The Academy has announced that 19 films have been submitted for consideration in this year’s Best Animated Feature Film race. Per Academy rules, 16 qualifying films are needed for the category to extend to five nominations. But all 19 may not qualify. For instance, “The Smurfs 2” was submitted by Sony, but as with the first film in that franchise a few years ago, it could be dismissed by the Academy as ineligible due to various factors.
The two films on the list that wasn’t on my radar is Yeon Sang-ho’s “The Fake,” a left field entry from South Korea, and Akiyuki Shinbo’s “Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie – Rebellion,” the third in an on-going Japanese franchise. I was aware of the Annecy award-winning “O Apostólo,” which could actually be a potential threat for a nomination, and “Rio: 2096 A Story of Love and Fury,” but wasn’t sure if they had been submitted.
The question with films like these and the expected GKIDS entries, “Ernest & Celestine” and “A Letter to Momo,” etc., is how the new process of sending screeners will impact the race. That will open it up to a much larger group of voters and, therefore, could make for voting blocks to win the day.
Oh, and it looks like The Weinstein Company didn’t bother submitted “Escape from Planet Earth.” It’s probably just as good they didn’t
Check out the full list below. More on the animated feature race next week when we break it down as the final category in our contenders galleries series.
“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2”
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Epic”
“Ernest and Celestine”
“The Fake”
“Free Birds”
“Frozen”
“Khumba”
“The Legend of Sarila”
“A Letter to Momo”
“Monsters University”
“O Apóstolo”
“Planes”
“Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie – Rebellion”
“Rio: 2096 A Story of Love and Fury”
“The Smurfs 2”
“Turbo”
“The Wind Rises”