Locksmith Animation

Locksmith Animation is a British-American independent computer animation feature film studio owned by Sister Group. Headquartered in London, England with an office in Los Angeles, California, Locksmith is best known for producing and developing independent computer-animated feature films.

Locksmith Animation

Logo used since April 2023
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Computer animation Film production
Founded	January 14, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-01-14)
Founder	Sarah Smith Julie Lockhart Elisabeth Murdoch (financial backing)[1]
Headquarters	113 Regent's Park Road, London, England , United Kingdom
Number of locations	2 (2024)
Key people	Julie Lockhart (president of prod.) Natalie Fischer (CEO) Mary Coleman (CCO) Britt Gardiner (COO) Daphne Mather (Head of Culture) Doug Ikeler (CTO/SVP Digital Prod.) Shelley Page (Head of Talent)
Products	Feature films
Owner	Sister Group
Number of employees	100 (2025)
Parent	Sister Pictures
Website	www.locksmithanimation.com

Locksmith Animation's first film, Ron's Gone Wrong, was released on 22 October 2021, distributed by 20th Century Studios (which had recently been acquired by Disney two years prior) with positive reviews. That Christmas, a holiday film based on the children's Christmas book trilogy That Christmas and Other Stories by British filmmaker Richard Curtis, was released by Netflix on 4 December 2024. The studio's next films are, Bad Fairies, a subversive original musical-comedy film set in contemporary London, to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures^[2] on 23 July 2027, The Lunar Chronicles, based on the author Marissa Meyer's four young adult science fiction fantasy novels by the same name, and Wed Wabbit, based on the adventure fiction novel from Lissa Evans, and their first independent feature, to be funded and release by themselves.

History

Locksmith Animation was founded in January 14, 2014 by media executive businesswoman Elisabeth Murdoch and two Aardman Animations collaborators Sarah Smith and Julie Lockhart. Locksmith was named after Lockhart and Smith's surnames.^[3] In April 2014, visual effects studio Double Negative (now known as DNEG) formed a deal with Locksmith to provide the computer animation for Locksmith's films, this led DNEG to found their own animation department, DNEG Feature Animation (now known as DNEG Animation).^[4]

The early logo of Locksmith Animation used since 2015

In May 2016, Locksmith formed a production deal with Paramount Pictures, with Paramount acting as the distributor for Locksmith's films to be produced under the Paramount Animation label.^[3] The following year, however, Paramount abandoned its deal with Locksmith when Paramount chairman and CEO Brad Grey was replaced by Jim Gianopulos.^[5]

In September 2017, Locksmith formed a multi-year production deal with 20th Century Fox, which would distribute Locksmith's films; 20th Century Fox Animation was brought in to oversee the deal, as Locksmith was aiming to release a film every 12–18 months.^[5][6] The first film to be produced by Locksmith Animation was Ron's Gone Wrong which was released on 22 October 2021 by 20th Century Studios.^[5][7] In February 2018, it was announced that Locksmith was developing Wed Wabbit, a live-action/animated hybrid film based on Lissa Evans' children's book, originally served as the first live-action/animated hybrid film from Locksmith.^[8] In October 2019, after Disney took over 20th Century Animation, Locksmith formed a new multi-year production deal with Warner Bros. Pictures, which will distribute three Locksmith films under the Warner Animation Group label after the release of Ron's Gone Wrong, which was now the only theatrical Locksmith film to be distributed by 20th Century Studios.^[1]

The original logo of Locksmith Animation (used from 2017 to 2023) with the Sister Pictures byline (used from 2021 to 2023)

Sister Pictures was announced as Locksmith Animation's parent company following the release of Ron's Gone Wrong in October 2021.

