When Netflix released its “engagement report,” a chart that details the streaming giant’s top performing content from July to December 2024, on the film list, just past word-of-mouth sensations like “Carry-On” and “Rebel Ridge” and a couple of spots below heavily hyped sequel “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” the sixth most-watched thing on Netflix was “Sing: Thriller,” a short film set in Illumination’s “Sing” universe that features Michael Jackson’s beloved smash. This 10-minute “Sing” short performed better than animated features like DreamWorks’ “Trolls Band Together” and Netflix’s own original animated movies “That Christmas” and “Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie,” a “SpongeBob SquarePants” project licensed from Paramount. “Sing: Thriller” racked up a staggering 77,000,000 views.
The short, which features an odd ooze turning the animal denizens of the “Sing” universe into zombie-like creatures (after a stage show presentation of the Jackson song, of course), captures the colorful, brightly choreographed charm of the “Sing” movies and distills that charm into an easily digestible, fun-sized package with an appropriately killer soundtrack.
And “Sing: Thriller” isn’t the only short of its kind performing on streaming, as Disney recently axed a planned long-form animated series based on “Princess and the Frog,” in part because of the success of the studio’s animated shorts, which have consistently been drawing engagement on Disney+ — an increasingly vital metric for the big studios in the streaming age.
This all portends the unlikely comeback of the animated short — one that makes even more sense given the receding tide of streaming content, the lack of resources at animation studios and the reduced attention span of modern audiences, who are used to scrolling through TikTok or getting stuck for a few seconds on the more appealing reel. They might not make the streamers money, but these short films can also serve as an important lynchpin to a vast world of consumer products and ancillary items — everything from spinoff television series to theme park attractions.
It’s enough to turn what was meant as a Halloween-season trifle into a streaming juggernaut.
Feeding the streaming need
With the streaming revolution came a desperate need for content.
In order to bulk up Disney+, Disney leaned hard on its animation studios — Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios — for fresh material, putting long-form series into development while also asking for quicker, shorter programming.
These weren’t the kinds of shorts that would play in front of their big animated features, but they would still cultivate and encourage talent and, ultimately, feed the streaming beast. The Pixar program, SparkShorts, tackled occasionally thornier subject matter and embraced different art styles, while Disney Animation had a similar program, Short Circuit, that also encouraged adventurousness.
These shorts went up on Disney+, along with short-form programming based on beloved IP like Pixar’s “Toy Story” riff “Forky Asks a Question,” which launched alongside the streaming service. “Up” spinoff “Dug Days” and “Cars” continuation “Cars on the Road” were similar collections of shorts, produced in-house at Pixar. Disney Animation produced a series of COVID-inspired shorts that featured Goofy and Olaf, later releasing more complete series of shorts “Baymax!” (based on the “Big Hero 6” property) and “Zootopia+,” which featured memorable Disney characters in smaller adventures.
According to a person familiar with the decision, the “Princess and the Frog” series “Tiana,” which was meant to be a long-form streaming series from Walt Disney Animation Studios, was canceled, in part, because the shorter content was doing so well and it seemed like a better use of resources. There will now be an animated special, which will more closely align to the original animated feature “The Princess and the Frog.”
Animated features are incredibly cumbersome and time-consuming — and, thus, expensive. Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” had a reported budget of around $200 million. DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot,” which was done more quickly, still had a reported budget of $80 million. Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” which clocked in at a gargantuan 140 minutes, cost between $100 and $150 million.
Dozens of animators, artists and technicians can work on these projects for years at a time. Pixar’s recent long-form animated series “Win or Lose” took over four years to produce 145 minutes of animation.
A full-on animated series is a huge strain on the studio’s limited resources, even with Disney opening a satellite animation studio in Canada to help with the workload. Shorter projects mean that they can be completed in a shorter amount of time and with a smaller crew; these were previously referred to as “special projects” — things that the artists could work on in between larger jobs. Pixar did one series of very small shorts, called “Pixar Popcorn,” utilizing unused audio from earlier projects. That’s how scrappy these things can be.
A natural brand extension
When it came to “Sing: Thriller,” it seemed like a wise decision for the streamer. The two “Sing” movies were big hits and they could coast off of that excitement for the short film. According to a source close to the streaming giant, Netflix was able to nab the rights because, while Peacock is the initial home for Universal content (including the animated features produced by Illumination), that agreement doesn’t extend to short films.
It’s all about extending the life of a franchise, particularly in the fallow period between larger projects.
Sequels between big properties can take a considerable amount of time. It was 14 years between the first “Incredibles” and the sequel. And nine years passed between “Inside Out” films. It’ll be another nine years between “Zootopia” and its sequel, “Zootopia 2.” That is what makes shorts like the ones that comprise “Zootopia+” so important — they are a stopgap in between mainline entries that act to cultivate and enliven those brands.
And they act as quick fixes for kids who love the properties but might not know that there’s an additional installment on the horizon. They take less time and resources and they keep the brand alive, even without the scale and complexity of an actual sequel.
And they can drive interest in consumer products (everything from soundtrack albums to branded pajamas) and help gauge interest in everything from subsequent sequels to theme park attractions. (A “Zootopia”-themed 3D movie opens at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, part of the vast Walt Disney World complex, around the time that “Zootopia 2” arrives in theaters in November.)
“Love the movie? Here’s a hit,” said one animation industry professional.
The drive for engagement
Engagement plays a factor into the pivot to shorts as well. Industry leader Netflix is shifting its metric of success to engagement, or time spent, as it looks to prove to Wall Street that it can keep growing, and other streamers are similarly finding ways to boost time spent on their streaming services.
For Disney, these animated shorts can also be easily slotted into their “streams” — the “live” channels on Disney+ that just play programming continuously, like a regular TV channel. Disney Entertainment co-chairman Dana Walden specifically called out the toddler-focused stream “Playtime” in remarks on how Disney+ is boosting engagement.
“Disney+ Playtime has been very successful because, of course, parents don’t have to keep selecting another show,” Walden said. “They can watch ‘Bluey’ or all of our programming and that is helping us to introduce this young audience to multiple franchises.”
The attention span of the average viewer is shortening, and kids have grown up on things like “SpongeBob SquarePants” and, more recently, “Big City Greens,” with two stories, averaging 11-minutes each, crammed into each half-hour episode. And most installments of “Bluey,” the most-watched TV show of 2024, clock in around seven minutes. But last year, Disney+ introduced what were marketed as “minisodes” that were one to three minutes in length.
And yet despite the length, viewers roll right from one short into the next one, each a complete story, sometimes shifting genres or animation styles from one short to the next while keeping the viewer engaged.
The future isn’t just bright for animation — it’s also much, much shorter.
