The most valuable entertainment franchise on the planet just changed streaming landlords. Disney has signed a global distribution deal with The Pokémon Company International, and the centrepiece is a brand-new stop-motion series built by Aardman — the Bristol studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. The move reads less like a licensing footnote than a direct answer to Netflix, which spent the past two years making Pokémon feel handmade with its stop-motion hit Pokémon Concierge. Disney’s reply is bigger clay and an older kind of prestige.

The headline title, Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu, sends its two creatures across the Galar Region on a quest to protect other Pokémon — a premise pulled straight from the Sword and Shield games. As Deadline first reported, the series marries the franchise’s fan depth to Aardman’s tactile craft. Ayo Davis, president of Disney Kids & Family, framed Pokémon as a property with “that rare ability to mean something to longtime fans while continuing to feel completely relevant to young audiences today.”

The choice of Aardman is the tell. Netflix’s Concierge, produced by Japan’s dwarf studio, proved that painstaking frame-by-frame animation could reintroduce a video-game property as something warm and artisanal rather than algorithmic. By handing that same aesthetic to an Oscar-winning British claymation house, Disney is buying craft heritage in a single signature — and signalling that the kids-and-family streaming war is now being fought on production values, not just catalogue size.

Just as revealing is where the deal lands first. Rather than a streaming-only drop, Disney is routing Pokémon through Disney XD, the linear cable channel it has spent years letting drift, then funnelling viewers to Disney+ — using a marquee brand to give a fading network a reason to exist. The back catalogue is already moving: Pokémon the Series: The Beginning has started airing on Disney XD and now streams on Disney+ in the U.S. and select markets.

Aardman has put director Tom Parkinson, IP-development creative director Nat McKay and model-making lead James Young on the build, with the series set to debut on Disney XD and stream exclusively on Disney+ in 2027. Phil Rynda, Pokémon’s director of original animation, said telling these stories “from the perspective of Pokémon” is made “even more exciting through the lens of the incredible filmmakers at Aardman.”

Two streamers are now betting that the way to sell the highest-grossing franchise in history is to make it by hand, one frame at a time — dwarf’s felt on Netflix, Aardman’s clay on Disney+, and a global audience left to decide which texture it trusts.

Tags: Disney+, Pokémon, Aardman, stop-motion, The Pokémon Company International