Pixar’s Finding Dory cleared $135 million over the weekend, earned a solid A at Cinemascore and is on track to become the highest grossing film of the year, or certainly one them. Finding Dory, like Inside Out, revolves around a female protagonist. This could also be said of Zootopia, and the upcoming Moana, and the Dreamworks film, Trolls. This is quite a change from the pattern of animated films under the rise of Pixar, which were very male centric.
Traditionally speaking, the animated feature Oscar mostly likes to go to original films over sequels, but one never knows whether Finding Dory could win but if it did, the Finding Nemo win followed by a Finding Dory win would be a first in the Animated Feature category for original and sequel. Toy Story 3 won but that’s only because the Animated Feature category did not exist when Toy Story was released.