Golden Globes 2021 Animation Nominees Announced

This year's award season is going to be a very different one. In response to the global pandemic, the major awards organisations have had to delay their ceremonies or switch to virtual events and change their eligibility requirements. First out of the gate is the Golden Globes.

This year's ceremony has been moved to February 28, and the eligibility period was also extended to February 28. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the 2021 nominees on February 3.

The Golden Globes only has one category for awarding animation, although occasionally animated films might manage to snag an award in other categories- typically in one of the music categories. This year, that film is Pixar's Soul, which picked up a nomination for Best Original Score for Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste.

This nomination was in addition to Pete Docter's film's anticipated nod in the Best Motion Picture (Animated) category, where it was nominated along with Pixar's other 2020 release, Onward. The Croods: A New Age picked up a nomination for DreamWorks Animation. The remaining two nominations went to films that were released on streaming services (although both did also get limited cinema runs). Glen Keane's directorial debut Over The Moon was released on Netflix, while Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart's Wolfwalkers is streaming on Apple TV Plus.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association are not noted for their discerning taste when it comes to animation and have typically nominated only the most mainstream studio fare. Since 2016 however, they have begun to nominate more independent and international animation. 

The Globes are less predictable than other awards and can occasionally result in surprise winners like last year's win for Missing Link, or The Adventures Of Titin's victory in 2011. It should be noted that they have awarded a film from a studio other than Disney or Pixar only four times since the category was established in 2006. This would seem to give Soul the best chance of taking home the Globe come awards night.

With the possible exception of The Croods, these nominees are those widely seen as being in the mix for this year's Awards Season and can be expected to be repeated elsewhere.

The full list of nominees can be seen here.