Karol G. Courtesy Of Netflix ©2025
Netflix will no longer be the home for the new animated feature film from Steve Box, the award-winning director behind Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit and Moominvalley, titled The Cat Burglars.
The project was unveiled in June 2022 as part of a “bold” slate of new European animated series and films. Most of the titles from this slate have now been released, such as Scrooge: A Christmas Carol and That Christmas, which landed just in time for the holidays in 2022 and 2024, respectively. Bad Dinosaurs was released last year, Wereworld was released earlier this year, and The Seven Bears is due out this Summer. That leaves two projects: Embers and The Cat Burglars (initially labeled Untitled Steve Box Animated Film).
Months after the announcement, Embers, the follow-up project from Klaus director Sergio Pablos, was announced to be scuppered entirely. While it was noted that the project could be shopped, that has not yet happened. That brings us to the new animated feature from Steve Box.
Originally described as an “animated family comedy heist movie,” the film centers on Tibbles, Holly, Sox, and Smudge, a rag-tag gang of stray cats keen to keep their freedom.
Steve Box Animated Film Concept Art (2022)
There’s been minimal movement on the movie from Netflix’s end, and we’ve now confirmed that the streamer will not be distributing the film. Where will the animated movie be released, and will it even come out at all? That’s unclear. While Superprod still marks the project as “in development” on its website, we could find no distributor attached to the project.
This isn’t the first time an animated movie initially attached to Netflix has gone independent. A couple of years ago, we learned that the exact same thing happened to the animated film High in the Clouds, which had Paul McCartney’s involvement. That went independent for a time and is now being distributed by multiple vendors around the globe. There are also other notable high-profile animated cancellations in Netflix animation history, such as Cattywumpus, Escape from Hat, and I, Chihuahua.
Superprod did not respond to a request for comment on release plans, and Netflix declined to comment.
Picture: SuperProd Animation
While The Cat Burglars won’t be coming to Netflix, there are plenty of new animated feature films to watch. This year, we’ve already been treated to Plankton: The Movie and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (excluding the UK), with Lost in Starlight, KPOP: Demon Hunters, Pookoo, The Twits, and In Your Dreams still to come this year, with even more in the pipeline.
