‘The Wild Robot’ Leads 2025 Annie Awards Nominations With 10 Nods

variety.com:

Carolyn Giardina Chris Sanders’ “The Wild Robot” from Dreamworks Animation leads the feature competition of the 52nd Annie Awards for animation with 10 nominations, followed by Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Aardman and Netflix’s “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” with seven apiece; and Locksmith Animation and Netflix’s “That Christmas,” with six noms.

All four movies are nominated for best animated feature, alongside “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “Ultraman: Rising,” while noms for best independent animated feature went to “Chicken for Linda!,” “Flow” (Latvia’s international feature Oscar contender), “Kensuke’s Kingdom,” “Look Back,” “Mars Express” and “Memoir of a Snail.” The rest of the categories combine studio and independent productions.

For direction of an animated feature, ASIFA-Hollywood nominated Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach for “Chicken For Linda!”, Gints Zilbalodis for “Flow”, Chris Sanders for “The Wild Robot”, Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham for “Vengeance Most Fowl,” and “That Christmas” for first-time feature director Simon Otto, who is best known as head of character animation on the “How To Train Your Dragon” trilogy. “Inside Out 2” helmer Kelsey Mann was snubbed in this category.

In writing, “Inside Out 2” scribes Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein were nominated alongside three independent movies: “Flow” (Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža), which contains no dialog; “Kensuke’s Kingdom” (Frank Cottrell-Boyce); and “Memoir of a Snail” (Adam Elliot).