In what might be one of the most impressive — and unintentionally anti-capitalist — FYC moves of all time, Netflix just put its Oscar-nominated animated film Nimona up for free on YouTube! Yep, the beloved adaptation of ND Stevenson’s breakout graphic novel smash is now available for anyone to watch even without a Netflix subscription.
Nimona centers on a fantastical futuristic middle-ages inspired world where a young shapeshifter, Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), longs to become the sidekick of a disgraced knight, Ballister Blackheart (Riz Ahmed). Celebrating the monstrous in all of us, Nimona turns our expectations of heroism on its head.
We’ve been lovers of Nimona for a decade here at WWAC, and you can read our conversation about when the online version of the book came to an end in 2014, long before the graphic novel became the award-winning hit that made ND Stevenson one of the most exciting names in comics and animation. It was in 2015 that the book hit shelves and became a comic shop stalwart, bringing in new audiences and readers and enchanting those who had long been looking for representation on the walls of their favorite store. Nimona inspired a generation of creators and critics, including our very own alum turned Popverse Editor Tiffany Babb who gave a fantastic talk on the nature of monsters and women at 2017’s Comics Art Conference and wrote it up for our Comics Academe column.
A Nimona animated movie was first announced the same year as the graphic novel was released in 2015. But it was a long journey to the screen and the beautifully animated film from Blue Sky Studios almost never made it to our screens, thanks to Disney scrapping the project when they completed their merger with Fox. It was only when Netflix picked up the project that it was completed and released to its adoring fans.
Now viewers everywhere can enjoy the gorgeously rendered adaptation of Nimona that centers queerness, self-discovery, and of course, cool shape-shifting action and adventure without paying a penny. And in an age of rising costs and expensive streaming that’s really magical. Now let’s just hope those animators are getting some of the inevitable ad-revenue from this experiment.
