Nimona’s first Netflix teaser goes all in on making fun of Disney

It was a long road to the screen Nimona, the animated adaptation of ND Stevenson’s webcomic graphic novel about a mistreated knight in a wild sci-fi techno future and the changing girl who declares herself his sidekick. The film was originally produced at Blue Sky Studios (home of the Ice Age films) and it wasn’t until months after its completion that Disney – which had acquired Blue Sky’s parent company, 20th Century Fox – canceled the project. (A Blue Sky employee told Business Insider last year

this Disney “Systematically censors queer content” which means the film was shelved because two of its leads portray a gay couple.)

Netflix announced in April 2022 that it would start and complete the project, and the streaming service has now released the first teaser for the film. This early look contains only a small portion of the actual animation from the film – mostly a snappy frame story in which the shape-shifting girl Nimona (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) takes on a classic Disney-style fairy tale to create it mocking – and setting fire to a Disney princess and her entire castle. It all has the stylized, fast-paced “teenage artist playing with style and self-promotion” vibe of Netflix’s previous animated film The Mitchells against the machines

.

But the last part of the teaser offers a brief look at it Nimona

world and in particular Nimona herself who transforms into a whale, a gorilla and other animals. If you don’t bat an eyelid, you’ll get a glimpse of the graphic novel’s hero, Ballister Blackheart – here renamed Ballister Boldheart – in the middle of a chaotic battle.

Here is the Netflix description of the film:

A knight (Riz Ahmed) is framed for 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 teenager who may be too is a monster he swore to kill. Set in a techno-medieval world unlike anything seen in animation before, it’s a story about the labels we give people and the shapeshifter who refuses to be defined by anyone.

Nimona will premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival in mid-June and hit Netflix on June 30th.