‘Coco,’ ‘The Breadwinner’ are the top toons in Annie Awards nominations
The Pixar film “Coco” and the Irish indie “The Breadwinner” are the leading film nominees at the 45th annual Annie Awards, the major awards show devoted to all facets of animation.
In nominations announced on Monday morning, “Coco” landed 13 nominations to lead all films, while “The Breadwinner” finished second with 10 noms.
In the Best Animated Feature category, the nominees were “Coco,” “The Boss Baby,” “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie,” “Cars 3” and “Despicable Me 3,” while the lineup in the Best Animated Feature – Independent category consisted of “The Breadwinner,” “The Big Bad Box and Other Tales,” “In This Corner of the World,” “Loving Vincent” and “Napping Princess.”
Former Disney animator Glen Keane’s “Dear Basketball,” which was based on the poem Kobe Bryant wrote when he retired from basketball, is one of the nominees in the Best Animated short category, alongside “Hedgehog’s Home,” “Negative Space,” “Scavengers” and “Son of Jaguar.”
“Trollhunters,” “Disney Mickey Mouse” and “Samurai Jack” led the TV nominations.
The Annie Awards are handed out by the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood.
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In the t16 years that the Oscars Best Animated Feature category has existed, all but three of its 64 nominees have first been nominated for the top Annie Award – and since 2005, every one of the 50 Oscar animation nominees was also an Annie nominee. (This statistic is helped by the fact that the Annies expanded its top category to seven to 10 nominees for four years beginning in 2011, and then went back to five nominees but added a second category, Best Animated Feature – Independent, in 2015.)
Over those 16 years, the same film has won both awards 11 times, with the only Annie winners to lose at the Oscars being “Cars,” “Kung Fu Panda,” “Wreck-It Ralph,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and its sequel.
The 45th Annie Awards will take place on Saturday, February 3 at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles.
The complete list of nominees can be found at www.annieawards.org/nominees.