Panda Express launched Wishes, its first-ever animated Lunar New Year short, in January 2026 via Opinionated and Passion Pictures, earning Campaign Ad of the
ARCHIVEPanda Express Wishes on Lunar New Year With Its First Animated Short
Panda Express launched Wishes in January 2026 as the brand's first-ever animated short film, a two-minute hand-drawn narrative set in San Francisco's Chinatown that follows a young girl's longing to have her family together for Lunar New Year — making it the most cinematically ambitious holiday campaign in the brand's history.
Titled Wishes and released on January 21, 2026, the film was created in partnership with independent agency Opinionated, a Tombras company, and produced by three-time Academy Award-winning global animation house Passion Pictures. The campaign extends the Have You Eaten Yet? brand platform that Panda Express established in 2025, deepening its commitment to emotionally resonant, culturally grounded storytelling at the most significant moment of the year for the brand. Directed by Slimane Aniss, the film was built entirely without the use of AI, relying instead on meticulous hand-drawn 2D animation and subtle 3D effects to render a world of lantern-lit streets, community warmth, and familial love.
The story at the centre of the Wishes campaign is deliberately intimate. A young girl wishes for nothing more than to celebrate Lunar New Year with her whole family, but when her physician father is called away on a medical emergency, she embarks on a journey above the glowing streets of Chinatown that ultimately arrives at a place of pure love. In the United States, where Panda Express operates as the defining name in American Chinese food, Lunar New Year represents both a cultural moment and a commercial one — and Wishes positions the brand squarely at the intersection of both. The film distributed across broadcast, YouTube, Panda Express owned channels, social platforms, and in-store materials, ensuring the story reached guests wherever they encountered the brand. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 77 out of 100, reflecting strong craft, cultural resonance, and strategic coherence.
ARCHIVEPanda Express occupies a singular position in the American dining landscape as the family-owned pioneer of American Chinese comfort food. The Wishes campaign did not emerge from a blank strategic slate — it arrived as the next deliberate chapter in a multi-year evolution of brand positioning. In 2023, the brand's principal platform, However You Panda, emphasised flexibility and broad accessibility, according to Clapboard. By 2025, the Have You Eaten Yet? platform had shifted the conversation toward culturally specific food-as-care messaging, as documented by QSR Magazine. Wishes in 2026 advances that arc into what Clapboard describes as cinematic cultural ambassador positioning, using animation to carry Chinese cultural tradition directly into American homes during Lunar New Year.
The strategic rationale is rooted in a clear consumer insight: for millions of Americans of Chinese heritage and for the wider audience that has embraced American Chinese food, Lunar New Year is the emotional apex of the calendar year. Food is not incidental to that celebration — it is the celebration. Panda Express has built its entire modern communications strategy around that truth, and Wishes makes it visceral rather than declarative. In the United States, the fast-casual restaurant market is a substantial and growing competitive arena. Competitors including Raising Cane's and Shake Shack have invested heavily in brand storytelling and cultural relevance, but neither operates in the specific cultural territory that Panda Express commands with authenticity. The Asian fast-casual segment is growing at approximately 7.3 percent annually, according to market research firm Marketintelo, signalling sustained consumer appetite for the cuisine category Panda Express leads. By choosing animation as the vehicle for Wishes rather than live action, Opinionated and Panda Express made a deliberate craft statement — one that signals seriousness of cultural intent rather than seasonal opportunism.
Passion Pictures produced the Wishes animated short. The London and New York-based studio holds three Academy Award wins and brought that level of craft rigour to every frame of the two-minute film, according to Passion Pictures' own documentation of the project. Director Slimane Aniss guided the visual construction of San Francisco's Chinatown into a space that feels simultaneously specific and mythic — lantern-lit, detailed, alive with community texture — using hand-drawn 2D animation as the primary visual language and layering in subtle 3D effects to give depth and dimensionality without sacrificing the warmth that hand-drawn work uniquely provides.
