Alvin and the Chipmunks Confirm New 2028 Movie as Big Shot Pictures Takes Ownership Stake

This isn’t a franchise digging itself out of storage. Alvin, Simon, and Theodore have stayed remarkably present for most of the last two decades, four live-action films that ran through 2015, an eight year run fronting Nickelodeon’s ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks that only wrapped in 2023, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame added in 2019. Now that steady footprint is about to get considerably bigger. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Big Shot Pictures, the family entertainment studio led by former Paramount and Nickelodeon co-CEO Brian Robbins, has acquired a 25 percent stake in the franchise in partnership with Bagdasarian Productions, with a theatrical film planned for the second half of 2028 to coincide with the trio’s 70th anniversary.

The recent track record is the real story here. The four theatrical films, released between 2007 and 2015, pulled in more than 1.3 billion dollars worldwide, and even after The Road Chip closed out that run, the Chipmunks never actually left screens. Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and his wife Janice Karman kept voicing all six chipmunks themselves for the Nickelodeon series, which ran from 2015 all the way to 2023, meaning there has barely been a stretch of the last twenty years without new Alvin content somewhere. The characters go back further than that, invented in 1958 by Bagdasarian Sr. under the stage name David Seville, but the more relevant history for most of today’s audience is the movies and the Nickelodeon show, not the decades before them.

That is what makes Bagdasarian and Karman’s caution around the property notable. They have had plenty of chances to sell off pieces of the franchise over the years and mostly didn’t, which is part of why Bagdasarian Jr. told the Journal the family had simply been waiting for the right partner rather than the right offer, and that this deal finally felt like it.

Big Shot’s plan is not a straight theatrical relaunch. Short form, digital first content is set to roll out later this year on platforms like YouTube, with the Chipmunks appearing almost like influencers, reacting to trends and covering songs in real time. Robbins framed the approach as an attempt to have the group playing into the zeitgeist and living inside pop culture as it happens, ahead of the 2028 film itself. Sony Pictures Entertainment, which holds Big Shot’s first look theatrical deal, was also among the investors that backed the studio’s launch back in January.

The rollout has already generated some friction. A first look at a redesigned Alvin arrived alongside the announcement, and a chunk of the online reaction focused on reports that Big Shot is hiring for roles with generative AI experience. The studio hasn’t confirmed AI will touch the actual Chipmunks content, but for a fanbase that has watched this franchise stay consistent for the better part of two decades, that question is likely to keep following the project through the rest of the digital rollout.

What’s still unknown is basically everything about the film itself: title, voice cast, plot, tone. What is clear is that Big Shot isn’t reviving a forgotten property so much as taking a franchise that never really slowed down and pushing it toward its biggest platform yet.