There was a lot to unpack Jan. 11 when the International Animated Film Society ASIFA-Hollywood announced the nominees for the 51st Annie Awards for animation: For respected animation vet Tom Sito, whose credits include Disney classics such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and who’s now a USC animation professor, it underscores that “diversity has moved into the mainstream. People want to see stories about all interesting people.”
Others had a similar reaction to the contenders for the animation awards show taking place Feb. 17 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Nimona leads the feature competition with nine nominations including best feature, direction and writing. A “fairy tale come true” is how Troy Quane, who directed with Nick Bruno, describes the recognition.
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The film, based on the graphic novel by ND Stevenson that follows a gender-nonconforming shape-shifter who teams with a knight falsely accused of a crime, proved difficult to make. Production began at Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age), which was shut down in 2021 when it was acquired by Disney as part of the Fox purchase. “Our first screening with Disney, it was reduced to a small conversation where they said, ‘Let’s talk about the gay stuff,’ and shortly thereafter Blue Sky was shut down for [unrelated] business decisions and the movie was killed,” Bruno recalls. (When contacted, Disney offered no comment.) The filmmakers refused to give up on the project, and shopped it until it caught the attention of Megan Ellison. It was revived at Ellison’s Annapurna with Netflix, which distributed it in 190 countries. “[While still at Blue Sky], we had decided, as a filmmaking group, we were going to be unapologetically pro-LGBTQ+, because that’s the group that loved the graphic novel and [which it] makes its connection with,” says Bruno.
“It is incredibly universal,” adds Quane. “It’s a love letter to anyone who has felt ‘othered.’ ”
In the Annies’ top category for best feature, ASIFA-Hollywood nominated an international mix of bold stories and animation styles: Nimona is nominated alongside animation icon Hayao Miyazaki’s Golden Globe winner The Boy and the Heron; Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; and anime hit Suzume from Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering With You), all of which earned seven nominations apiece; and Paramount and Nickelodeon’s fresh franchise reboot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which collected six nominations. Pixar’s original fire-and-water love story Elemental also earned six nominations, though it was snubbed in the top category. Nimona, The Boy and the Heron, Across the Spider-Verse, Mutant Mayhem and the Spanish-French film Robot Dreams (nominated for five awards including best independent feature) received directing noms.
Disney’s centennial-celebrating Wish and DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour both failed to earn a single nomination. In the case of Wish — coupled with the omission of Elemental in the best feature category — this is the first year since this award debuted in 1992 that Disney Animation or Pixar didn’t earn at least one nom for best animated feature. (Since the nominations were announced, there have been whispers suggesting that the org expand its nomination voting committees to include more voices; more on this to come.) Among the other titles snubbed in the Annies’ best feature race were Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie — the year’s highest-grossing animated movie — as well as Illumination’s Migration and Aardman and Netflix’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
This story first appeared in the Jan. 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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