‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ Wins Big at the ANNIE Awards

Although The Boxtrolls lead the nomination tally going into the awards, How to Train Your Dragon 2 won six awards at the 42nd ANNIE Awards this weekend, including Directing, Editing, Music, Storyboarding, Character Animation in an Animated Feature as well as the big one itself, Best Animated Feature. The Boxtrolls won Best Production Design and Best Voice Acting (Ben Kingsley) and The LEGO Movie won Best Writing. Looking at the Oscars, of the three big winners here the battle looks to be between HTTYD2 and The Boxtrolls. While the former won the Golden Globe this month, it missed out on a BAFTA nomination, something the latter has and stats show us that no recent animated film has ever won the Oscar without a BAFTA nomination first. We’ll also be keeping an eye on Disney’s Big Hero 6. Even though it wasn’t ANNIE-nominated (the group has a history of snubbing Disney and Pixar films) with The LEGO Movie out of the way we could see a huge push by Disney for a win here.

Juried awards went to:

Winsor McCay Award – Didier Brunner, Don Lusk and Lee Mendelson for their career contributions to the art of animation

June Foray Award – Charles Solomon for his significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation

Ub Iwerks – DreamWorks Animation’s Apollo Software for technical advancement that has made a significant impact on the art or industry of animation

Special Achievement Award – The Walt Disney Family Museum recognizing the unique and significant impact on the art and industry of animation

For all winners, including television awards go to http://annieawards.org/nominees/.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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