In June 2021, it was announced that Natalie Fischer, the former COO of Illumination Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation and Pixar would step in as CEO. Locksmith co-founder Sarah Smith exited the company to pursue her own creative endeavours. It was also announced that Locksmith is currently in production on That Christmas,^[9] a holiday film based on the children's Christmas book trilogy That Christmas and Other Stories by British filmmaker Richard Curtis, and they are working on an original musical-comedy film.^[10] That Christmas was unveiled in June 2022 as part of Netflix's slate of animated films.^[11]

In January 2022, Locksmith had optioned to adapt Marissa Meyer's fantasy novel series The Lunar Chronicles.^[12]

In June 2023, as part of the rebranding of WAG (now called Warner Bros. Pictures Animation), it was announced that the studio had signed a first-look deal with Locksmith to develop and produce the animated feature films, Bad Fairies, and The Lunar Chronicles for Warner Bros. Pictures.^[13]

Feature films

Released

Release Year	Title	Director(s)	Screenwriter(s)	Producer(s)	Composer(s)	Co-production with	Distributor	Animation service(s)
2021	Ron's Gone Wrong	Sarah Smith Jean-Philippe Vine Co-director: Octavio E. Rodriguez	Peter Baynham Sarah Smith	Julie Lockhart Lara Breay	Henry Jackman	TSG Entertainment	20th Century Studios	DNEG Animation
2024	That Christmas	Simon Otto	Based on the books by: Richard Curtis	Nicole P. Hearon Adam Tandy	John Powell	—	Netflix
			Richard Curtis Peter Souter

Upcoming

Release Year	Title	Director(s)	Screenwriter(s)	Producer(s)	Composer(s)	Co-production with	Distributor	Animation service(s)	Ref.
2027	Bad Fairies	Megan Nicole Dong	Deborah Frances-White	Carolyn Soper	Isabella Summers (score) Toby Marlow Lucy Moss (songs)	Warner Bros. Pictures Animation Sketchshark Productions	Warner Bros. Pictures	DNEG Animation	[10][14]
2029	The Lunar Chronicles	Noëlle Raffaele			Avenged Sevenfold	Warner Bros. Pictures Animation Legendary Entertainment Village Roadshow Pictures	Warner Bros. Pictures
Wed Wabbit	Olly Reid	Based on the book by: Lissa Evans	Julie Lockhart Andrew Baker	Cantilever Media Timeless Films	Sky Cinema	—	[8][15]
		Gideon Defoe

Short films

Release Year	Title	Director(s)	Producer(s)	Composer	Distributor	Animation service(s)
2025	Cardboard[16]	Jean-Philippe Vine	Michaela Manas Malina	TBA	TBA	DNEG Animation Ritzy Animation

Reception

Box office

Film	Budget	USA box office gross	Worldwide box office gross
Ron's Gone Wrong	TBA	$23 million	$60.7 million
That Christmas	TBA	—	—

Critical and public response

Each film is linked to the "Critical response" section of its article.

Film	Rotten Tomatoes	Metacritic	CinemaScore
Ron's Gone Wrong	82% (103 reviews)[17]	65 (23 reviews)[18]	A[19]
That Christmas	66% (41 reviews)[20]	60 (13 reviews)[21]	—

Accolades

Annie Awards

Year	Film	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
2021	Ron's Gone Wrong	Outstanding Achievement for Character Design in a Feature Production	Julien Bizat	Nominated
		Outstanding Achievement for Production Design in an Animated Feature Production	Aurélien Predal, Till Nowak and Nathan Crowley
2025[22]	That Christmas	Best Animated Feature	That Christmas
		Outstanding Achievement for Character Design in an Animated Feature	Uwe Heidschötter
		Outstanding Achievement for Directing in an Animated Feature	Simon Otto
		Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature	John Powell, Ed Sheeran and Johnny McDaid
		Outstanding Achievement for Production Design on an Animated Feature	Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn and Mike Redman
		Outstanding Achievement for Storyboarding in an Animated Feature	Lorenzo Fresta, Ashley Boddy and Helen Schroeder

British Animation Awards

Year	Film	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
2022	Ron's Gone Wrong	Best Long Form	Sarah Smith, Jean-Philippe Vine and Octavio E. Rodriguez	Won
		Best Design
		Writers Award	Sarah Smith and Peter Baynham	Nominated