Nimona (Annapurna/Netflix, 2023)

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Fox Animation has announced a release date — February 14, 2020 — for Nimona, the feature directorial debut of Oscar-winning director Patrick Osborne (Disney’s Feast, Google’s Pearl).

The genre-bending Nimona follows a shapeshifting teen girl who becomes a sidekick to a supervillain. The project started its life as a webcomic created by Noelle Stevenson, while she was a 20-year-old student in art school. HarperCollins published the comic as a graphic novel in 2015, the same year that Fox acquired the animation rights.

The cg-animated Nimona will be produced at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Blue Sky Studios, best known for its Ice Age and Rio franchises. Their latest film, Ferdinand, opens in December. It’s an unconventional — and intriguing — project for the insular Fox-owned studio, which up until now had developed its ideas in-house and relied on a small group of in-house directors to helm its features.

Screenwriter Marc Haimes (Kubo and the Two Strings) is adapting Nimona for animation.

Osborne, speaking to Variety in February, offered some insights into how the idea was being developed for the screen. “It’s kid-friendly, for sure,” he said. “The comic book is kind of violent so we have to tone it down, but it’s very smart and we’re sticking to the self-aware tone of the comic. What Noelle did with the writing, we definitely want to preserve; it’s so good.”