Warner Bros. Pictures Animation

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation (WBPA), formerly known as the Warner Animation Group (WAG), is an American animation studio that serves as the feature film label of Warner Bros.' theatrical film production and distribution division, Warner Bros. Pictures. Established on January 7, 2013, by Jeff Robinov, the studio is the successor to the dissolved 2D traditional hand-drawn animation studio Warner Bros. Feature Animation, which shut down in 2004, and is also a sister to the regular Warner Bros. Animation studio. Its first film, The Lego Movie, was released on February 7, 2014, and its most recent film was DC League of Super-Pets on July 29, 2022; their upcoming slate of films includes The Cat in the Hat in 2025, Thing One and Thing Two in 2026, Oh, the Places You'll Go! in 2027, and Coyote vs. Acme, Toto, and Meet the Flintstones on unspecified release dates. Films produced by WBPA have grossed a total of $2 billion at the box office. History On January 7, 2013, Jeff Robinov (then head of the studio's motion picture division) founded a screenplay development department, nicknamed a "think tank" for developing theatrical animated films, known as the Warner Animation Group. The group includes John Requa, Glenn Ficarra, Nicholas Stoller, Jared Stern, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Warner Bros. created the group with the hope that the box office reception of their films will be competitive with other animation studios' releases. On February 7, 2014, Warner Animation Group released their first film, The Lego Movie, a film animated by Animal Logic, which also provided the animation for both spinoffs. It was met with critical praise and proved to be a box-office success. Due to the movie's success, a media franchise was created, with two spinoffs, The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie (both 2017), and a sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019). While The Lego Batman Movie proved to be successful at the box office, The Lego Ninjago Movie and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part were both unable to recoup its budget, with Ninjago being the first film from the Warner Animation Group to be a box-office flop.