DreamWorks Animation 2020-2025 poster featuring various cartoon characters like Trolls, Puss in Boots, and Fall Guys characters, with film reels and stage lights in a cinema setting.

The COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 dealt a major blow to the global film industry, and DreamWorks found itself a guinea pig as Hollywood experimented with how to respond to the shutdown of theaters. Trolls World Tour was among the first films to be released on premium video on demand (in several regions, including the US), bypassing theaters and allowing people to rent it at home for full theatrical price. This model would be adopted by many studios in the proceeding years. DreamWorks properties also became a core part of Universal's new streaming service Peacock. However, DW would not abandon theaters completely; The Croods: A New Age would become one of the first films to have a successful turn at the box office in late 2020. In 2022, DW films like The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish began to experiment with a stylized 2D/3D blended art style (thanks to in the style of rival Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). While this has not become the studio's “house style”, it has contributed to distinguishing DW from Illumination while also reaping in a positive response from critics and audiences. However, in 2023, with NBCU facing cost-cutting measures amid a massive dual Hollywood strike and many other factors, the studio announced that by 2025, they would shift to a mixed-production model and would move feature animation production to outside studios (such as Sony Pictures Imageworks, which would handle animation services for an unannounced film See more