by Nathaniel R
Last year's animation race proved, just as we predicted, that the Academy's animated branch will only put up with a couple of sequels in any given year. For 2020 that wasn't going to be an issue as the scheduling wasn't sequel heavy. But then COVID-19 happened and there's a whole new set of issues. The release schedules of everything got pushed back -- the latest calendar shuffle is that Pixar's Soul is power-walking to Thanksgiving week where it will replace Disney's Raya and the Dragon, now pushed to 2021...
The latter is a good move for Raya given that that all-star Asian cast movie about a kid and a dragon was previously slated to go nearly head-to-head with Sony's Wish Dragon, another all-star Asian voice cast film about a kid and their dragon! That's great news for Sony, too, if Wish Dragon plays well.
Sony has only won this category once (for the deserving Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) so they're surely salivating for another triumph. Nevertheless Academy history proclaims that this race is always Pixar's to lose. They've won just over 50% of the time. Which means that Soul (co-directed by two-time winner in this category, Pete Docter) is already the movie to beat. We're hoping (sight unseen of course so who we're rooting for is subject to change) that this is the year when Cartoon Saloon can strike and finally win via Wolfwalkers. That Irish animation studio has, just like Laika (another perennial loser in the category), never missed a nomination and never achieved a win, despite all of their films being of very high quality.
"Soul" strolling to a November release.
But... again... COVID-19. Who knows what will even be eligible this year?
Though we haven't actually had a year with only three Best Animated Feature nominees in a full ten years (the last time was 2010 with three win-worthy contenders: The Illusionist and How To Train Your Dragon both lost to Toy Story 3), we're predicting for now that it's about to happen again. Sixteen eligible films will trigger a five-wide race but will we get there this year? At this juncture we're guessing no. But here are the predictions...