Netflix has invested heavily in original animation and received a great deal of critical success as a return on that investment. In terms of hours viewed, however, the streamer’s original feature titles haven’t fared nearly as well.
Premiering October 28, Henry Selick’s Wendell & Wild failed to break into Netflix’s weekly Top 10 English-Language Films list in its first week on the platform, while Illumination’s Sing (2016) and Dreamworks Animation’s The Boss Baby (2017) both achieved the feat during that same period.
The only Netflix original animated feature released this year to break into the company’s Top 10 weekly list was Chris Williams’ The Sea Beast, becoming the streamer’s most-viewed original animated film while doing so. It is a small sample size to be sure – Netflix’s only other feature-length animation titles released so far this year are Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood, Entergalactic, The House, and Wendell & Wild – but if Netflix is recruiting talent like Selick and co-writer/producer Jordan Peele to make animated films for them, a Top 10 debut seems a reasonable expectation.
