The 2026 Oscar for Best Animated Feature will go to Hoppers.

Why? Because this year, it went to KPop Demon Hunters, a Netflix original, in spite of the entire theme of the whole fucking night apparently being "Cinema isn't dead! We mean it! People are still going to the movies! Netflix is blasphemy! Go to the movies!"

I'm actually surprised they even considered KPDH for the nomination at all, given that the Academy was already one of the few remaining bastions of the big screen. And just to be clear, I do think KPDH was a good movie. But there are a lot of people who I don't think realize WHY it was a good movie, including a lot of the people who made it. I liked KPDH for its fleshed out characters and organic dialogue, not because of the seizure-inducing animation and whiplash-prone tone, which is what so many people appear to have grappled onto instead.

What does this have to do with Hoppers? Well, if I'm honest, 2026 looks like it's going to be a pretty shit year for animation; lots of sequels nobody asked for, lots of IP adaptations nobody asked for, and a few things that might look promising if the studios weren't doing absolutely nothing to promote them and already seem committed to taking a loss on them.

God, I would love to say Laika is finally going to win it, but... (sigh) I hate to say it, but it's becoming more and more apparent that they're the M. Night Shyamalan of animation: They blew it out of the water with their first movie, and they've been on a steady decline recycling the same elements ever since.

So unless we get another "Flow" upset out of Europe, I think we've already seen the top two contenders for 2026: Goat, which banked everything on all of the elements that did NOT contribute to KPop Demon Hunters being such a good movie (and which I almost went to go see, until the horrendous fart mask scene made its way into the trailers), and Hoppers, Pixar's foray into DreamWorks-like dark comedy with a progressive message which... Surprisingly kinda' worked.

Similarly, the big two of 2025 were the aforementioned KPDH, and Zootopia 2, another movie from a formerly top-of-the-world animation studio with a progressive message.

Basically, I'm expecting the Academy to have wound up regretting their 2025 choice either way, and that, in 2026, they will plead the opposite.

If Zootopia 2 had won, the KPDH fans would have made a big stink about it being robbed, after which they would have tried to correct it by giving it to Goat. But we're in the timeline where KPDH won, which I predict will lead to a glut of horrible copycat movies, including by Sony Pictures themselves, who, as I said, don't seem to understand why KPDH was good), which will cause a lot of people to sour on KPDH and give all the curmudgeons at the Academy who spent the 2026 ceremony rage-screaming at the changing times an intense enough desire to want to pretend it's the year 2009 again to push the Pixar movie over the finish line instead.

That's my prediction. I want to have faith in Wildwood... But I can't...