We’re seven months away from finding out if “Toy Story 5” will be a Best Animated Feature Oscar nominee. There are plenty of other animated movies on the way, but I’d say its chances of being one of the final five are pretty good. Pixar’s iconic animated franchise kicked-off in 1995. “Toy Story” was the highest grossing movie of the year and earned three Academy Award nominations — Best Original Screenplay (rare for an animated film), Best Original Score, and Best Original Song for the beloved “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”. However, the most significant honor for “Toy Story” that evening was a Special Achievement Award given to director John Lasseter for creating the first computer generated animated motion picture.
“Toy Story 2” was the 1999 Golden Globes winner for Best Picture: Comedy or Musical, but it only received one Oscar nomination — though it was a powerful one — for Best Original Song, for heartbreaking tune “When She Loved Me”. I think The Academy made-up for the Best Adapted Screenplay snub for “TS2” by getting 2010’s “Toy Story 3” in that category. “Ts3” also earned nominations in Sound Editing and Best Picture of the Year (becoming only the third — and the most recent — animated movie to be on that list). And it WON in two categories: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, for Randy Newman’s “We Belong Together”.
2019’s “Toy Story 4” put Newman back on the Original Song ballot, for “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away”. And “Ts4” won Animated Feature. So what will happen with “Toy Story 5”? Again, I think an Animated Feature nom is likely… and maybe a fifth consecutive Best Original Song nomination recognition — this time for Taylor Swift and Jack Antanoff’s No. 1 hit on the music charts, “I Knew It, I Knew You”. We’ll find out what happens in January.