Although it has been evident for decades, there is a peculiar imbalance in Hollywood that hardly anyone discusses in public. From Rudolph to The Nightmare, animated holiday entertainment is entirely dominated by Christmas. The other winter holidays hardly make an appearance on the screen, from Christmas to every streaming original that was released in November. Although they are present in American culture, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Diwali are almost completely absent from American animation. And now a few smaller studios appear to be circling the gap in silence.
The most intriguing movement is taking place in unexpected locations rather than Burbank or Glendale. The rights to a holiday project that combines Hanukkah themes with more general winter storytelling have reportedly been acquired by MONK Studios, a Thai animation company. As is common for projects at this stage, there are still few details. However, the very fact that such a deal exists reveals something about the industry’s perception of opportunity. Disney, Illumination, and DreamWorks are among the major studios that have spent years mining the same Christmas well. Eventually, someone would search elsewhere.
It’s important to take a step back to comprehend why this disparity still exists. From concept to screen, animation development cycles are lengthy, typically lasting three to five years. Holiday specials depend heavily on repeat viewership, and studios are risk averse. For a generation, a Christmas film can be shown every December. Executives have always believed that Hanukkah content has a smaller audience, which is likely accurate in terms of raw numbers but ignores the fact that Jewish families have been purchasing the same few specials for thirty years, such as the Adam Sandler song and the Rugrats Hanukkah episode. There is nearly no supply and pent-up demand.
In the meantime, a more significant change in the industry is suggested by Netflix’s recent animation reorganization. Building animated franchises that expand into live events and consumer goods is Hannah Minghella’s responsibility as the current head of Netflix Animation Studios. With hits like KPop Demon Hunters, the streaming behemoth has already demonstrated that animation doesn’t have to conform to traditional demographic categories. The same cultural appetite that made Moana popular among Pacific Islanders and Coco popular among Mexican Americans could be tapped into by a well-executed Hanukkah franchise, one with genuinely compelling characters and stories that don’t feel like an after-school lesson. It turns out that representation is profitable as well.
Execution is the difficult part. Inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas and its willingness to mash holidays together, a number of social media creators have proposed multicultural holiday concepts that combine Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa into a single special. Although the instinct makes sense, there is a chance that it will be diluted. Trying to honor three traditions in twenty-two minutes can turn heartfelt storytelling into a checklist. The projects most likely to succeed will be the ones confident enough to let a Hanukkah story simply be a Hanukkah story, without needing Christmas as a framing device.
Atomic Cartoons in Vancouver offers a useful model. The studio built credibility through projects like LEGO Pixar BrickToons before landing bigger franchise work. That slow accumulation of trust — proving you can deliver on time, on budget, with quality — is exactly the path a smaller studio would need to follow before a major streamer hands over a holiday franchise. Nobody gives you the keys to a tentpole on faith alone.
Whether the animation studio quietly building Hollywood’s next Hanukkah franchise turns out to be MONK Studios or someone else entirely remains genuinely uncertain. What feels less uncertain is that the vacuum exists and someone will fill it. The economics point that direction. The cultural moment points that direction. And after decades of animated holiday content that looks almost exclusively like one thing, there’s a growing sense — among creators, audiences, and now apparently among executives — that the calendar has room for more than reindeer and snowmen.