Netflix's animated Redwall series appears to be dead

Five years after it was announced, it appears that Netflix has abandoned work on an animated adaptation of Brian Jacques' fantasy series, Redwall. Broadcast Now revealed the news that the series was no longer developing the project, which What's On Netflix conveyed.

The streaming service optioned the series from Penguin Random House back in 2021, with plans for an animated film and television series, tapping Patrick McHale (Adventure Time, Over the Garden Wall, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) to pen the screenplay. It was a notable deal at the time, and it appeared that the company had ambitious plans for Jacques' world. It had the rights to the entire series, which would have given it a wealth of material for multiple projects to bolster their catalog with.

However, just a year later, McHale revealed that "I wrote a script for the movie and did a lot of beautiful development art with different artists," and that while he thought the story was moving forward in other places, he was no longer working on the project. According to What's On Netflix, the project was still in the works as of 2025, but the project came to an end when Netflix opted to let the rights lapse. I've reached out to Netflix, Penguin Random House, and the Jacques estate, and will update if I hear anything further.

First published in 1986, Redwall is a YA series set in a fantastical fantasy world populated by talking animals, centered around Redwall Abbey in Mossflower Woods. Redwall followed the adventures of a mouse named Matthias, a monk in the Abbey, where he dreamed of following in the footsteps of the Abbey's founder, Martin the Warrior. When his home is threatened, Martin sets out to find Martin's sword to protect his friends.

Many of Jacques' stories follow a similar formula: a heroic character sets off on an adventure to protect their home, often fighting against the land's antagonists (usually rats, wild cats, snakes, and other predators), consuming well-detailed feasts, and calling back on the legends and stories of past heroes to inspire them. The series includes 22 novels in all, the last of which was published in 2011, after Jacques passed away.

I'm rather bummed to see this didn't come to fruition: it felt like the basis for a really strong franchise, one that could introduce a whole new generation to the novels. I was an enormous fan of the series when I was first introduced to them, and picked up a huge pile of them at a library sale a couple of years ago with the intent of reading them to my kids at some point. Time to put that plan into action.