Jason

This is a very generous assessment. I'm quite sure they didn't.

Hmm. I don't think there's a large enough data set to make it worth trying to develop a predictive model for the Oscar winner based on the "precursor" awards. I could make lists for the awards that didn't have Wikipedia articles, but from what I've seen so far it seems those ones don't go back very far. Also, no model based purely off of the precursor awards could have predicted Big Hero 6's win. Although it would probably show that year was a toss-up with no likely winner since the precursor favorite wasn't even nominated. However, from a cursory analysis of the awards so far, I can say that it is quite unusual for the populist-leaning CCMAs to agree with both of the more independent-minded NYFCC and TFCC. The only year that has happened before is 2008, WALL-E.

Overall critical reception indicates it's not a contender. Average rating of 7.0/10 on RT, total of 44 reviews. Could have been a contender in other years, not this year.

I'm not convinced that the reason why many GKIDS films have been receiving nominations is because of their ability to campaign for a nomination. Rather, I think the reason is because they've been making an effort to secure the distribution rights to films that would be in a strong position to receive a nomination on their own merits alone. Critical reception is easily the strongest predictor of which films are nominated, with the result that in most years (at least since 2005) none of the submitted films that do not receive a nomination have a significantly higher average RT rating than any of the nominees. Of the six GKIDS-distributed films that have received a nomination, five of them could be expected to do so just on the basis of critical reception. The sixth, A Cat in Paris (2011), has an average rating that is lower than Winnie the Pooh and Arthur Christmas but with only borderline significance. Overall, the pattern of nominations received by GKIDS films appears to fit the pattern for films from other distributors. I made a graph (technically a scatterplot, although it's not being used that way) that shows all of the submitted films for each year as blue diamonds, with red circles around the nominated films, and a larger golden circle around winners (just for interest). Films with a significantly higher average rating than the weakest film of that year (possible "upsets") are shown with black circles. GKIDS films are shown with a purple cross. Note that there are sometimes multiple films with the same average rating, I made the symbols partially transparent to make this apparent by the presence of a darker symbol.

Yes. It's also the first time that the TFCA has awarded a WDAS film, the previous Disney-distributed films that they have awarded were either Pixar (Nemo, Ratatouille, WALL-E ) or Ghibli (The Wind Rises ). Well, they didn't pick Kubo.

San Francisco Film Critics today as well. Nominations are here: San Francisco Film Critics Circle Nominations!

Thanks, and no I didn't - I'm actually new to derby. Aside from the week where I lucked out by falling asleep, I think I'm also benefiting from missing out on some tough weeks that happened before I started playing. Competing against over 100 players does sound very tough, it's difficult enough here with ~40. (But the challenge is what makes it fun!)

Turns out BOFCA has only been awarding films since 2012, so there isn't much of a history to examine and is probably the reason why it doesn't have a dedicated Wikipedia article for its Animated Feature award yet. Anyway, looked it up, it has awarded ParaNorman, Frozen/The Wind Rises (tie), The Lego Movie, and Inside Out. Kubo is generally what I am expecting from any film critics association that has awarded both ParaNorman and The Wind Rises. The exception is the Toronto Film Critics Association, I think Kubo might be too mainstream for them. (The last year that they chose a film favoured by the majority of organizations in my sample was 2008.)

Yes, there are seven remaining Pixar films to come, plus Nemo, which makes Up 9th. I've been making one, was planning on waiting until the end to post it, since we're so close anyway. The last one I posted went down to the the 54th spot, here.

Mhmm, I was referring to Moana moving there. Not sure it would have done better BO-wise, necessarily (DM3 cutting its legs?), just that there's no animated film next summer I'm looking forward to. DM3 plot seems a bit dodgy to me, and honestly I haven't liked any Illumination films that much since Despicable Me. I guess I am glad I got to see Moana my birthday weekend? But the animation wasteland next year is real. Coco is the only one I'm really looking forward to.

Hoping to be proven wrong, but Cars 3 seems like a waste of such a good release date.

This table might be what you're looking for. It has the original and exchange-rate adjusted OS grosses for SW7 on a regional and country-by-country basis ("TFA" and "TFA-A", respectively) as well as the original and exchange-rate adjusted OW ("TFA-OW" and "TFA-OWA"). All figures are in US$ millions. Exchange rate adjustment is current as of December 9.

Well, I have an idea of what's coming up but I won't spoil it for others. Suffice it to say that I'll be able to forgive you if 14th place is a Pixar film. But if it's Disney, Dreamworks, or Ghibli...

Given the past history of Oscar voting, I think a surprise Moana win is still more likely than Kubo. That's not a knock on Kubo, it's just that the strength of ParaNorman's support among critics in 2012 (it won among a majority of local critic associations) wasn't enough to get it past Brave.

Rogue One Beauty and the Beast La La Land Coco The Red Turtle Hidden Figures The LEGO Batman Movie Sing Passengers Dunkirk

It might, but I'm guessing that Zootopia will end up with a total number of around 7-9 awards from the above list. Around 2-4 more from the eight remaining local critic associations, plus the CCMAs, Golden Globes, Annies, and BAFTA (which all tend to be more populist). My guess for Kubo is a total of around 4-7 awards, with 2-5 more from the local critic associations. The upcoming awards from the above list that I'm aware of are the SFFCC and CCMAs this Sunday, and the DFWFCA on Tuesday. I'm predicting that the SFFCC will choose Kubo but the others will go for Zootopia.

