‘Zootopia’ Wins Best Animated Feature at 2017 Annie Awards
With Oscar season just around the corner, now is the time for all the smaller award shows to announce this year’s big winners. Earlier this weekend, we saw the Directors Guild of America give their biggest honors to movies and television shows such as La La Land, Game of Thrones, Veep, and O.J.: Made in America. And today the animation industry shared their own selections for the best animated films, television shows, and shorts of 2016.
As reported by Variety, Zootopia beat out Moana and Kubo and the Two Strings to take home the prize for Best Animated Feature. Since the Annie Awards focus on animation in all its various forms and mediums, the list of award winners is pretty diverse, from Marvel’s animated Doctor Strange movie to an episode of Bob’s Burgers and even the special effects in the live-action The Jungle Book adaptation. You can view the full list of nominees and winners on the Annie Awards website.
While not as big as some of the more notable award shows, the Annie Awards are no less storied. The Annie Awards were first established by the Hollywood branch of the International Animated Film Association back in 1972, the same year that animation icon Max Fleischer (Popeye, Betty Boop) died. An interview with voice actress June Foray on the Annie Awards website notes that the industry decided to use Fleischer’s passing as an excuse to establish an annual honor for animated features, and subsequently, the Annie Awards were born.
Sadly, while the Annie Awards may be one of the industry’s highest honors for animated features, they aren’t particularly useful for predicting the ultimate winner of Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. The Annie Awards and the Oscars have disagreed three times over the past six years; while both institutions named Inside Out (2016), Frozen (2014), and Rango (2012) as the best animated films of their respective years, they also differed wildly on features like How to Train Your Dragon, Big Hero 6, and Wreck-It Ralph. That makes Zootopia, as great as it may be, no sure thing Oscar night.