2014 was a pretty good year for Animation. Good points, Disney triumphed at the Oscars with “Frozen”, which went on to become the most successful animated festure of all-time (so far). “The Lego Movie” made a mint, Studio Laika released the imaginative “Boxtrolls”, whilst Dreamworks released “How to train your Dragon 2” and “Peabody and Sherman” both to critical acclaim, but slightly disappointing box-office returns. Miyazaki released his final feature for Studio Ghibli, the wonderful “The Wind Rises”.

Downsides? It was the first year since 2005, (when there was a gap between The Incredibles and Cars) that we’ve not had a Pixar film in the Theatres. “Postman Pat – The Movie”…and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

So what does 2015 have in store for us? First of all, there are a lot more releases than the 11 I’ve featured below. I’ve focused on UK release dates (hence why I’ve led with Big Hero 6 which is already on general release in the USA). A lot of features, such as Warner Brothers “Storks” which is to be the directorial debut of ex-Pixar animator, Doug Sweetland (Presto) just don’t have enough available information to feature, but worry not, Skwigly will keep you posted throughout the year on further developments. So let us begin with;

Big Hero 6

Release Date: 30th January

Directors: Don Hall & Chris Williams

Production Company: Disney

Although released in November in the US, the UK will finally get to see Disney’s attempt at a Marvel comic adaptation in late January 2015. Big Hero 6 has taken an estimated $56 million on its opening weekend in the US. Directed by Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh), the CG-animated movie centres on a robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada and his robot companion BayMax, who join a team of superheroes in a high-tech city called San Fransokyo. When a devastating event befalls the city, it catapults Hiro into the midst of danger, so he turns to Baymax and his close friends, adrenaline junkie Go Go Tomago, neatnik Wasabi, chemistry whiz Honey Lemon and fanboy Fred. Determined to uncover the mystery, Hiro transforms his friends into a band of high-tech heroes called “Big Hero 6.”

Even die-hard comic book fans may have trouble recalling the Marvel series, which was created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau in 1998 and is something of a whimsical love letter to Japanese culture. The original comic is set in Tokyo, though Hall’s film takes place in a mythical mash-up of Tokyo and San Francisco, a conceit that allows Disney’s animators to imagine a uniquely stylized cityscape — and indulge a studio-wide affinity for Japan fed by that country’s strong animation tradition. “Marvel properties take place in the real world,” Hall said. “We were looking for something to do where we could make our own world — bring in the Japanese influences, have recognizable landmarks mashed up with a Japanese aesthetic.”

Hall, a lifelong comic book fan who started at Disney Animation in 1995, was in the midst of directing Winnie the Pooh when Disney acquired Marvel in 2009. He found Big Hero 6 while digging through Marvel’s library for ideas and pitched it to Disney’s chief creative officer, John Lasseter, in 2011. For Hall, the movie itself is a mash-up of two passions — animation and comic books. “It’s basically geek wish fulfilment,” Hall said. Big Hero 6 is being produced wholly at Disney Animation, but Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada has been participating in brainstorming sessions about the project.

Shaun the Sheep

Release Date: 6th February

Directors: Richard Starzak & Mark Burton

Production Company: Aardman Animations

Keeping the British end up on this list and notable for being the only Stop-Motion feature of note released in 2015, Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep will make his feature-film debut in February.

In January 2011, The BBC reported that Aardman had started developing a feature film version of Shaun the Sheep, with a plan to be ready for a 2013/2014 release. The film is written and directed by Richard Starzak and Mark Burton and financed and distributed by French company, Studio Canal. The film will follow Shaun and his flock into the big city to rescue their farmer, who was forced by Shaun’s mischief to leave the farm. Justin Fletcher will voice Shaun and John Sparkes will voice Bitzer, his canine friend. Nice to see Shaun and the gang are sticking with their TV voices and not replacing them with Hollywood megastars.

Strange Magic

Release Date: 11th February

Director: Gary Rydstrom

Production Company: Lucasfilm Animation

Strange Magic is to be the feature- directorial debut of Gary Rydstron. A seven-time Oscar winner for sound-design and director of Pixar short Lifted. It’s written by David Berenbaum, Irene Mecchi Rydstrom, from a story by George Lucas.

