Following years of intense lobbying by frustrated animators, and the ever-increasing numbers of animated flicks flooding multiplexes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the creation of a new Oscar, for Best Animated Feature.
The first new category in 20 years, the award will be handed out at the Academy Awards ceremony starting in March 2002.
"We're just delighted," June Foray, a governor of the Academy's animation branch and the voice of Rocky the flying squirrel in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, told the Hollywood Reporter. "We've been trying to for many, many years. There's such a multiplicity of animated films now--and good ones."
To be eligible, the "primarily animated" film must be at least 70 minutes in length. The award won't differentiate between traditional, hand-drawn animation à la Disney's The Lion King, computer animation (such as Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 2 or Fox's Titan A.E.) and stop-motion and claymation works (DreamWorks' Chicken Run).
The Academy's Board of Governors has stipulated that the new Oscar will become a permanent part of the Academy Awards, but may not necessarily be doled out annually. That all depends on whether eight or more eligible films are released in a calendar year.
If eight to 15 films are released, then the Academy will nominate up to three films to compete for Oscar. If 16 or more are released, then the group will expand the field to as many as five nominees.
Just as foreign-language films can be nominated for Best Picture and other categories, toons nominated for Best Animated Feature can still contend for multiple Oscars. That means films like Beauty and the Beast--the only toon ever nominated for Best Picture, the Disney flick lost to The Silence of the Lambs for Best Picture in 1992--would get another shot in the animation category. Until now, the only cartoon-specific category was for animated shorts.
The Academy last added an Oscar in 1981, when it created a makeup award and the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar honoring the career of a person whose technical achievements brought recognition to the industry.
Although the rules haven't formally been written yet, the Academy intends to hash out the definition of what "primarily animated" means when its executive committee meets in the next few months. They're also expected to clear up any confusion that will inevitably crop up when films like Stuart Little or Who Framed Roger Rabbit are released that combine live-action with animation.
"The other thing that will be tricky is when they meet to define an animated feature," says Academy spokesman John Pavlik. "Is it intended to be live action mixed with animation like Roger Rabbit, or is it intended to fake you into believing in that reality such as Stuart Little or the Jar Jar Binks character?"
Jar Jar up for an Oscar?! Meesa no think so.