Nimona’s first Netflix teaser goes all-in on mocking Disney

It’s been a long way to the screen Nimona, the animated adaptation of ND Stevenson’s webcomic-turned-graphic novel about an unjust knight in a wild sci-fi techno future, and the shape-shifting girl who declares herself to be his sidekick. The film was originally in production at Blue Sky Studios (home of the Ice Age films), and it took months for Disney — which had acquired Blue Sky’s parent company, 20th Century Fox — to cancel the project. (An employee of Blue Sky told Business Insider last year that disney “Systematically censors queer content”, implying the movie was stopped because it stars a gay couple.)

Netflix announced in April 2022 that it would pick up and wrap up the project, and now the streaming service has released the first teaser for the film. This early look features only a small amount of actual animation from the movie – mostly it’s a happy frame story where that shape-shifting girl, Nimona (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz), pulls herself into a classic Disney-style fairy tale to mock it – and a Disney princess type and set fire to her entire castle. The whole thing comes with the kind of stylized, fast-moving “teen artist playing with style and self-indulgence” flavor like Netflix’s previous animated movie The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

But the final part of the teaser does offer a quick look at the Nimona world, and in particular Nimona herself, transform into a whale, a gorilla and other animals. If you don’t blink, you get a quick glimpse of the graphic novel’s hero, Ballister Blackheart – here renamed Ballister Boldheart – in the middle of a chaotic fight.

Here’s the Netflix description of the movie:

A knight (Riz Ahmed) is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and the only person who can help him prove his innocence is Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shape-shifting teen who may also be a monster he’s sworn to fight. kill. . This story takes place in a techno-medieval world unlike anything animation has tackled before.

Nimona will premiere at the Annecy Animation festival in mid-June and arrive on Netflix on June 30.