The nominees for the 43rd annual Annie Awards were announced this morning by the International Animated Film Society, which honors the best work in animation during the past year with two films in contention, Pixar dominated the field with 25 nominations.
This year marked the first time Pixar ever released two films in the same calendar year, so it’s also the first time the studio has two features up for Best Animated Feature. Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur are both up for the top prize. The non-Pixar films nominated are Paramount’s Anomalisa, Aardman Animations’ Shaun the Sheep The Movie and 20th Century Fox’s The Peanuts Movie.
Anomalisa is one of the films to keep an eye on because it could give the Annies a chance to honor an R-rated adult film. However, it was surprisingly not nominated for writing, which might disappoint writer Charlie Kaufman. It earned four other nominations for Directing, Music, Voice Acting (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Editing.
There were only three nominees for feature writing: Inside Out (Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley), Shaun the Sheep The Movie (Mark Burton & Richard Starzak), and When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi). Perhaps the reason for leaving Anomalisa out was because the film is based on one of Kaufman’s plays.
The Annies also honor television animation. The nominees for Best Preschool how are Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol, Pet er Rabbit, Sheriff Callie’s Wild West, Transformers Rescue Bots and Tumble Leaf.
The nominees for Best Children's TV show are Clarence, Gravity Falls, Harvey Beaks, Sanjay & Craig, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Steven Universe and Wander Over Yonder.
The nominees for Best TV show for a general audience are Bob’s Burgers, BoJack Horseman, Moonbeam City and The Simpsons.
The Annie Awards are on Feb. 6. You can check out the full list of nominees right here.