POOKOO – Cr: Skydance Animation/Netflix © 2025
Annecy Film Festival had a lot of good news for Netflix. We got a bunch of details about its slate of upcoming projects, including some deep dives on titles like In Your Dreams and Stranger Things: Tales from ’85. Snuck away in the details, however, was the news that Pookoo, the second major animated title from Skydance Animation, coming exclusively to Netflix, has been pushed back to 2026 after initially being part of the 2025 Netflix slate.
Written and directed by Nathan Greno (Tangled) and produced by Jennifer Magee Cook (The Princess and the Frog), the new film was first announced to be coming to Netflix back in 2022 when Netflix announced it was taking over from Apple TV+ in distributing Skydance Animation movies moving forward.
In addition to a new picture, we also have a slightly revised logline for the film, which reads: “When two natural sworn enemies of The Valley, a small woodland creature and a majestic bird, magically trade places, they must set off on an adventure of a lifetime to save their home.”
While the movie did get a small spotlight at Annecy, beyond the new picture released above, audiences were treated to a very short clip of our main character diving into the water for the first time with the hand-crafted googles and breathing apparatus seen in the picture below, which attaches to a lily pad on the surface of the river. No dialogue was spoken, but it gave me strong Finding Nemo vibes throughout, especially at the beginning of the movie, with everything being peaceful.
Whether this means the originally planned 2026 Skydance Animation movie, Ray Gunn, is set to be pushed back to 2027 is unclear.
POOKOO
The good news is that Netflix’s animation slate for the rest of the year remains strong, with nearly 30 series and movies scheduled to arrive between July and December, in addition to any licensed pickups for each region. As we covered in a recent slate reveal, movies like Fixed, The Twits, and In Your Dreams headline the lineup alongside series like multiple Dr. Seuss shows, and a new season of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory is on the way.
Additionally, another interesting tidbit regarding Skydance Animation is that Netflix holds indefinite rights to the movies it releases. The first movie from the deal featured an all-star ensemble voice cast, although it failed to ignite the Netflix top 10s in terms of viewership. It did spend 3 weeks in the top 10s, picking up 29.10 million views but as our kids analyst pointed out earlier this year, those numbers are likely not what Netflix was hoping for.
“The numbers are undeniable,” Emily Horgan told us, “Spellbound came in low for what’s possible from a high-profile Netflix animated feature. It has also been conspicuously absent from any comment by the streamer itself.” Speculating why it disappointed, Horgan added, “Perhaps it wasn’t marketed enough, or perhaps it got stuck in algorithmic discovery. Returning to the movie itself, there must have been a disconnect between the audience and the storyline or characters. It’s a shame because, on paper, Spellbound had a lot going for it.”
Pookoo is the next big swing, and on the surface, it’s a visual feast of a film, but will it have the heart to connect? We’ll have to find out in 2026.
