Fans of animation will probably not be shocked to hear that three of the four most nominated films for this year’s Annie Awards this year hail from Disney. Raya and the Last Dragon leads all nominees with 10 total, followed by Encanto with nine and Pixar’s Luca with eight. However, right on the heels of those films is Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines with eight nominations, and the streamer also got nods for several of its other popular shows, such as Arcane, Trollhunters, and Castlevania.
For the big prize, Best Animated Feature, those four top nominees — Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto, Luca and The Mitchells vs. The Machines — will compete with Illumination’s Sing 2. Television is a bit different because it’s broken into age groups but for general audiences, the nominees for best TV show are Arcane, Bob’s Burgers, Love, Death + Robots, Star Wars: Visions, and Tuca & Bertie which, again, is kind of a Netflix vs. Disney category with Arcane and Love, Death + Robots coming from Netflix, and Bob’s Burgers and Visions coming from Disney/Fox.
You can look at the full slate of nominees at this link — and despite the Annie Awards not getting the love of other awards shows, it’s an incredibly stacked and interesting list. For example, there’s a category for Best Character Animation in a Live-Action Movie, which includes nominations for some heavy hitters featuring fully animated CGI characters: Flora & Ulysses, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Suicide Squad, The Tomorrow War, and Y: The Last Man. Yes, Y the Last Man gets a nomination for ILM’s work on Ampersand the monkey. That’s pretty neat.
And despite Disney dominating many of the categories, its other big mainstream animation project, What If…? only got one nomination: Best Editorial for the episode “What if Ultron Won?”
The Annies will be handed out February 26, 2022 in Los Angeles, CA.