And the Nominees Are ...

These six from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

Best Animated Feature



Big Hero 6

The Boxtrolls

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Song of the Sea

The Tale of The Princess Kaguya

And the front-runners would be How To Train Your Dragon and Big Hero 6 for all the obvious reasons:



Big Hero is from a monster conglomerate named Disney. (On the other hand, Frozen won last year and the Academy usually doesn't go to the same well in successive years.)



How To Train Your Dragon 2 picked up a Golden Globe for "Best Animated Feature", will likely win an Annie (maybe?), and DreamWorks hasn't won a "Best Animated Feature" statuette in a while.



I don't think you can rule out the other nominees, but the academy's voting members are tilted toward the major California animation studios, and I think it's foolish to pretend otherwise.