After the closure of the
Screen Gems cartoon studio in 1946 and before the establishment of SPA, Columbia Pictures distributed a few animated films from 1959 to 2006 that were produced by outside studios, including
1001 Arabian Nights,
The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, ''
Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!, The Man Called Flintstone, Jack and the Beanstalk, American Pop, Heavy Metal, Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Eight Crazy Nights,
and Monster House.'' In 2001,
Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility
Sony Pictures Imageworks but after failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the
CGI sequences of
Stuart Little and seeing the box office successes of
DreamWorks Animation's
Shrek, SPI was reconfigured to become an animation studio.
Astro Boy, which had been in development at Sony since 1997 as a live-action film, was set to be SPI's first all-CGI film, but never made it to fruition. On May 9, 2002, Sony Pictures Animation was established to develop characters, stories and movies with SPI taking over the digital production while maintaining its visual effects production. Meanwhile, SPI produced two short films, the
Academy Award-winning
The ChubbChubbs! and
Early Bloomer, as a result of testing its strengths and weaknesses in producing all-CGI animation. On its first anniversary on May 9, 2003, Sony Pictures Animation announced a full slate of animated projects in development:
Open Season, an adaptation of a Celtic folk ballad
Tam Lin,
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, ''
Surf's Up, and a feature-length film version of The ChubbChubbs!'' On May 27, 2014, it was announced that
Netflix had acquired streaming rights to films produced by Sony Pictures Animation. On November 3, 2014, the studio collaborated with
Frederator Studios'
Cartoon Hangover on
GO! Cartoons, an incubator series consisting of 12 short films, with at least one short film being developed into a series. The short films were funded by SPA, with the additional goal of attracting new talent for the studio. In June 2019, Sony Pictures Animation announced that they had launched an "International" division headed by
Aron Warner at the 2019
Annecy International Animated Film Festival, with
Wish Dragon set to be the division's first film. The same day, they also announced an "Alternative" division aimed at producing
adult animated content, headed by Katie Baron and Kevin Noel. In addition to Tartakovsky's films
Black Knight and
Fixed, the division's TV shows are set to include
Superbago, a co-production with
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios that was originally greenlit as a feature film; and
Hungry Ghosts, a series based on the
Dark Horse graphic novel by
Anthony Bourdain and
Joel Rose. They had previously announced their plans to produce adult content at the 2017 Annecy festival. In January 2021, during the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix purchased the distribution rights to
The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Later that year, Netflix released
Wish Dragon in June, and
Vivo in August. While
The Mitchells vs. the Machines and
Wish Dragon were released in theatres only in mainland
China,
Vivo was released
in limited theatres in the United States. The 2025 films
KPop Demon Hunters and
Fixed were distributed by Netflix as part of the company's first-look deal with the streamer, with both films receiving limited releases.
Fixed was originally going to be released through
Warner Bros. Pictures and
New Line Cinema, but it was dropped in 2024 as part of cost-saving measures by parent company
Warner Bros. Discovery, with the rights returning to Sony. Netflix would instead end up purchasing the rights to the film. ==Process==