2025 Oscars: Best Animated Feature Predictions

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

“Inside Out 2” (Pixar/Disney) has become the Best Animated Feature Oscar favorite as the year’s box office phenomenon ($1.6 billion worldwide, a first for animation), putting Pixar back on top theatrically after its recent drought. The other frontrunners include “The Wild Robot” (DreamWorks/Universal), Annecy winner “Memoir of a Snail” (IFC),” Ottawa winner “Flow” (Sideshow/Janus Films), and “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” (Aardman/Netflix).

Still to come are “Moana 2” (Disney) and “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” (Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line), but it’s already a very competitive field.

However, there are some dark horses: “Ultraman: Rising” (Netflix), the directorial debut of animation vet Shannon Tindle, who reimagines the legendary anime franchise from Tsuburaya Productions as a sci-fi adventure, and “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie,” the 2D Daffy Duck and Porky Pig sci-fi adventure, which Ketchup Entertainment picked up theatrically from Warner Bros. Discovery. After premiering at the Animation Is Film Festival, it will have an Oscar qualifying run before its theatrical release on February 28, 2025.

For the follow-up to Pete Docter’s imaginative Oscar winner, “Inside Out,” newbie director Kelsey Mann tapped into anxiety as the newest and most resonant emotion for 13-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman), and audiences responded beyond expectation. Voiced brilliantly by Maya Hawke, the hyper-active, orange, and stringy Anxiety mounts a hostile takeover of Riley’s emotions with cohorts Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). It’s up to Joy (Amy Poehler) to set things right with Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira).

While Riley goes into overdrive to impress at summer hockey camp, Joy and the regulars attempt to restore Riley’s Belief System and Sense of Self, which represent the latest world-building wonders from Pixar. The former is a glowing, translucent environment with a river and pulsing strings that replay Riley’s memories, while the latter is the crystal-shaped foundation of her evolving identity. There’s also more inside/out back and forth and screen time for Riley. Also, Pixar takes the rare retro opportunity of exploring the 2D dog and fanny pack stars of Riley’s favorite preschool show “Bloofy’s House.”

“The Wild Robot,” from director Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”), poses the strongest competition for the Oscar as the leading non-sequel. Adapted from Peter Brown’s illustrated book, the sci-fi adventure follows robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), who washes ashore on an uninhabited island and must adapt and live among the animals, eventually adopting an orphaned gosling bird (Kit Connor), Brightbill. Joining Roz and Brightbill on their wilderness adventure is Fink, the fox (Pedro Pascal), and along the way, they encounter Catherine O’Hara as opossum Pinktail and Bill Nighy as elderly goose Longneck.

‘The Wild Robot’DreamWorks

The film is DreamWorks’ best since “How to Train Your Dragon,” exploring the relationship between technology and nature and the notion that kindness can be a survival skill. DreamWorks embraces an impressionistic 2D aesthetic (inspired by Tyrus Wong’s legendary watercolor backgrounds in “Bambi” and Hayao Miyazaki’s lush forests) that’s the most impressive hand-drawn stylization since the influential “Spider-Verse.” Thanks to new tech, DreamWorks hand-painted all of the environments as mattes while also applying 2D textures and shaders to Roz and the various animals. The more time Roz spends in the wild, the more her surface changes with dents, scratches, mildew, and mold. She very quickly becomes a hand-painted surface, blending in with the animals and the wilderness.

“Memoir of a Snail,” which took this year’s Annecy Cristal Award, is the second stop-motion feature from Adam Elliot (“Mary and Max”), the claymation master of monochromatic melancholy. The semi-autobiographical story concerns sad, lonely, and snail-hoarding Gracie (Sarah Snook), who narrates her life story in a letter to favorite snail, Sylvia. She details her life of mistreatment and the trauma that led to her retreating from life. Gracie pines for her long-lost twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who’s had it rough as well on the other side of the country with an abusive religious cult.

“Flow,” Latvia’s international feature Oscar entry, is a sublime, dialogue-free adventure from director Gints Zilbalodis (“Away”). It’s about an earth inhabited by animals, in which a black cat is forced to survive the aftermath of a flood on a boat with a capybara, lemur, stork, and golden retriever. Animated in the open-source Blender with its real-time engine, the CG animals have a soft quality while the environments are sharper. Zilbalodis achieves an immersion with his roving camera, and is served well by his animation team based in Latvia, France, and Belgium.

“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” (Netflix/Aardman), directed by franchise creator Nick Park and creative director Merlin Crossingham, marks the feature-length return of Aardman’s favorite stop-motion pals. It’s about an out-of-control “smart gnome” with a mind of its own. The fiendish plot also involves fan-favorite Feathers McGraw, the villainous penguin from the Oscar-winning short “The Wrong Trousers.”

