Paradoria

Paradoria is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated adventure film produced by Universal Animation Studios for Universal Pictures. The eighteenth feature in the Universal Animated Features canon, it was directed by Steve Samono and Gary Hall from a screenplay by Samono, John Hamburg, and Laurie Craig, and a story by Samono, Hall, Amy McNeill, Craig, and Michael Wildshill, and stars the voices of Finn Wolfhard, AnnaSophia Robb, Rob Riggle, Bryan Cranston, Jenny Slate, Maya Rudolph, Patrick Stewart, Wendie Malick, Cheech Marin, and Tommy Chong. Set in a fictional world known as Paradoria, the film centers on a relationship between a young cap-wearing boy and a princess who aspire to see the outside world. However, when their home is attacked by ferocious human-eating monsters who pursue them to a faraway land, they now must find a way back home and stop them from destroying Paradoria, while they eventually fall in love and spend time together during their adventure.

Samono and Wildshill conceived the film's original concept in 2008, citing the video games Ico (2001) and Another World (1991) as inspirations. Wildshill originally directed the film with Samono until May 2013, leaving the later as its sole director. The film, as well as its main setting, was named after a genus of tachinid flies in the family Tachinidae. Some of the Universal Animation staff visited the Mediterranean Sea, Taghit, the Kananaskis Range, Ein Gedi, and southern Montana for inspiration. Paradoria was the first Universal Animation Studios film to use the studio's new animation technology to produce its animated visuals and lighting.

Paradoria premiered at the Brussels Animation Film Festival in Belgium on February 23, 2015, and was released in the United States on March 6, 2015. It received critical acclaim, with many critics praising its animation, concept, characters, score, and vocal performances, particularly of Wolfhard and Robb; it is widely considered by many to be the best Universal animated film since Computeropolis. The film grossed over $1 billion worldwide on a budget of $103 million, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2015, the sixteenth highest-grossing film of all time, and the third highest-grossing animated film of all time; it also displaced Computeropolis 2 as the highest-grossing film from Universal Animation Studios. It was nominated for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. The film's success has since helped spawn an expanded franchise, including a television series on Netflix, a Christmas television special on NBC, and a sequel, titled Paradoria 2: Enchanted Realm, scheduled for release in 2019.