To the surprise of absolutely no one, “Encanto” – the Disney musical from directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard – has taken home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The win comes in an otherwise-crowded year for animated films, which included Netflix‘s breakout hit “The Mitchells vs The Machines,” Pixar‘s “Luca,” and Jonas Poher Rasmussen‘s highly regarded refugee film “Flee.”
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Since the Best Animated Feature category was created in 2001, Disney has been a successful distributor of Oscar-winning films. From 2002’s “Spirited Away” to the decades of Pixar dominance (“Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” and more), Disney has had a hand in many winners – but as Variety notes, none of them have come with the iconic Walt Disney Studios logo at the front of the film. “Encanto” breaks that streak, bringing an end to the most technical of underdog stories.
While animated features are a uniquely collaborative medium, a big chunk of the success of “Encanto” has to be attributed to songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. Each of the songs he wrote for the movie – including the wildly popular “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” – have been mainstays on the Billboard Top 100 over the past three months. Miranda is also nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song (“Dos Oruguitas”), the second Oscar nomination of his career.