The decision to create the film entirely without AI was not incidental — it was structural to the campaign's meaning, as reported by The Drum in its January 22, 2026 coverage by Senior Reporter Amy Houston. In a year when AI-generated imagery is becoming an industrywide default, the laborious frame-by-frame process of hand-drawn animation becomes a statement in itself: that the care taken to make the film mirrors the care the brand associates with food and family. Cameron Soane, Associate Creative Director at Opinionated, described the collaboration in terms of craft admiration, stating that Passion Pictures represent an elite level of craft and that observing their process at every step had been a joy, as documented by Clapboard. Chris Le, also Associate Creative Director at Opinionated, offered a more personal measure of the film's success, noting that he could not think of anything he had been more excited to show his mother, and that thought, care, and love had been poured into the film by partners working across continents, as reported by Clapboard and Reel360. The characters and community moments woven through the film are not atmospheric decoration — they are the argument, rendered visually, that food and the rituals around it are the ultimate expression of love.
Campaign magazine selected Wishes as its Ad of the Week in its January 23, 2026 edition, framing the film as a meaningful expansion of Panda Express' emotional brand platform through the story of a young girl's Lunar New Year wish, according to Campaign Live. The Drum, in coverage published January 22, 2026 and authored by Senior Reporter Amy Houston, described Wishes as Panda Express' most ambitious holiday story, citing its handcrafted 2D animation, family-centred narrative, authentic cultural setting in San Francisco's Chinatown, and its place within the Have You Eaten Yet? platform, according to The Drum.
No independently verified viewership, engagement, or sales performance data for the Wishes campaign is publicly available at the time of publication. What the available record does confirm is structural effectiveness across several dimensions. The campaign secured earned media coverage in two major trade publications within forty-eight hours of launch, demonstrating creative work that the industry found genuinely noteworthy rather than merely seasonal. The choice to release on January 21, 2026 — timed precisely to the lead-up of Lunar New Year — reflects distribution discipline that maximises cultural relevance during peak consumer attention. The multi-channel distribution strategy spanning broadcast, YouTube, owned social, and in-store touchpoints ensures the emotional impact of the two-minute film is reinforced across the full arc of a consumer's relationship with the brand. Wishes carries a Clapboard Score of 77 out of 100, a rating that reflects the campaign's genuine craft ambition, cultural specificity, and strategic coherence within the evolving Have You Eaten Yet? platform, even as longer-term performance data remains forthcoming.
Wishes is Panda Express' first-ever animated short film, released in January 2026 for Lunar New Year. Created by Opinionated and produced by Passion Pictures, the two-minute hand-drawn film follows a young girl's wish to have her family together for the holiday, extending the brand's Have You Eaten Yet? platform.
Slimane Aniss directed Wishes for Panda Express. The film was produced by Passion Pictures, the three-time Academy Award-winning animation house, in partnership with independent agency Opinionated, a Tombras company, and built entirely without the use of AI tools or AI-generated imagery.
Panda Express chose hand-drawn 2D animation for Wishes to reflect the care and craft the brand associates with food and family. The decision to forgo AI in favour of frame-by-frame artistry reinforces the campaign's central message — that food prepared and shared with love is the ultimate expression of family belonging.
Wishes extends the Have You Eaten Yet? platform Panda Express established in 2025. Where earlier work grounded food-as-care in everyday cultural moments, Wishes escalates that idea into cinematic Lunar New Year storytelling, positioning Panda Express as an ambassador of American Chinese culture through its most ambitious branded film to date.
Campaign magazine named Wishes its Ad of the Week on January 23, 2026, according to Campaign Live. The Drum also featured the film prominently in January 2026 coverage, describing it as Panda Express' most ambitious holiday story. The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 77 out of 100.
Panda Express distributed Wishes across broadcast television, YouTube, its owned social media channels, and in-store materials throughout the United States. The multi-channel approach ensured the two-minute animated film reached consumers across every major touchpoint, from national screens to individual restaurant locations during the Lunar New Year period.
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