Annie Awards Move to March for Virtual Ceremony Amid Omicron Surge

The Annie Awards for 2022 have been delayed and for the second 12 months in a row will host a digital ceremony, the board for ASIFA-Hollywood introduced Thursday.

The awards, now of their forty ninth 12 months celebrating the perfect in animation, will now be held in a live-streamed occasion on March 12 at 7 p.m. PT, pushed again from their authentic date on February 26.

The occasion will now be on the identical evening because the DGA Awards however will transfer off a spot at the moment held by three different awards exhibits within the PGA Awards, the NAACP Picture Awards and the Scripter Awards.

“Once we introduced that the Annies can be in-person this 12 months on February 26, the Omicron variant was not even on the horizon,” Frank Gladstone, ASIFA’s government director, stated in a press release. “However now it’s right here and so extremely infectious that, after a lot debate and dialogue, ASIFA’s board of administrators has determined, in an abundance of warning, to as soon as once more transfer to a digital ceremony. We’ve additionally moved the date of the occasion by two weeks to offer our manufacturing crew time to assemble and edit the massive quantity of further materials it takes to assemble the digital ceremony.”

“Raya and the Final Dragon” led the sphere of nominees this 12 months with 10, adopted by “Encanto” with 9. Pixar’s “Luca” and Sony Animation/Netflix’s “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” every acquired eight nominations. See all of the nominations right here.

The Annie Awards have been handed out since 1972, initially to offer lifetime-achievement honors after which, starting in 1992, to honor the perfect animated movies of the 12 months. Within the 20 years for the reason that Academy Awards created a class for animated options, greater than 93% of the Oscar nominees within the class have first been nominated for Annie Awards in both the Greatest Function or Greatest Indie Function class. No movie has ever gained the Oscar with out first being nominated for an Annie.