Why Megan Ellison Saved ‘Nimona’: “I Needed This Movie”
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In January of 2021, Megan Ellison got a call from Erik Lomis, the former head of distribution at her company, Annapurna Pictures, asking if she’d like to take a look at a movie whose filmmakers needed a lifeline. Disney was days away from announcing that it planned to shutter Blue Sky Studios, the 500-person, Greenwich, Connecticut-based animation studio it had inherited in the 2019 Fox acquisition, and with that closure, the Burbank media giant would be dropping Blue Sky’s most promising movie, Nimona.
“I wasn’t really engaging in new film projects at the time, but being curious, I said yes,” Ellison said, in an email.
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Ellison watched the hand-drawn storyboard reels, which directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane had adapted from ND Stevenson’s 2015 graphic novel, and instantly connected with the title character, a shape-shifter voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz who appears most often as a young woman, but can change into animals or other people. “I had never seen a character like Nimona in a film, let alone an animated family movie,” Ellison said. “I needed this movie when I was a kid, and quite frankly, I needed it right then and there. It was the perfect story to come into my life at that moment.”
Nimona — which has LGBTQ themes that Disney executives wanted to downplay — seemed destined to become a tax write-off before Ellison scooped it up. Now the movie, which Netflix released last June, is nominated for an Oscar for animated feature.
“We pretty much agreed Nimona was the best thing we’d ever made and it would never see the light of the day,” said Robert Baird, who previously headed Blue Sky and is now running Ellison’s Annapurna Animation together with Disney alumnus Andrew Millstein. Nimona is the division’s first feature film.
The movie’s path to the screen included seemingly every obstacle that can beset a modern production — a director change, a pandemic, a merger, and finally, studio pushback. Its final incarnation, as an independent movie backed by Ellison, meant Nimona‘s filmmakers had an unusual degree of creative latitude for an animated family film.
Bruno and Quane, who made 2019’s Spies in Disguise at Blue Sky, came aboard Nimona in March of 2020 after original director Patrick Osborne departed over creative differences. Their position was to embrace the LGBTQ themes in the source material, including a romantic relationship between two knights, voiced in the film by Riz Ahmed and Eugene Lee Yang, and a potential reading of Nimona as a trans character. Working remotely during the height of the pandemic with the goal of a January 2022 release, Bruno and Quane put together reels to show their vision to Disney executives. But a Zoom meeting with then Disney chief creative officer Alan Horn made it clear the studio wasn’t on board. “The first words out of [Horn’s] mouth were, ‘Can we talk about the gay stuff?'” says Bruno. After Bill Condon’s 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast remake had Josh Gad’s Le Fou dancing with a man as what Condon said was Disney’s first openly gay character, the studio had gotten angry emails, Disney executives told the filmmakers. (This was over a year before Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill and Pixar’s Lightyear, which has a kiss between two female characters, thrust Disney deeper into the culture wars.) “They said it’s something they want to move toward eventually, but they don’t want to do it just yet,” Bruno said.
The filmmakers didn’t have long to marinate on the notes. On Feb. 9, 2021, Disney announced it was closing Blue Sky amid the pressures of pandemic-era economics. For Millstein, who had moved from Walt Disney Animation to become president of Blue Sky after the Fox deal, the focus shifted to a new mission. “If we couldn’t save the entire studio, how do you at least save the movie?” Millstein said. He and Baird began shopping the film to hedge funds, banks and studios. “We got a lot of passes,” Baird said.
Baird and Millstein found enthusiasm for the property at Netflix, with then Netflix animation executives Melissa Cobb and Greg Taylor. But the streamer wanted financial help with the production. Ellison, meanwhile, watched the reels multiple times and spoke to Millstein. “Andrew got off the phone with Megan and said, ‘I think maybe we have a savior,'” Baird said.
“I backed the film because it wasn’t going to happen otherwise,” Ellison said. “Everyone else who could support a film of this size had passed. I heard Netflix was interested but they needed a partner on it and that’s where Annapurna came in.” Ellison paid a fee to purchase the project from Disney, and paid to hire DNEG, the London-based VFX and animation company, to do the animation, for a budget that Millstein characterizes as “a moderately priced tentpole movie.” (Nimona cost less than Blue Sky’s last film, Bruno and Quane’s $100 million Spies in Disguise.)
Shortly after coming aboard, Ellison met with the filmmakers on Zoom. “Her only mandate was, ‘What did you feel like you couldn’t fully express before, under the leadership you had? Do that. Lean into it,'” Quane says. In other words, don’t worry about the gay stuff. “We were able to make what is typically subtext text,” says Bruno. “Very often in animation there are stories that queer youth will see themselves in — a bunny who is trying to live with cats — but it’s never explicitly said. We didn’t have to be metaphorical. We could say, ‘This is a real relationship.'” In Nimona the two knights hold hands, tell each other they love each other and kiss at the end.
At one point, the filmmakers began to doubt whether Nimona could sustain a serious section in the third act, an almost two-minute, dialogue-free stretch that deals with teen suicide. “You start hearing these corporate voices in the back of your head: ‘Funny is money. Let’s cram some jokes in here,'” Quane said. “Megan said, ‘Guys, you know what the right choice is here. Trust yourselves.'” They left out the jokes.
Ellison said she has been heartened by the response to Nimona, which has a 93 percent fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and in addition to its Oscar nomination has also received nods from the Critics Choice Awards, the Annie Awards and the GLAAD Media Awards. “I love that Nimona is getting a lot of attention for being an LGBTQ+ story, because it is that and it’s for us queer folk,” Ellison said. “But it’s worth saying that I think the appeal and message of the film goes far beyond that. Anyone who has ever felt misunderstood or like an outsider can relate to this movie. And it’s fun!”
Annapurna Animation, which employs 11 people, is developing more content. They plan to make original films and movies based on properties created by Annapurna’s gaming unit, as well as TV shows, such as a series based on Sausage Party, the 2016 R-rated animated comedy Ellison produced with Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures. Baird said, “We all held hands and said, ‘Yeah, let’s develop some more movies beyond Nimona.”
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