‘Cosmic Motors,' John Lasseter's First Film in 15 Years, Moves from Netflix to Paramount Theatrical Release

UPDATE: According to Vulture,the Netflix/Skydance deal is off because “Spellbound” was such a disappointment that the streamer expressed a desire to get out of the deal.

EARLIER: Netflix and Skydance Animation have called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.

Both pledged to see through the release of Brad Bird's "Ray Gunn." The biggest casualty — or beneficiary, depending on how you look at it — is John Lasseter's "Cosmic Motors," which is the first I'm hearing of this project. It was built for a Netflix debut but will now get a proper theatrical rollout from Paramount Pictures sometime next year.

So what is "Cosmic Motors"? It's being pitched as "Cars" in space. The film is based on Daniel Simon's 2007 concept-art book of the same name, a cult object among vehicle designers built around a fictional manufacturer headquartered in the Galaxion galaxy — CoMo to its devotees — with nine ships, pods, racers, war machines and giant trains rendered in photorealistic detail.

Paramount is now Skydance-controlled and starving for theatrical product, with David Ellison having set a post-Warner Bros. target of 30 movies a year. A finished Lasseter feature sitting on a streamer is exactly the kind of asset that gets repackaged for theaters.

Then there's Lasseter's own directing résumé. He came up through '80s Pixar shorts, then made five features: "Toy Story" in 1995, "A Bug's Life" in 1998, "Toy Story 2" in 1999, "Cars" in 2006 and "Cars 2" in 2011. After that he stopped directing and ran things instead, serving as CCO of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios through the stretch that produced "Tangled," "Frozen" and "Zootopia."

Of course, you might know that Lasseter left Disney at the end of 2018 following misconduct allegations and a leave of absence, and was hired by Skydance Animation in January 2019, a move that drew significant public criticism at the time. "Cosmic Motors" will be his first directing credit in roughly fifteen years.