The Key to Bumping up Animated to Five Nominees

Steve Pond at the Wrap does some nice investigative reporting to come up with a tiny little mystery in the world of Oscar watching – the idea that one animated movie could make the difference between three and five nominees. This was touched upon in the comments section of this post back on October 10 here at AD but perhaps it had not yet been confirmed:

But in the world of animation, “The Missing Lynx: Paws on the Run” could prove to be one of the year’s most significant releases.

The director of the Spanish movie, Raul Garcia, confirmed to theWrap on Saturday that the company had submitted the paperwork required to enter the film in the Oscar animated-feature race.

The news is crucial because for the last couple of weeks, the number of entries in the category appeared to have stalled at 15. If 15 movies qualify, the category will have three nominees; if 16 do so, it’ll jump to five.

With a number of high-profile, well-reviewed films in the running, and with “Up” and “Coraline” seemingly heavy favorites for the first two slots, a slate of three nominees would have resulted in a dogfight for the final spot between the likes of “Ponyo,” Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog,” the buzzed-about “Mary and Max,” Sony’s “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “9,” and the boxoffice hit “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” among others.