LEGO Batman Movie & Coco Submitted For The Oscars

Coco, The Boss Baby, and The LEGO Batman Movie are among 26 animated movies that have been submitted for the Oscars. It will be a crowded field for the Academy to choose from, as always, to narrow the final list of nominees down to 2-5 for the Best Animated Feature award at the 90th Academy Awards in March. They can also be considered for Best Picture, but that is exceptionally rare. Up and Toy Story 3 are the last two to receive that distinction, but only after room was made for 10 Best Picture nominees.

The likelihood is that the animated movies submitted in 2017 will vie for Best Animated Feature, without reaching the Best Picture summit. The most critically acclaimed, original movies of the genre typically make it to Oscar night, as evidenced by the presence of features like Zootopia (which won), Moana, and Kubo and the Two Strings at last year's ceremony. Pixar appears to have another Oscar-worthy success in the upcoming Coco, while other notable hits appear on the list of submitted movies.

As reported by Deadline on Friday, AMPAS has approved a total of 26 movies that it will vote on to pick nominees for next year's Best Animated Feature award. At least 16 movies need to meet the Academy's requirements regarding theatrical runs and other qualifications in order for as many as five total nominees to be selected. Fox's The Boss Baby and Warner Bros.' The LEGO Batman Movie, both box office successes, are among the notable submissions. Coco was submitted even though it doesn't get its wide release until Nov. 22, but it appears on its way to being certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 95 percent rating as of Friday night.

Fox's Ferdinand and Sony's The Star are two other animated movies that have yet to be released but were submitted for consideration. Here's the complete list of submissions:

The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales

Birdboy: The Forgotten Children

The Boss Baby

The Breadwinner

Captain Underpants The First Epic Movie

Cars 3

Cinderella the Cat

Coco

Despicable Me 3

The Emoji Movie

Ethel & Ernest

Ferdinand

The Girl without Hands

In This Corner of the World

The Lego Batman Movie

The Lego Ninjago Movie

Loving Vincent

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Moomins and the Winter Wonderland

My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea

Napping Princess

A Silent Voice

Smurfs: The Lost Village

The Star

Sword Art Online: The Movie – Ordinal Scale

Window Horses The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming

If you go by Rotten Tomatoes scores, the safest bets to end up with Best Animated Feature nominations are Coco, LEGO Batman, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, and the Japanese In This Corner of the World, directed by Sunao Katabuchi. Coco looks to be another winner for Pixar based on the early reaction, with a good chance to nab the first Oscar for the groundbreaking studio since 2015's Inside Out.

Although Coco could turn out to be a commercial success, big profits at the box office don't necessarily translate to winning over the Academy. Pixar's Finding Dory became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time with over $1 billion worldwide in 2016, but didn't even get a nomination. So despite The Boss Baby's profitability, it was lukewarm with critics and probably has a worse chance at a nomination than the likes of Coco and LEGO Batman.