In 2002, the Academy Awards first honored animated features with their own Oscar category — the inaugural winner was DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek. Before then, the stance on rewarding animated features was that there were too few to warrant a separate category; honorary Oscars were given to groundbreaking films like the animated/live-action hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the computer-animated Toy Story.
But with the founding of DreamWorks — and the expansion of other studios, such as stop-motion houses Aardman and Laika, the Irish outfit Cartoon Saloon, and animation departments within Sony and Netflix — there arose an abundance of animated titles that could compete with the output of cartoon titans Disney and Pixar.
While those two studios have led the pack with the most nominees and winners since the category’s debut two decades ago (Pixar with 11 wins, Disney Animation with four), it’s still a rarity for an animated feature to find recognition outside the category, particularly best picture. This year, however, one — or even two! — animated contenders could claim a spot among the 10 best picture nominees.
Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the 2019 winner for animated feature, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which claimed the studio’s first win in the category and was the second film featuring a Marvel character to win an Oscar. (That Spider-Man iteration is not, technically, part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its Oscar win came the same year as Black Panther’s three for original score, costume design and production design.) The film was released to critical acclaim and commercial success, with a 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a global box office total of $690 million.
Beyond its stellar reviews, Across the Spider-Verse — co-directed by Kemp Powers, who co-wrote Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-nominated Soul — has earned plenty of year-end accolades, including its placement on AFI’s list of the year’s top 10 films (alongside such live-action contenders as Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer). Following a precedent set by best picture nominee Toy Story 3 in 2011, it’s also an entry in a beloved, Oscar-winning franchise and boasts a cast of A-listers (Oscar nominees Brian Tyree Henry and Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar hopeful Greta Lee and Oscar winners Mahershala Ali and Daniel Kaluuya) and dazzling sequences.
However, GKIDS’ The Boy and the Heron could be Across the Spider-Verse’s biggest competition in both categories. Written and directed by anime master Hayao Miyazaki, the three-time Academy Award nominee who won the second animated feature Oscar for Spirited Away in 2003, the film topped the North American box office with its $12.8 million debut over the weekend of Dec. 9-10 — besting The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé and Disney’s fall animated title Wish.
Its box office performance proves the brand power of Japan’s Studio Ghibli as well as the devotion of Miyazaki’s fan base; the movie brought the 82-year-old animator out of retirement for what he says is his final film, and audiences welcomed him back in droves. The Academy has a final chance to celebrate the animation auteur with another Oscar — or a history-making best picture nomination.
This story first appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