According to director Rydstrom, Lucas “really wanted to make a beautiful fairy tale with goblins and elves, and do it in a way that only this company can do. He had been working on it for a long time.” Rydstrom mentioned that Lucas emphasized that the story should be about “finding beauty in strange places.” Before Disney acquired Lucasfilm in late 2012, production on Strange Magic was already well underway. Rydstrom and his crew screened the film for Disney executives. Rydstrom stated “We’re not Pixar or Disney Animation, so in some ways George was our John Lasseter on this one…I like the fact — not that I don’t like advice from all over — but this is our own thing, this is a Lucasfilm project…I remember when Labyrinth came out and how exciting that was. There was a magic to that, this has the same vibe to me.”

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: Sponge out of water

Release Date: 20th March

Directors: Paul Tibbitt & Mike Mitchell

Production Company: Paramount Animation/Nickolodean Movies

A sequel to the 2004 animated film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and is directed by the show writer and executive producer Paul Tibbitt, with live-action direction from Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After.)

Burger-Beard (Antonio Banderas) is a pirate in search of the final page of a magical book that makes any evil plan he writes in it come true, which happens to be the Krabby-patty secret formula. When his search is completed and the formula is missing, the entire city of Bikini Bottom is in danger. Spongebob (Tom Kenny), Patrick(Bill Fagerbakke) and the gang need to go on a quest that takes them to the surface. In order to get back the recipe and save their city, the gang must retrieve the book and transform themselves into superheroes and fight Burger-Beard and his super villain pirate crew. The movie stars the regular television cast (Kenny, Faggerbakke along with Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Carolyn Lawrence and Mr. Lawrence), who are returning to reprise their respective roles from the series and the previous film, with guest appearances from the aforementioned Banderas and ex Guns’n’Roses guitarist, Slash.

The film is produced by Paramount Animation, Nickelodeon Movies and United Plankton Pictures and will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. In July 2011 Paramount formed its new animation unit, Paramount Animation, in the wake of commercial and critical success of the 2011 computer-animated film Rango, and the departure of Dreamworks Animation upon completion of their distribution contract in 2012. Philippe Dauman, the president and CEO of Paramount’s parent company Viacom, officially announced on February 28, 2012 that a sequel film was in development and slated for an unspecified 2014 release, saying that “We will be releasing a SpongeBob movie at the end of 2014. Dauman added that the film “will serve to start off or be one of our films that starts off our new animation effort.”

Home

Release Date: 20th March

Director: Tim Johnson

Production Company: Dreamworks Animation

An overly optimistic, yet inept alien race called the Boov, led by Captain Smek, invades Earth to hide from their mortal enemy and make it their new home. Convinced they are doing Humanity a favour, they begin to relocate the human race, but one resourceful teenage girl, Tip, manages to avoid capture. When on the run, she is accompanied by a banished Boov named Oh who has accidentally notified the enemies of his whereabouts.

Directed by Tim Johnson (Over the Hedge, Sinbad, Antz.) Home is based on the 2007 Adam Rex’s children’s book, “The True Meaning of Smekday” and stars Rhianna, Jim Parsons, Steve Martin and Jennifer Lopez. In 2008, DreamWorks Animation optioned the book’s rights to adapt it into an animated feature film.A 4-minute short film called Almost Home, directed by Todd Wilderman, was attached to theatrical showings of DreamWorks Animation’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman in early 2014 and showed The Boov and their leader Captain Smek in a sequence of unsuccessful attempts at finding a hospitable planet, before they finally come across the Earth.

In late 2012, Fox and DreamWorks Animation announced the release for November 26, 2014. In May 2014, the film’s release date was pushed back to March 27, 2015, switching places with DreamWorks Animation’s other film, the recently released, Penguins of Madagascar. Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation’s CEO, reasoned that Penguins, coming from one of DWA’s most successful franchises, would have easier task to stand out during the thanksgiving time, while Home will try to take advantage of less competitive spring release window and repeat successful spring launches of some of DWA’s original films, including The Croods and How to Train Your Dragon.

Minions

Release Date: 26th June

Directors: Pierre Coffin,Kyle Balda

Production Company: Illumination Entertainment

Considering that the estimated box-office take of Despicable Me 2 in the USA alone is $368 million, I’m of the thinking that most people probably know what a Minion is by now. This seems to be an origin-story of sorts tracking the evolution of the Minions, who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who have only one purpose: to serve history’s most despicable masters. After accidentally destroying all their masters, they decide to isolate themselves from the world and start a new life in Antarctica. Sometime in the 1960s, the lack of a master drives them into depression, so brave Minion Kevin comes up with a plan to find a new one. Joined by teenage rebel Stuart and little Bob, they arrive at a villain convention where they compete for the right to be henchmen for Scarlet Overkill, a stylish and ambitious villain determined to dominate the world and become the first female super-villain. Travelling through New York , they end up in London, where they must confront a threat that wants to eliminate all Minions.