Well, I do think Zootopia has this in the bag, but I've been compiling a list of the winners of Best Animated Feature Awards from various local critic associations (ten in total), as well as the NBR, OFCS, CCMAs, Golden Globes, Annies, and BAFTA. I wanted to see if there are any predictive patterns among "precursor awards", since this is the first year I've actually been paying attention. The local critic associations I have data for are the ones with existing Wikipedia tables for Best Animated Feature (for my convenience), the list wasn't intended to be exhaustive. Here's a table showing how many of each of the awards matched the Oscar for that year. Some of the awards were introduced more recently than 2001, so the total number of awards for each organization is also shown ("N"). I noticed that most of the critic associations were less likely than the Academy to award Disney films, so the table also shows the number of winning Disney films ("Dis.N", at far right) and the number of those that also won the Oscar ("D.Oscar"). I included all Disney-distributed films as "Disney", including Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Frankenweenie. *This includes Ratatouille, which was co-awarded along with Persepolis. Most notable of the above list is the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, which has awarded the eventual Oscar winner 13 out of 15 times, with the exceptions being 2012 and 2014. In 2012 only two of the above organizations awarded Brave, and in 2014 none awarded Big Hero 6. The DFWFCA awards for this year will be on December 13. I'm expecting them to award Zootopia, of course. Here's a table showing each Oscar winner and the number of the above organizations that awarded it as well. The total number of organizations granting the Animated Feature award in each year is shown as "N". *This includes the LAFCA Award, which was co-awarded with Persepolis. Brave and Big Hero 6 are the only Oscar winners where other films were awarded by a greater number of the above organizations. In 2012 ParaNorman received seven awards and Wreck-It Ralph received four. In 2014, The Lego Movie received ten awards, HTTYD2 received three, The Tale of Princess Kayuga received two, and Boxtrolls received one. A total of 43 different films have been awarded by the above organizations since 2001. Only five of them did not receive at least an Oscar nomination, and only two that received more than one award were not nominated (The Adventures of Tintin and The Lego Movie).

I feel like I'm missing out on why this is so hilarious. Has he made bad predictions in the past or something?

Just took a look, none of them are predicting a nomination for My Life as a Zucchini either, and there are eight predicting nominations for Sing and seven for Sausage Party. I don't think this group of experts is paying very close attention to the general pattern of BAF nominations from previous years. For Sing it's also possible they're imagining that the film will turn out to better received that it is actually likely to be. The early average is quite damning but most people without a statistics background underestimate what can be extrapolated from a small sample. Anyway, Your Name definitely isn't a lock, but the strength of its reviews so far (now buttressed by the Annie nominations and LAFCA win) indicate to me it's among the strongest set of contenders competing for the last couple spots, along with The Red Turtle and My Life as a Zucchini.

I haven't paid attention to ratings on MAL, but user ratings on RT and IMDb have a tendency to fall somewhat after initial release, which makes sense since the most enthusiastic viewers are likely to rate it first.

I presume you're referring to the posts I made in the International Moana thread. I should make it clear that I do not think Moana's performance at this point should be ascribed to having a non-white princess - quite the opposite. Rather, my intention was to show that this possibility has been raised before, and that it cannot be easily dismissed (although I would prefer that it could). I do not think it is either the only possibility, or even a strong possibility. Yes, I think the change in exchange rates is something most of us have been taking into account when making the comparisons. But always worth a reminder, I'll take this excuse to plug my post for recent Disney films in the Moana OS thread, as well as the more general chart in the Adjusting Exchange Rates thread. (Probably most of the people who'd be interested have seen them, but I know the latter thread disappears from the front page fairly quickly.) There are definitely specific explanations for individual markets. I hope that the ongoing release makes it clear that these other explanations are more likely causes. Not re-quoting all the explanations you listed, but I think all of them are at least plausible, and should be considered. An excellent point. For example, sales of at least some Zootopia merchandise have been low because it simply hasn't been available, Disney seems to have underestimated demand (which clearly exists based on high resale prices). It's certainly possible some of the non-white princesses may have a low total value of resales on eBay because not many high quality dolls were made in the first place when the film was released. Market saturation could definitely be in play to a greater extent overseas, and this could be a general problem affecting multiple markets. I agree, it's a general rule to be wary of looking for a single explanation for something as complicated and diverse as worldwide box office. I don't think a low total WW gross for Moana will be simply because of a non-white princess, but I am concerned that it might be perceived to be the cause.

I don't know of anyone who expected it to make Frozen-level cash WW. I don't think many people expected it to make Frozen-level cash domestically either. I'm not worried about Disney's bottom line, the film will obviously be profitable. I'm a little concerned though that if its performance seems too comparatively weak, one of the explanations (true or not) will be that it's because of a non-white princess. It's hard not to get the impression that studios are already wary of having non-white leads. So while I never thought it would get anywhere near Frozen, I was hoping for a strong performance in the $800M+ range. It's obvious that's quite unlikely at this point, I'm still hoping for $700M. If I had to make a projection, probably $650M. I'm not someone who can't enjoy a film because of a lack of diversity in the cast (far from it), but I've been persuaded that it's important that more films have non-white lead roles. Only speaking for myself, but I suspect based on comments made earlier today I'm not the only one with that concern. I dunno though, maybe the main concern is Disney/Illumination fanboy war. But honestly, that's like 1% as heated as certain fanboy wars that ought not to be named.

It doesn't do it in my browser or on my phone, so I can't play around with it to try and make it stop.

Just checked: the only time that a winner of the LAFCA failed to recieve a nomination for the Academy Award was 2008, Waltz with Bashir.

Promising sign for Your Name: Runner-up was The Red Turtle. (cc: @eXtacy, @SchumacherFTW)