In what may or may not be one of the biggest upsets this awards season (depending on how you look at it), How to Train Your Dragon 2 won this year’s Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature last night, beating out its fellow nominees The Book of Life, Big Hero 6, The Boxtrolls, and The LEGO Movie all in doing so.
It’s also a history-making event for DreamWorks Animation, for this is the first time in the studio’s history that it’s won the award (after previously being nominated six times).
For those interested, here’s a video of the award announcement and speech:
Also for those interested, here’s a full transcript of Dean DeBlois’s acceptance speech (courtesy of Cartoon Brew):
“Wow, this is incredible. Thank you so much. We’re so excited. On behalf of over 400 people who worked on this film, from the bottom of our hearts we thank the Hollywood Foreign Press. We’d love to thank the leadership at DreamWorks: Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ann Daly, and Bill Damaschke. To our amazing partners who were with us on the distribution of it: Jim Gianopulos and all the great people at Fox. To Cressida Cowell, who actually created the whole world that we’ve been able to play in; she’s the author of the books. To our incredible cast, our incredible crew, to our incredible producer Bonnie Arnold. Thank you so much to our families; to Dave Wirtschafter and Jeff Gorin at William Morris; to Linda Lichter and Peter Nichols, our attornies; we thank you so much.”
Given that the Golden Globes are often seen as a foreshadowing of the Oscars, it’s not too far out to speculate that if that’s really the case, How to Train Your Dragon 2 may be on the fast track towards a possible victory at the Oscars. Granted, nothing’s too certain when the competition is as diverse and stiff as ever. And I say that because even though I wholeheartedly expect a large number of wildly differing opinions on this award, the awards season itself has been a bag of various surprises and it’s all due to how great these films are.
Big Hero 6 got plenty of love from our readers when it all but swept our ‘Best of 2014’ awards a week ago, while The LEGO Movie has been circulating quite strongly around many film critics circles. And who would have thought that The Boxtrolls would lead this year’s Annie Award nominations!
The level of surprise and unpredictability this awards season for animation has never been this high. And thus, speculating about who might get the prize has never been this much fun. This is what happens when you have a stellar year in animation.
That being said, congratulations to the other nominees and a BIG round of applause to Writer/Director Dean DeBlois, Producer Bonnie Arnold, Composer John Powell, Executive Producer Chris Sanders, Author Cressida Cowell, and everybody over at DreamWorks Animation!
What do you think? Are you satisfied with the result? In your opinion, who should have taken the award instead?
(From left to right: Kit Harrington, Bonnie Arnold, and Dean Deblois)
Edited by: Morgan Stradling
