After announcing they’d soon have a teaser for us, Netflix delivered on their promise and finally unveiled the first trailer for the highly anticipated animated movie Nimona. The story centers around the title character (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) as she embarks on a journey with a knight that originally set out to eliminate her. The teaser also reveals when we can expect to see Nimona on our screens: June 30, a little over a month from now.
The trailer for Nimona subverts expectations by presenting an animation style that takes you by surprise. In a mixture of doodles, low frame-rate animation and different styles that don't really go together, it reveals a princess on a tower that tries to order a bird around. She quickly discovers that the bird is a shapeshifter that doesn't take crap from princesses and decides to breathe fire on the woman. Then it's shapeshifting madness with a dragon, shark, King Kong, and a town going crazy.
Pink Gorillas, Rhinos and Giant Whales Are Just The Beginning For Nimona
It is then revealed that all of that is nothing less than a wild story being written and illustrated by Nimona herself, who sits in an artistic room and is having a lot of fun with her own evil ending to the story. Then the teaser switches to actual footage from the movie, and reveals that Nimona's shapeshifting is even wilder than she makes it on her illustrations. She transforms from cute to dangerous animals in what looks like an action-packed adventure.
Nimona is already a landmark title for several reasons, and one of them is the incredibly diverse and inclusive voice cast that populates it. The actors we know about up to this point are Eugene Lee Yang (Classified), Frances Conroy (American Horror Story), Lorraine Toussaint (The Equalizer), RuPaul Charles (RuPaul's Drag Race), Indya Moore (Pose), Beck Bennet (Hamster & Gretel), Julio Torres (The Great North) and Sarah Sherman (Saturday Night Live).
On top of that, Nimona is also set to be one of the few animated movies to feature same-sex affection — an element that put big studios like Disney in the hot seat in early 2022. Incidentally, Disney was the studio that decided to shelve Nimona after they bought 20th Century Studios and, by extension, its animation division Blue Sky Studios. At the time, Nimona was pretty deep into production, with over 75% of the project done.
Nimona debuts now as a partnership between Netflix and Annapurna — the latter of which is taking the opportunity to launch an animation studio whose first project is Nimona. Nick Bruno and Troy Quane direct, while the screenplay is adapted by Robert L. Baird (Big Hero 6) and Lloyd Taylor (Spies in Disguise) from an acclaimed graphic novel by author and artist ND Stevenson. Nimona premieres on June 30. You can watch the teaser trailer below:
Check out the official synopsis here:
When Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a knight in a futuristic medieval world, is framed for a crime he didn't commit, the only one who can help him prove his innocence is Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a mischievous teen with a taste for mayhem — who also happens to be a shapeshifting creature Ballister has been trained to destroy. But with the entire kingdom out to get him, Nimona’s the best (or technically the only) sidekick Ballister can hope for. And as the lines between heroes, villains, and monsters start to blur, the two of them set out to wreak serious havoc — for Ballister to clear his name once and for all, and for Nimona to…just wreak serious havoc.