Oct 18, 2023

Questions about the 2024 animated feature Oscar Race 7.

We are still 5 months away from the 2024 Academy Awards, but these questions made me think about the Academy Awards ceremony on 3/10.

Last year, 2 Netflix films won animated feature nominations, with Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio winning the award. While it may have surprised some that Chris Williams's "The Beast of the Sea" was nominated, Pinocchio felt like a favorite from the day the release was first announced. This year, none of the Netflix titles cast as big a shadow as Pinocchio, but the streamers have a Nimona and Chicken Run: Very serious at the Dawn of the Nugget, Nimona has become one of the critics' favorite animated features and boasts an ambitious and unique look like any big studio movie. And while there are only a handful of post-dawn reviews of Nugget's Bfi Fest World premiere, most are positive, not to mention that Academy darling Aardman Animations produced it.

We asked similar questions last year, but now we are forced to ask them again. Few studios have comparable the cultural or box office impact of illumination in recent years, but academies regularly overlook the studio's fan-friendly fees. In 2022, Minions: The Rise Of Gru was a box office smash that spawned a tsunami of memes and social media interactions, but did not nod. This year, the Super Mario Bros. movie was a cultural phenomenon built on one of the largest media franchises in history. It also obscured most of the live-action stuff with all the other animated features in the box office, too. Some may argue that the film of Illumination is not as artistically ambitious as it deserves the attention of the Academy, but we are talking about the Academy that gave the Boss Baby and Ferdinand the nomination. Love them or hate them, those films were no more artistically ambitious than Mario, it's a perfectly solid movie if a little safe. Illumination also plans to release Migration later this year, but it's still too early to say if that film will resonate with voters. That said, it was directed by former Oscar nominee Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine).

Almost every review of the latest Spider-Verse entry agrees that it's a step forward from the franchise's first film to Spider-Verse. Since the film won an animated feature Oscar in 2019, Across The Spider-Verse must be considered one of the favorites of the year and the rock to secure the nomination.1 That said, voters may be put off by the movie's definitive ending and wait to recognize the franchise until the 3rd and last movie comes out.

One of the biggest question marks of the year is Disney's Wish, which is due to open in theaters on 1/11/22. Some of the company's recent titles feel "Disney" as a musical family feature with Wish, talking animals and princesses – mentally as its lead, if not the title. And after pixar's disastrous opening of Elemental, peter Sohn's film will be one of the strongest contenders of the year - after an incredible box-office comeback, Elemental nodded, and Disney has practically owned the animated feature division since it was founded in 2001, and this year the studio easily won two nominations and two nominations. Perhaps Darkening the win

Since the company stopped distributing Dreamworks movies more than 10 years ago, Paramount has been largely absent from the chatter of the awards season, although the 2015 Anomaly was a notable exception. This year, Jeff Rowe's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has the potential to change that. The film, like any other candidate of the year, pushed the boundaries of graphics and had a cultural impact, reportedly bringing the franchise's global retail sales this year to more than110 billion.

Sony Pictures Classic may not distribute many animated films, but when it does, films are often distributed by SPC, with the Academy's note Persepolis, Red Turtle, and Belleville triplets all distributed, and all 3 animated feature-length Oscars. We received nominations. Waltz with Bashir was also the release of SPC, whose film was nominated for an international feature. They photographed piano players from Javier Mariscal and Fernando Truba (Chico & Rita), and farmers from DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman (Vincent-loving).

Of the top 10 animation features at the global box office this year, three of Guardian Code, Deepsea, came from China: Zhang An, Bunny Bears. Despite the tremendous success of the trio in their domestic market, none of them had a significant impact on the West. But how long will that trend last - it feels like a matter of when, not whether Chinese animation will start making waves in the US box office and award scenes. Also do not miss Liu Jian's Art College 1994, which debuted in the competition in Berlin and has some serious festival credibility after screening in the main competition in Annecy.

Hayao Miyazaki's Boy and Heron are already a shoin for the feature-length division of the anime, but we believe it might have been a multi-category contender. This year, Japan selected Wim Wenders's "Perfect Days" for the international feature film category, and for the first time applied for a film by a foreign director. However, Japan had submitted animated films in the past, including Princess Mononoke of Miyazaki in 1997. And just four years ago, Makoto Shinkai's weathering with you was a Japanese pick. It's probably unusual for the Academy to nominate an animated film for the international feature category, but it's certainly not unprecedented. In 2021, Denmark submitted Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated feature "Flee", which was nominated for Best Animation, Documentary and International feature.