5 Big Announcements From Annecy: Ron Clements, ‘In Your Dreams,’ ‘ParaNorman,’ ‘Miraculous Stellar Force’ And ‘Lars Of The Stars’

Another edition (the 49th) of the Annecy Int’l Animated Film Festival has come and gone, and with it, lots and lots of animation news.

Whereas most Hollywood animation producers used to wait until San Diego Comic-Con to reveal major news, Annecy is now THE place to make major announcements in the animation world. Here are five big reveals that happened at last week’s event:

Walt Disney Animation Studios: Legendary Disney director Ron Clements, half of the directing team of such memorable works as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Moana, is coming out of retirement and returning to Disney Animation in an advisory role. “I’m excited about just returning to kind of mentor,” the 72-year-old filmmaker said last week during Annecy. “There aren’t as many old people around as there used to be, and there certainly are so many young people who want to work in animation.”

Netflix: The streamer rolled out the first trailer for In Your Dreams, its highly-anticipated fall feature, releasing November 14, 2025. The film, directed by Alex Woo and co-directed by Erik Benson, is a comedy-adventure that follows Stevie and her brother Elliot as they journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams. Per the synopsis: “If the siblings can withstand a snarky stuffed giraffe, zombie breakfast foods, and the queen of nightmares, the Sandman will grant them their ultimate dream come true…the perfect family.”

Laika: The Oregon-based studio will theatrically re-release its second feature, ParaNorman (2012), for a limited one-week theatrical engagement this Halloween season. Trafalgar Releasing will open in international markets on Thursday, October 23, while Fathom Entertainment will release in the U.S. on Saturday, October 25. The remastered film, available in RealD 3D and 2d formats, will be accompanied by a new cg short film, ParaNorman: The Thrifting, directed by Laika’s lead character designer Thibault LeClercq and written by Chris Butler. The short was produced in association with Passion Pictures.

ParaNorman’s revival follows last year’s re-release of the studio’s first film, Coraline, which earned an incredible $56 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest global film re-releases of the past decade. Approximately 70% of the U.S. gross of Coraline’s re-release was in 3d format.

Disney Channel: Miraculous Stellar Force, an anime-inspired spin-off of the popular French Miraculous franchise, will premiere in 2027 on Disney Channel and Disney+. Unlike the original cg series, the new show is hand-drawn 2d. The series is created by Thomas Astruc, who also created the original Miraculous – Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.

Per Disney, the show is “set in an international school in Tokyo, where twelve students discover they are guardians of the shattered Stellar Matrix, an ancient cosmic weapon. Led by Miki, Mayotte, and Yu Lu, the team must overcome clashing personalities and chaotic friendships to unite against rising galactic threats – including the vengeful Modeler and the dark entity known only as The Supreme.” A one-hour special introducing the characters will debut later this year.

Prime Video: Cartoon Network Studios is developing a new Steven Universe spin-off series called Steven Universe: Lars of the Stars. The new show is developed by show creator Rebecca Sugar and her husband Ian Jones-Quartey (OK K.O.!). The new show amplifies a character from the original series, Lars Barriga, who is described as an “eternal teenager and space outlaw” as he and a crew of pirates “smuggle contraband, evade the authorities and uncover the darkest secrets of the fallen Gem Empire.”

Tellingly, even though the show is being produced by Cartoon Network Studios, it wasn’t commissioned by the slowly-decaying Cartoon Network, but is rather headed to Amazon’s Prime Video.