The film is currently having the finishing touches applied at the Paris-based animation studio, Illumination Mac Guff and is being produced by Illumination Entertainment for Universal Pictures. Written by Brian Lynch, it will be directed by the Despicable Me series team of Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda and produced by Chris Melendandri and Janet Healy. Sandra Bullock will voice Scarlet Overkill, the villain of the film, and Jon Hamm will voice her husband, inventor Herb Overkill.

Inside Out

Release Date: 24th July

Directors: Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen

Production Company: Pixar

Here’s something to celebrate for 2015, not one, but two Pixar cinema releases. To make up for the disappointment of 2014 being a Pixar-free zone, the first scheduled release is Pete Doctor’s Inside Out.The film is based on an original idea by Docter, (Monsters Inc, Up) who is directing the film along with co-director Ronnie del Carmen, and producer Jonas Rivera.

The film will be set in the head of a young girl, Riley Anderson, where five emotions—Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear and Sadness—try to lead the girl through her life. It was also reported that Michael Arndt is writing the screenplay. Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is guided by her emotions – Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kalling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.

John Lassetter has said of the film; Pete [Docter] has this way of constantly trying to figure out something that we’re all familiar with in some way… he’s constantly looking for these kinds of things. You look at people oftentimes and they do something to make you go “What are they thinking?” or it’s like how a song gets stuck in your head and you just can’t get it out. Little quirky things like this that we all do. Certain emotions just seem to take us over, anger or happiness, where you start giggling and laughing and you can’t stop. He thought “I want to take a look at that, explain that.” His idea is that the emotions of this little girl are the characters and it takes place in the head of this little girl, and shows how they control things that go on. It’s very, very clever and it’s truly unlike anything you’ve ever seen, yet it explains things you’ve seen.

Hotel Transylvania 2

Release Date: 9th October

Director Genndy Tartakovsky

Production Company: Sony Pictures Animation

This sequel to the surprisingly successful 2012 film Hotel Transylvania will again be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. The majority of the original’s cast will also return, Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, David Spade, Kevin James and Steve Buscemi and adds Keegan-Michael Key, who replaces CeeLo Green as Murray the Mummy. A major cast addition for the sequel is that of Actor/Director Mel Brooks who will star as Dracula’s Father, Vlad.

Genndy Tartakovsky, the director of the film, commented in October 2012, about the possibility of the sequel: “Everyone is talking about it, but we haven’t started writing it. There are a lot of fun ideas we could totally play with. It’s a ripe world.” The movie was officially green-lit in November 2012 and is scheduled for release on September 25, 2015. In March of 2014 it was announced Tartakovsky will return to direct the sequel, even though he originally was too busy due to his developing an adaptation of Popeye.

B.O.O.Bureau of Otherworldly Operations

Release Date: 16th October

Director: Tony Leondis

Production Company: Dreamworks Animation

B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations! is based on an original idea by Tony Leondis, (Igor, Lilo and Stitch 2) who is also directing and stars Dreamworks regular, Seth Rogen as well as Melissa McCarthy and Bill Murray. The Bureau of Otherworldly Operations (B.O.O.) is a top-secret government agency which employs ghosts to protect humans from evil hauntings. When two new agents named Jackson Moss and Watts uncover a plot by the agency’s most wanted haunter Addison Drake to destroy B.O.O., they must use their skills to defeat his ghost army and save the world.

There isn’t a lot of information available online for B.O.O. On May 28, 2009, DreamWorks Animation first announced plans for their new “Super Secret Ghost Project.” Later in 2009, it was reported that DreamWorks is developing the project as Boo U. Tony Leondis had been set to direct and Jon Vitti to pen the screenplay for the film, set to be released in the end of 2012. The story would follow a ghost who is bad at his job and must return to ghost school. Seth Rogen was reported in August 2010 to have joined the film as a voice of the lead character.

