Sony Pictures Animation has a new movie in 2026 with the sports story GOAT, and it shows the studio is still putting out quality work and is just getting better as time goes on. Sony Pictures Animation started up in 2002, and it was established to compete with movies from DreamWorks, which it has done over the years.
While never seen on the same level as DreamWorks, Pixar, or Disney Animation, the studio continued to put out quality work, and people are starting to take notice. With 30 feature films to its name, Sony Pictures Animation has won at the box office and on Netflix, and it even has this year’s Oscar frontrunner for Best Animated Feature.
The Angry Birds Movie (2016)
While it is true that The Angry Birds Movie is an acquired taste, and for some people a guilty pleasure, it is actually a funny, family-friendly animated movie that surpassed most expectations. The fact that it is based on an app phone game and yet somehow became an entertaining movie was a huge surprise.
Released in 2016, the movie introduced three Angry Birds characters in Red, Bomb, and Chuck, and then had them rally their fellow birds to battle the pigs who attempted to steal their eggs. The animated film was a huge success, making $352 million at the box office, and while it received lackluster reviews, it remains popular.
In fact, a sequel hit theaters in 2019, and while the box office dropped for that sequel, a third movie in the franchise is coming out in 2026.
Wish Dragon (2021)
Wish Dragon is a fantasy comedy that Sony Animation released internationally on Netflix in 2021, while it was released theatrically in China. This caused many fans to overlook it, but this is an animated movie that deserves more attention, especially with a sequel coming out in 2027.
The movie is about a college student named Din Song who finds a teapot that contains a dragon who can grant three wishes. It is the story of the Djinn, but with a dragon instead, and is an Eastern version of a movie like Aladdin. This is the first Sony Animation movie to use effects provided by ILM, which upped the game for the studio.
Critics praised the movie, with a 71% Rotten Tomatoes score, and while the humor was considered juvenile at times, the animation itself received high praise. The China-set comedy also set things up for the studio’s biggest Asian release, which arrived four years later.
Open Season (2006)
Open Season was another popular franchise for Sony Animation, and it ended up with three sequels, a video game, and even a television series called Open Season: Call of Nature in 2023. The original movie was released in 2006, and it followed a domesticated bear who was freed to live in the woods.
The problem is that he is domesticated, and he has no idea how to survive. He teams up with a mule deer named Elliot to get back home before open season starts, and the hunters start gunning for him. With Ashton Kutcher and Martin Lawrence in the lead voice cast, the movie was a huge success.
It made $200.8 million at the box office and received mixed to negative reviews from critics, although it was a favorite for kids and has a slightly higher audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
While it is often seen as lowbrow humor, Hotel Transylvania remains Sony Animation’s most successful movie franchise, and it is the reason the studio was able to make more critically acclaimed movies in the following years. However, it is a mistake to underestimate the first movie in the franchise.
While it might seem hard to believe, no less than Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Primal) directed the first film in the franchise. While the humor is lowbrow at times, it is a visually dynamic experience with Tartakovsky’s sensibilities on display all the way through.
The movie was such a monster success that it spawned a franchise that included three sequels, two of which Tartakovsky returned to direct. Two main cast members left before the final sequel, with Adam Sandler and Kevin James both departing the voice cast.
The Pirates! Band Of Misfits (2012)
The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a criminally overlooked animated movie from Aardman Studios, the company behind Wallace & Gromit. This movie was released in 2012 by Sony Animation, and it has Peter Lord bringing his stop-motion brilliance to the realm of swashbuckling pirate films.
A group of amateur pirates set out to win the Pirate of the Year competition, with voice actors like Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Martin Freeman, and Jeremy Piven in the main roles. The movie was a small success, but it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
The fact that no one talks about this film is criminal. This is a movie that has the same quirky sense of humor as the Wallace & Gromit movies, but fans seem to have let it pass them by. It is one of Sony Animation’s best animated releases.
GOAT (2026)
GOAT is the newest Sony Animation movie release, and it has received positive reviews, thanks to a strong mix of the story and the incredible animation techniques that Sony has become known for over the last decade. The film is a sports story about an undersized “roarball” player with a big heart.
NBA star Steph Curry, one of the NBA’s best undersized basketball players in history (6 ft 2 in), produced the movie, and Caleb McLaughlin voices the main character of Will Harris, a young goat who makes the team his idol, black panther Jett Fillmore plays for. At this point, his own idol mocks him for his size.
There is a lot going on in this film that owes to its critical success. This is an underdog story about a person who won’t give up on their dreams despite the world seeming to be against them. GOAT also has a hidden message, as Will’s idol, Jett, is a female roarball player, which is meant to show the rise in women’s sports in the real world.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009)
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is based on the incredibly popular children’s book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett, and is directed by the team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who later made The LEGO Movie. The movie follows a young scientist who discovers how to turn water into food.
While this is seen as a great thing, at first, it gets out of control when the machine malfunctions and starts to create food storms, which threaten to destroy the world. While the movie was a little expensive for a Sony Animation release at $100 million, it still broke $243 million at the box office.
However, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews with an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It also spawned a sequel and a TV series based on the book.
Arthur Christmas (2011)
Arthur Christmas was a second collaboration between Aardman Studios and Sony Animation, but this was different for Aardman because it wasn’t stop-motion animation. Instead, Aardman used computer animation, the second time the studio did this, following Flushed Away.
What resulted was one of the best yet underrated animated Christmas movies of all time. The movie follows Arthur, Santa Claus’s younger, more neurotic son. While his older brother, Steve, has started to modernize Christmas and plans to take over for his dad, Arthur sets out to return one gift to a girl whom Steve forgot.
The movie received critical acclaim, with a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the story was about the true meaning of Christmas and about how no one should ever get left behind. It ranks high among the best Aardman movies the studio has ever made.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023)
This list of the best Sony Animated movies ever made includes only one from each franchise. However, both Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse deserve spots on the list. Both feature cutting-edge animation that has changed the entire business for most studios.
However, what moves Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ahead of the first movie is the changes in animation that add to the fantastic original story. Miles Morales meets a lot more variants of Spider-Man from across the multiverse, and each of the characters has their own animation style.
From Spider-Man Noir’s classic black and white old-school animation to Spider-Man India’s most Eastern-influenced style to the look at them moving between universes, this is arguably the most amazing animation work done in any movie in the 21st century, from start to finish.
KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
No one could have seen KPop Demon Hunters coming from a studio like Sony Animation. However, for a company that pushed boundaries in animation with movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and broke ground in international movies like Wish Dragon, this was the obvious destination.
KPop Demon Hunters is a movie about a K-pop girl group called Huntrix, who are also demon hunters. In this movie, they face off against a rival boy band called the Saka Boys, who happen to secretly be demons themselves. What resulted was Sony Animation’s greatest triumph.
KPop Demon Hunters is the most-watched original Netflix movie in history, with over 500 million views. It was so popular that Netflix broke its long-standing rule of skipping theatrical releases and sent it to theaters for a second run. From the story to the animation, this is the best Sony Animation movie ever released.