Is SpongeBob next? Skydance just pulled Paramount Animation's I Eat Poop
Short answer: the franchises are safe — it's everything else at the SpongeBob studio that should worry. The merger created one owner for three animation houses, and the first cut wasn't at Warner's.
Start with the casualty, because the name undersells the stakes: I Eat Poop: A Dung Beetle Story, the Mark Pett picture-book adaptation Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort set up at Paramount Animation in 2025, has been dropped from the studio's development slate under the new regime. The Paramount+ TMNT spinoff went quietly with it.
SpongeBob himself isn't going anywhere — Paw Patrol 4 is dated for 2029, the horror-comedy Freddy the 13th for Halloween 2028, and franchises that reliable don't get cut. The question the pulled projects raise is about everything around them, because post-merger Skydance now controls three animation studios: Paramount Animation under Jennifer Dodge, Skydance Animation under John Lasseter, and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation under Bill Damaschke. The company says all three stay open and independent, at least for now.
Three studios, one favorite
Read TheWrap's survey of the industry and the pecking order is not subtle. WBPA — the youngest of the three — is the one insiders call the strongest, and one of them compressed the consolidation logic into a sentence:
"They should just give the whole thing to Bill."
— an animation industry insider, to TheWrap
WBPA's Cat in the Hat opens Friday, and a sequel is already penciled in as the third film of its Seuss pact if the movie hits.
Paramount Animation's 15-year ledger explains the gap. Transformers One grossed $129 million worldwide on a budget near $150 million; Mutant Mayhem made money but got snubbed by the Oscars; Wonder Park shipped without a credited director; The Little Prince was offloaded to Netflix. The fan diagnosis matches the insider one:
"I think out of every studio, WBPA shows the most promise. Paramount Animation definitely needs a big creative overhaul imo because it's never really worked out in its 12+ year history"
— a commenter on r/boxoffice
Skydance Animation has its own wobble: Netflix ended its output deal early, Don Hall walked back to Disney, and everything now rides on Lasseter's Cosmic Motors — described by everyone TheWrap spoke to as "Cars in space" — becoming a theatrical hit next year.
Don't miss: Skydance owes us 30 movies a year. Its $87.5 billion debt says don't count on it
Why the dung beetle matters
A studio with three animation houses eventually asks why it has three animation houses. Disney answered that question in 2021 by closing Blue Sky two years after acquiring it, mid-production on a film. Every cut so far — the beetle movie, the TMNT spinoff — has landed on Paramount Animation's side of the ledger, while WBPA collects sequel plans.
For the people who actually buy the tickets, this is the quiet story under the funny headline: the slate of children's films for the next decade is being triaged right now by one owner with a visible favorite. The studio that makes your kid's Paw Patrol will survive. The version of it that ever makes anything riskier than Paw Patrol might not.
Previously we wrote: Sony tried to buy Paramount once — after a $1.28 billion Spider-Man quarter, it might get a second shot