After hitting theaters with a staggering $160 million gross (the biggest opening weekend so far this year) and with reviews to match, Toy Story 5 has positioned itself as the default front-runner for Best Animated Feature prize at the 2027 Oscars. But will voters hold the number five against it?
Since the Academy introduced the category in 2001, only two sequels have won, and both had Toy Story in the title. The first was 2010’s Toy Story 3, which had a leg-up in the competition since it was also nominated for Best Picture. Although Pixar had pulled off a perfect trilogy, the franchise returned with 2019’s Toy Story 4, which triumphed over another sequel, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
Other sequels have tried and failed to score wins at the Academy Awards. Shrek (2001) won the inaugural Best Animated Feature award, but Shrek 2 (2004) came up short against The Incredibles. In a funny bit of history repeating itself, Incredibles 2 (2018) lost to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and that movie’s follow-up, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), lost to The Boy and the Heron.
In 2005, the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit adventure, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, triumphed in the animated feature category, much like its predecessors, “The Wrong Trousers” (1994) and “A Close Shave” (1996), did in animated short. The Wallace and Gromit winning streak was broken in 2024, when Vengeance Most Fowl came up short against Flow.
Pixar’s Inside Out might have waltzed to victory in 2015, but it’s 2024 continuation, Inside Out 2, got swept away by Flow (much like Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl). Disney’s Zootopia trounced its challengers in 2016, but 2025’s Zootopia 2 was no match for KPop Demon Hunters.
Some franchises just couldn’t catch a break at the Oscars. Kung Fu Panda (2008) and Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) came up short against WALL-E and Rango, respectively. All three How to Train Your Dragon movies struck out against Toy Story 3 (2010), Big Hero 6 (2014), and Toy Story 4 (2019).
2012’s Wreck-It Ralph couldn’t wreck Brave‘s Oscar chances, nor could the 2018 sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet smash Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. 2013’s Despicable Me 2 was the only film in that franchise to earn an Oscar bid, and it got iced out by Frozen. Neither 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie nor its 2020 sequel, Farmageddon, could take down Pixar’s Inside Out or Soul.
Although Shrek won the first animated feature Oscar, its spin-off, Puss in Boots (2011) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), lost its respective duels against Rango and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
Even if a film was popular with Oscar voters the first go-round, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll reward its sequel, let alone even nominate it. Frozen 2 (2019), Finding Dory (2016), and Happy Feet 2 (2011) were all snubbed, despite their predecessors winning the Best Animated Feature prize. Frozen 2 and Finding Dory even got some precursor attention at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, but failed to land Academy Award bids.
Other follow-ups to Oscar-nominated films like The Croods: A New Age (2020) and Moana 2 (2024) tallied Golden Globe nods but came up short with the Academy. The same fate befell the BAFTA-nominated Shrek the Third (2007) and Monsters University (2013).
So if there’s a pattern that’s emerged, it’s that Oscar voters don’t really care for sequels outside of the Toy Story franchise… which is good news for Toy Story 5.
