Cocomelon Cocomelon

Dreamworks Animation will produce the first-ever Cocomelon animated feature, based on characters created for the Youtube preschool channel.

The film will be released by Dreamworks’ parent company Universal Pictures. The film was greenlit by Cocomelon’s producer Moonbug Entertainment (a division of Candle Media) and Flywheel Media. Other partners include Prime Focus Studios (The Garfield Movie) and animation studio DNEG Animation (Nimona).

The film will release theatrically in 2027.

No details have been released on the financial structure of the film, but it sounds like it may be patterned similarly to how The Angry Birds film franchise has been produced with the majority of production and marketing costs covered by the IP owner — in this case, Moonbug — and not by the film studio, Universal. As such, there is likely both more risk (and reward) for Moonbug than there is Universal and Dreamworks.

Cocomelon launched in 2006 as the Youtube channel ThatsMEonTV, but the characters for which the brand has become globally famous, including star baby JJ, didn’t appear until around 2017. An in-depth fan-researched history of the characters can be found in this Reddit post.

Today, it’s the third-most subscribed channel on Youtube with 193 million subscribers. Its animated videos have been viewed over 200 billion times. Candle Media, run by former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, acquired the Cocomelon IP in 2021 for around $3 billion.

In 2022, Netflix began streaming Cocomelon and has since launched the original series Cocomelon Lane. The shows are among the most-watched animation titles on Netflix. Cocomelon content has aired on plenty of other linear networks including Universal Kids from 2021 until the network’s closure earlier this year.

The brand has expanded in recent years to include a robust consumer products program as well as live entertainment shows.

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