“Ultraman: Rising” represents Tindle’s passion project, which personalizes Ultra-Man as an ode to parenthood and achieving balance in life. Baseball superstar Ken Sato (Christopher Sean) has difficulty fighting kaiju in Tokyo as a family obligation, and is further tested when forced to adopt a 35-foot, fire-breathing baby kaiju girl. Tindle (“Lost Ollie”) tapped ILM (the VFX powerhouse’s first animated feature since the Oscar-winning “Rango”) to tackle a stunning 2D aesthetic combining manga and anime, coupled with dynamic camera moves and lighting.

“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” stars Daffy and Porky (both voiced by Eric Bauza) in the franchise’s first fully 2D-animated theatrical feature. It’s a delightful surprise, directed by Pete Browngardt (“Looney Tunes Cartoons”), in which the duo discover a secret alien plot to take over the world via mind-control and chewing gum.

‘Memoir of a Snail’IFC Films

“Piece by Piece” (Focus Features), the documentary about musical icon Pharrell Williams from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom”), utilizes an inspired conceit from Williams: It’s a LEGO animated brickfilm, which perfectly captures the artist’s sense of wonder. Pure Imagination and Tongal produced the visual storytelling with the technology of Unreal Engine. The narrative is wrapped around Neville’s interviews with Williams and a host of other artists in his life, including Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay Z, and Snoop Dogg.

“Moana 2” began as a Disney+ series at the studio’s new Vancouver studio, but then transitioned to a feature amidst early praise, expanding its story, scope, and animation, with assistance from the Burbank studio. Directed by David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller, Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) returns to find the lost island of Motufetu, hidden by the jealous God of Storms, to reconnect all of the communities of Oceania. Demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) is back, but the sequel introduces baby sister Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda) and new crew members. Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i return as composers and co-songwriters, joined by songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear.

ILM also worked on “Transformers One” (Paramount), the franchise’s animated spinoff from Oscar-winning “Toy Story 4” director Josh Cooley. It’s a new origin story, exploring an untapped subterranean robot world with its own aesthetic, scale, and scope. We’re introduced to the future Optimus Prime and Megatron as Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), and their story and adventure has its roots in “Ben-Hur.”

“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” marks the first anime film in the franchise, with Kenji Kamiyama directing the 2D prequel (Sola Entertainment translated the 2D from performance-captured sessions using the Unreal Engine). It explores the tragic consequences of war and revenge, telling the story of Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox), the legendary king of Rohan, and his family, as they defend their kingdom against the ruthless Dunlendings, ruled by Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), the lord of Dunland, who seeks revenge for the death of his father. The film is narrated by Rohan descendant and future shieldmaiden Éowyn (Miranda Otto).

“That Christmas” (Netflix/Locksmith Animation) finds screenwriter Richard Curtis adapting his trio of books about the holiday into a “Love Actually” riff. “How to Train Your Dragon” animation vet Simon Otto directs with a sweet and absurd touch. It’s animated by Double Negative with an illustrative aesthetic. The voice cast is led by Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, Lolly Adefope, and Alex Macqueen, and the score is by John Powell (the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise).

‘Flow’Courtesy of Cannes

“Chicken for Linda” (GKids), last year’s Annecy Cristal winner, is a charming, hand-painted French-Italian musical comedy, directed by the married duo Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach (the animated “The Girl Without Hands”). It explores memory and mother-daughter bonding in what becomes a wild chase to catch a chicken to make chicken and peppers. It combines the spontaneity of the French New Wave with “All That Jazz”-inspired musical numbers. All of the characters are color-coded (Linda, the child, is yellow), and they add color blotches to black brushstrokes that bleed over the character lines.

“Look Back” (GKids), from first-time director Kiyotaka Oshiyama (“The Boy and the Heron” animator), is adapted from the critically acclaimed manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto (“Chainsaw Man”). It’s about the highs and lows of creative collaboration between Fujino, who’s forced to share space in her comics section of the high school newspaper with Kyomoto, a social misfit whose beautiful artwork sparks a competitive fervor in her.

“The Colors Within” (GKids), the acclaimed anime directed by Naoko Yamada (“A Silent Voice”), from Japanese animation studio Science SARU, concerns a high school student who forms a band with the ability to see the “colors” of others (bliss, excitement, serenity).

“The Glassworker,” Pakistan’s international feature Oscar entry, is a 2D drama, directed by Usman Riaz, about young Vincent and his father Tomas, who run the finest glass workshop in the country and find their lives upended by an impending war in which they want no part.

Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.

Frontrunners

“Flow”
“Inside Out 2”
“Memoir of a Snail”
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”
“The Wild Robot”

Contenders