Gkids has acquired all US rights to Julián, the first feature directed by the Irish animator Louise Bagnall, and will open it in US cinemas on 26 March 2027, Variety reported on 12 November. The hand-drawn film is produced by Kilkenny’s Cartoon Saloon with Luxembourg’s Melusine Studio, Toronto’s Aircraft Pictures and Denmark’s Sun Creature. Terms were not disclosed.
The deal extends a partnership that goes back to 2010. Gkids released all four Cartoon Saloon features that went on to Oscar nominations, from The Secret of Kells to Wolfwalkers, and Julián would be its fifth film from the studio. It also gives Gkids two of the eight features on the European Film Awards animation shortlist.
Key facts
- Buyer: Gkids; all US rights; US cinema release from 26 March 2027; terms not disclosed
- Same-day releases: Canada (Elevation Pictures), the UK (Anime Ltd) and Ireland (Wildcard Distribution)
- Film: Julián, directed by Louise Bagnall, co-directed by Guillaume Lorin and Mark Mullery, written by Juliany Taveras, from Jessica Love’s picture book Julián Is a Mermaid
- Producers: Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Melusine Studio (Luxembourg), Aircraft Pictures (Canada) and Sun Creature (Denmark); Zoe Saldaña is an executive producer
- Sales: CAA Media Finance closed the US deal; New Europe Film Sales handles the rest of the world
The film
Julián follows a seven-year-old boy, voiced by Knyght Darius Jack, who spends the summer in Brooklyn with a grandmother he barely knows, voiced by Milcania Diaz-Rojas. In her cluttered apartment and the neighbourhood around it, he discovers his Caribbean heritage and the conviction that he is, in fact, a mermaid.
More than 150 artists in Ireland, Luxembourg, Denmark and Canada drew it by hand in 2D, at 12 frames per second. The film had its world premiere in June in Annecy Presents, the non-competitive strand of the Annecy festival’s official selection. Bagnall was previously Oscar-nominated for her short Late Afternoon.
The producers are Nora Twomey, Tomm Moore and Paul Young for Cartoon Saloon, Stephan Roelants for Melusine, Anthony Leo and Andrew Rosen for Aircraft, and Fabien Renelli, Charlotte de la Gournerie and Lewis Taylor. Saldaña executive produces with her sisters Cisely and Mariel through their company, Cinestar Pictures.
Bagnall told Variety that Gkids was a “true champion” of Cartoon Saloon’s work. David Jesteadt, Gkids’ president, spoke of a friendship with the studio “nearly as old as Gkids itself” and said the film’s message of open-hearted acceptance mattered more than ever.
Who paid for it
Screen Ireland and New Europe Film Sales list the same four-country set of backers: in Ireland, Screen Ireland, Coimisiún na Meán and RTÉ; in Canada, Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund and Ontario Creates; in Luxembourg, Film Fund Luxembourg; and in Denmark, the Danish Film Institute, the West Danish Film Fund, the municipality of Viborg and DR. Several of the release partners, Elevation Pictures and Wildcard among them, are also listed as backers. None of the amounts has been published.
New Europe Film Sales, the Warsaw company handling international rights, had already closed deals before the American Film Market with Rita & Luca Films for Spain, Wanted Cinema for Italy, Eksystent Films for Germany, Films4You for Portugal, RTS for Switzerland and MCF Films for Serbia and Croatia, Variety reported.
The Gkids record
Gkids released The Secret of Kells in 2010, Song of the Sea in 2014 and The Breadwinner in 2017. On Wolfwalkers, an Apple original, it handled the cinema release and opened the film in 500 theatres in November 2020, a month before its Apple TV+ debut. Gkids’ principals, Eric Beckman and David Jesteadt, were executive producers on both The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Cartoon Saloon’s one feature outside the partnership, My Father’s Dragon, was a Netflix production and had only a brief cinema run before streaming.
All four films were nominated for the Oscar for best animated feature. Gkids counts 14 nominations in that category since 2010, including its win with Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.
Julián is one of eight titles on the European Film Academy’s animation shortlist for the 39th European Film Awards, which will be presented in Athens on 16 January 2027. Alberto Vázquez’s Decorado, which Gkids released in North America in May, is on the same list, as is Jim Queen, which Magnolia reportedly bought for a US summer release at the market. Main-category nominations follow on 14 November at the Thessaloniki festival, which handed out its Agora industry awards this week. In Ireland, the film opens into a UK–Ireland market whose box office had passed £1bn by October.
The US screen count and the film’s streaming home have not been announced.
Our reading
For a first-time feature director without a franchise behind her, a US release with the distributor that built Cartoon Saloon’s name in America is the most dependable route available. Opening the same day in Canada, the UK and Ireland also lets the film run one English-language campaign in spring rather than four staggered ones.
The date is the detail to watch. Gkids has usually opened Cartoon Saloon films in November or December, in the thick of awards season; only The Secret of Kells, released in March 2010 after its Oscar nomination, broke the pattern. A late-March opening positions Julián as a family release first, places it in the 2027 awards year unless Gkids adds a qualifying run, and leaves the European Film Awards in January as its nearer test.
Sources
- Variety, Gkids acquires US rights to Cartoon Saloon’s Julián (12 November 2026)
- Cartoon Saloon, Julián film page
- Screen Ireland, Julián world premiere at Annecy (28 April 2026)
- New Europe Film Sales, Julián title page
- European Film Academy, European Film Awards shortlist (14 October 2026)
- Animation Magazine, European Film Awards shortlists 8 animated features (14 October 2026)
- Gkids, Gkids brings Wolfwalkers to theatres (30 October 2020)
- Gkids, About Gkids
- Gkids, Decorado film page
- Cartoon Saloon, Where to watch My Father’s Dragon (November 2022)