A Look at What Movies Could Make the Cut as the 5 Nominated Animated Features at the 96th Academy Awards

A Look at What Animated Movies Will Be Mentioned at Oscar Time

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Elemental are early front runners for Best Animated Feature at next year’s 96th Academy Awards ceremony.

As the summer movie season comes to a close, there have been some terrific animated feature films so far this year. Three of the potential Oscar-nominated animated features have already been released: Nimona, Elemental and the likely winner at this point in time, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. However, two huge pictures with “Oscar potential” written all over them are coming out and they are the animated Netflix movie sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and The Boy and the Heron from GKids.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse was an Oscar-winner several years back so it seems likely that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will follow suit by taking home the coveted animation Oscar next year. Elemental, though, certainly was just as excellent, if not slightly better in some audiences’ opinions. That Disney gem was so genuinely moving that it gave the action-packed Spider-Man animated movie sequel a run for its money. Most critics, though, loved the Spider-Man picture more. It will still be a race between these two but Spidey is most likely looking to take home the gold right now at this point in time.

While Variety seems to think that the terrific box-office grosses of The Super Mario Bros. Movie could make it a potential contender for Best Animated Feature, it seems an unlikely contender in a crowded field. That movie, from Illumination, received too many mixed reviews to stand up against the formidable Netflix animated picture, Nimona which is enjoying a healthy run and has created a rather large fan base for itself over the past couple of months.

The Boy and the Heron is the latest from filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and it is opening the Toronto Film Festival, perhaps a good sign that it’s going to be absolutely amazing. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget will play at the BFI Film Festival and has been 23 years in the making. That movie will officially be released in December and industry insiders expect great things.

There are other contenders as well but these seem like the safe bets right now to be the five major contenders at the next Oscars ceremony. Disney has Wish coming out soon and Illumination has Migration slated for the fall but those two titles could be the studios simply treading on familiar turf. But, you never know. If one of those turns out to be excellent, then it could just bump one of the other pictures out of the race. If it’s going to be one of those two to make the cut, it would probably be Wish over Migration though it’s hard to know which of the five movies would get bumped. This is turning out to be quite an exciting year for animated films!

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