the larger statement of intent. After years of behind-the-scenes turbulence, including high-profile shake-ups and the well-documented saga surrounding Coyote vs. Acme, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation used the Annecy stage to reframe the conversation entirely. The message was simple and confident: this is a studio with a new face, a deep bench of filmmakers, and a slate designed to prove that animated features can be artful, varied, and unmistakably theatrical. Whether the finished films deliver on that promise will play out over the next two years, but as a mission statement, the Annecy debut landed exactly the way the studio wanted it to.
