Last weekend’s box office had everyone talking, after two young YouTube-first filmmakers toppled the kid-friendly Star Wars entry The Mandalorian and Grogu. It meant that Hollywood had to face something the kids biz has been grappling with for years already: that if you want to be successful with young people, you need to start paying attention to YouTube. Welcome to the club, big studios! It’s tough at first, but you’ll get the hang of it, and be winning again in no time.

Meanwhile, here are some more big winners this week:

Ánima Kitchent: It’s not every day a government just hands out millions of dollars in investment to a kids animation studio. When Spain was looking for a “leader” for the country’s animation industry, it picked the Cleo & Cuquín producer, investing US$28.8 million as a way to help set up the whole country as a competitive animation hub. That’s a lot of responsibility for one company. For both Ánima Kitchent and Spain itself, this could be the start of a new chapter. 

Coolabi and Tencent: 2026 may be the Year of the Horse, but it’s also shaping up as a pretty important milestone for our feline friends—the Warrior Cats, to be specific. Coolabi’s kidlit fantasy IP has been catnip for tween readers for over two decades (with 90 million copies sold globally) so it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for an animated adaptation to finally pounce into production. China’s Tencent is on board to launch the series to an East Asian population that’s increasingly becoming cat lovers (sorry, dog people). Plus, the brand’s enormous recent success as a Roblox game gives the multi-generational property some hard-earned cool cat points with Gen Alphas. 

ElevenLabs and Hasbro: As the industry grapples with AI’s place in content, Hasbro is owning its relationship with the tech by using it to create a brand-new licensing opportunity. The company has set up a studio that will license out AI-powered versions of its characters for use in content, games, chatbots, physical products and LBE. The first deal to come out of this strategy is with ElevenLabs, an AI company that clones actors’ voices. It’s a big step for Hasbro, and a big deal for ElevenLabs, which—with voices like Stan Lee’s in its library—is starting to grow into a licensing opportunity for the kids industry. Will Hasbro’s “behavioral licensing” become a real category? We don’t know, but we’ll ask the 8-foot-tall Optimus Prime we’re sure to see walking around the mall very soon.

So who had the best week in the bunch? Vote before 8 a.m. ET on Monday to let us know what you think:

Want to pitch us a Gold Star nomination? Send an email to submissions@kidscreen.com by noon on Thursdays. And check back every Friday for our next batch of nominees. Hope to see you on the list!