On November 17, 2014, The Los Angeles Times reported that the film had been delayed again, with no replacement release date set. Two sources were cited for the delay, with one saying that DreamWorks Animation’s CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was not satisfied with the progress of the film, while another attributed the push-back to the competition scheduled for the summer 2015, including Pixar’s Inside Out.

The Good Dinosaur

Release Date: 27th November

Directors: Bob Peterson & Peter Sohn

Production Company: Pixar

Pixar’s 16th movie certainly has an intriguing plot-synopsis; “The Good Dinosaur” asks the generations-old question: What if the cataclysmic asteroid that forever changed life on Earth actually missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct? The film is a humorous and exciting original story about Arlo, a lively 70-foot-tall teenage Apatosaurus with a big heart. After a traumatic event rattles Arlo’s tranquil community, he sets out on a quest to restore peace, gaining an unlikely companion along the way – —a young human boy named Spot. With a typically eclectic cast announced of Lucas Neff, John Lithgow, Frances McDormand, Neil Patrick Harris, Judy Greer, and Bill Hader it seemed that Pixar had another sure-fire hit on their hand.

Pixar are infamous for replacing Directors mid-production if their “Brain-Trust” don’t feel that the film is working out. The Good Dinosaur has had a notoriously rocky road to development. Bob Peterson, veteran Pixar story-man (and voice of Dug the Dog from Up) who came up with the idea for the story, directed The Good Dinosaur until August 2013, when he was removed from the film. It was later announced that Peter Sohn (who had previously been Peterson’s co-director) was announced as the new director of The Good Dinosaur. By summer 2013, the director and producer had been removed from the film due to the story problems. Peterson, who couldn’t crack the film’s third act, was notably absent at D23 Expo, where Sohn and producer Denise Ream presented footage from the film.In September 2013, The Good Dinosaur had been pushed back from May 30, 2014 to November 25, 2015 (the scheduled release date for Finding Dory) to “give the film some more time.” In November 2013, due to the delay, Pixar laid off 67 employees of its 1,200-person workforce, following the closure of Pixar Canada a month before, when about 80 employees had been laid off, officially to refocus Pixar’s efforts at its main headquarters.

There certainly doesn’t seem to be any bad blood between Peterson and Pixar as he immediately moved on to develop another in-house project, while John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Mark Andrews, and Sohn stepped in temporarily to work on various sections of the film.In August 2014, John Lithgow revealed in an interview that the film had been dismantled and “completely reimagined” and he was expected to re-record his role in the next month while mentioning that Frances McDormand was still part of the film.

Peanuts

Release Date: 21st December

Directors: Steve Martino

Production Company: Blue Sky Studios

Produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox, “Peanuts” is based on Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip, Peanuts. On October 9, 2012, it was announced that 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios were developing a 3D computer-animated feature film based on the strip, with Steve Martino directing from the screenplay by Craig Schulz, Bryan Schulz, and Cornelius Uliano. Craig, Bryan, and Uliano are also producing. Craig, claiming there is no one “more protective of the comic strip than myself,” chose Martino as director because he showed faithfulness to classics in his adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!

It is set to be the fifth full-length feature film to be based on the comic, and the first feature film based on the characters in 35 years. It features the voices of the late Bill Melendez (original Director of the old Charlie Brown and Snoopy 2D films) via archive recordings, as Snoopy and Woodstock. Martino and his animators spent over a year looking at Charles Schulz’ original drawing style to help translate the “hand-drawn warmth… into the cool pixel-precision of CGI” without the fear of something getting lost in translation, such as “how the dot of an eye [conveyed] joy or sorrow so efficiently”.

In addition to receiving the rights to use Bill Melendez’ voice for Snoopy and Woodstock, Martino was also able to get the rights to archive music from previous Peanuts specials.In 2006, six years after the release of the last original Peanuts strip, as well as the death of creator Charles M. Schulz, his son Craig Schulz came up with an idea for a Peanuts film, which he showed to his screenwriter son Bryan Schulz. “I was happy to show my son,” Craig said. “He showed me how to make it bigger — how to blow it up more — and he helped me put in structure.” When presenting their film to studios, Craig stipulated that the film remain under Schulz control, saying, “We need[ed] to have absolute quality control and keep it under Dad’s legacy… You can’t bring people in from the outside and expect them to understand Peanuts.”

The film will commemorate the 65th anniversary of the comic strip, and is scheduled to be released on November 6, 2015.