Ánima Estudios, One Of Mexico’s Most Important Animation Studios, Has Reportedly Shut Down

Ánima Estudios, one of the largest and most consequential animation companies ever established in Mexico, has reportedly closed after nearly 24 years in business.

Mexican news outlet TV Azteca Laguna reported that the studio’s offices had been emptied and that dozens of artists were left facing an uncertain employment situation. Ánima has not released an official statement about the closure, but its website has gone offline, and several of its social media accounts have been deactivated.

We’ve spoken with numerous sources off the record who have all confirmed that the studio has ceased operations, and that projects they were working on for the company are no longer moving forward, although more specific details are proving difficult-to-impossible to confirm.

The apparent shutdown follows months of public allegations by current and former employees about unpaid salaries, dismissals, and irregularities in benefits and severance. According to Mexican outlet La Crónica de Hoy, workers said in April that some wages had gone unpaid for as long as five months, and we can confirm that we started receiving anonymous and off-the-record emails in the spring. More than 60 employees were reportedly dismissed, with some claiming they had been removed from Mexico’s social security system without warning or had not received the compensation they were owed.

Reports of payment problems at the company date back much further, but the situation appears to have deteriorated last year as projects were paused, layoffs accelerated, and payments stopped. Neither Ánima nor its owners have publicly provided a detailed account of the company’s finances or the events that led to the apparent closure, and all attempts by Cartoon Brew to solicit comment or clarification have gone unanswered.

Although the efficacy of Ánima’s management will require a thorough, likely lengthy, autopsy, it is hard to overstate how significant a blow the loss of a company of its size and output will be to Mexico’s animation industry. Founded in Mexico City in 2002 by Fernando de Fuentes and José C. García de Letona, Ánima helped establish a sustainable market for locally produced animated features at a time when theatrical animation made outside the States was still a difficult proposition across much of Latin America. Although the studio provided service and commercial work, it also produced a prolific output of domestically-focused originals.

Its first feature, Magos y Gigantes, was released in 2003. Over the following two decades, Ánima produced more than two dozen films, along with television series, digital content, and licensing ventures. Several of its releases rank among the most commercially successful Mexican animated features ever made.

The company’s biggest theatrical hit was Top Cat: The Movie, a 2011 adaptation of the Hanna-Barbera television series distributed by Warner Bros. The film became a major success in Mexico and was followed by Top Cat Begins in 2015.

Ánima’s most enduring original property, however, is undoubtedly the Leyendas series of films. Beginning with La Leyenda de la Nahuala in 2007, the films followed children as they confronted supernatural figures drawn from Mexican history and folklore. Later installments included La Leyenda de la Llorona, La Leyenda de las Momias de Guanajuato, La Leyenda del Chupacabras, and La Leyenda del Charro Negro.

The series became one of the most valuable homegrown animated franchises in all of Latin America, proving that locally rooted stories could support multiple theatrical releases rather than a single novelty hit or featival/awards-friendly one-off. Its mix of horror, comedy, and regional mythology gave the films a recognizable identity that distinguished them from imported animated films, which have otherwise dominated the local box office.

The property later expanded to television with Netflix’s Legend Quest, released globally in 2017. The show was described at the time as Netflix’s first original animated series produced in Latin America and was made available in 190 countries. A second series, Legend Quest: Masters of Myth, followed in 2019.

Ánima also became an important production partner for some of the biggest media companies working in the region. The studio produced El Chavo Animado, the long-running animated adaptation of Roberto Gómez Bolaños’ iconic sitcom, and worked on projects involving Warner Bros., Disney, Cartoon Network, Netflix, Mattel, and Frederator.

Its most ambitious international collaboration finally arrived just last year with Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires. Produced with Warner Bros. Animation and Chatrone, the feature relocated the Batman mythology to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Ánima handled production in Mexico, with Juan Meza-León directing. The series was teased for years before its release, even scoring an Annecy Work in Progress session in 2023.

The production represented an unusual level of responsibility for a Latin American studio working with one of entertainment’s most closely managed IPs. Rather than functioning solely as an overseas service vendor, Ánima led production on the show, which reinterpreting Batman through Mexican history, iconography, and creative talent.

As recently as last year, the studio was also developing a three-minute animation demo for Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s adult series project El Guapo vs. the Narco Vampires. Other projects reportedly in development included La Venganza del Charro Negro, another installment in the Leyendas franchise that had been expected to arrive later this year.

What will happen to the ongoing projects, Ánima’s intellectual property, and its unfinished productions is currently unclear. The company’s ownership structure could complicate any sale or reorganization. From experience, we know that Ánima kept a very low profile and rarely spoke publicly about how the company operated, its goals, or its business. Many attempts were made over the years to profile the studio, and although they were often met with initial enthusiasm, nothing ever materialized. What we do know is that the private equity firm LIV Capital acquired a majority stake in Ánima in 2017 after investing in the company several times in the years before that, with AG Studios later joining as an investor.

Beyond the accusations of mismanagement and employee neglect, Ánima’s closure is also monumental for the catalog of films and series it leaves in limbo, and for the opportunities it created in a market starving for more animated  content and loaded with world-class talent. For many Mexican artists, the studio served as a training ground and one of the country’s few employers capable of maintaining large animation teams across successive productions. Its projects helped develop directors, animators, designers, production managers, and technical artists who later spread throughout Mexico’s growing animation sector and further abroad.

The studio was not the whole of Mexican animation, and the country now has a broader and more internationally connected production community than it did when Ánima began. But few companies have played such a central role in proving that Mexican animated films could attract domestic audiences, build lasting franchises, and eventually achieve global distribution.

Taken as a whole, the reported shutdown is more than the disappearance of a single production company. It marks the apparent end of an institution that helped transform feature animation in Mexico from an occasional experiment into a functioning industry.