Disney Just Broke Its Own Oscars Record (And It's Nothing To Celebrate)

Animation historians know the cycle of Disney animated feature films very well. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Disney animation was going through a transition. "Going through a transition," in business terms, is typically a polite way of saying that their films began to tank at the box office on a regular basis and/or they were critically panned (often both). Even some of the films that were hits didn't exactly become marketing bonanzas. As we all know, 1985's "The Black Cauldron" bombed so hard that Disney threatened to shutter its animation studio entirely. Luckily, the late '80s and early '90s proved to be a renaissance for the company, and it came out on top.

Of course, these things move in cycles. Disney Animation struggled during the 2000s, releasing either not-so-beloved films like "Home on the Range" or box office flops like "Treasure Planet." (One could argue that Disney is more interesting when the company struggles, but that's another story.) It was around this time that the Academy also introduced the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

A sure sign that Disney Animation was struggling in the 2000s was the fact that it didn't win said award until 2014. To be fair, though, Disney distributed the films made by Pixar, and Pixar has, to date, won 11 (of 25) of the Best Animated Feature Oscars. Disney has only won four sans Pixar, but they were all notable: "Frozen," "Big Hero 6," "Zootopia," and "Encanto." As a pair, however, Disney and Pixar have swept this category 60% of the time.

Of course, none of that stopped Netflix's animated musical "KPop Demon Hunters" from winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar over Disney's "Zootopia 2" and Pixar's "Elio." As a result, neither Disney nor Pixar has won this award in four years, setting a new "record."

Prior to this, the longest span of neither Disney nor Pixar not winning a Best Animated Feature Oscar was only two years. Neither company won the award in its first two years, with DreamWorks' "Shrek" taking the first award in 2002 and Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away" rightfully taking it in 2003. The next two-year span was 2006-2007, when "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" and "Happy Feet" won, respectively. Since then, only a few outliers have interrupted a pretty solid winning streak for the Disney/Pixar consortium. 

But the last four years have been Disney/Pixar free. This year, "KPop Demon Hunters" won. Last year, the dialogue-free Latvian film "Flow" beat out Pixar's giganto-hit "Inside Out 2." In 2024, Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" won over Pixar's "Elemental." In 2023, Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion film version of "Pinocchio" beat Pixar's "Turning Red." The last time a Disney or Pixar movie won was in 2022, and it was a stuffed ballot box that year, as three of the five nominees ("Encanto," "Raya and the Last Dragon," and "Luca") came from either Disney or Pixar.

It's hard to argue that Disney and Pixar are "struggling," though, given how financially successful their recent movies have been. 2025's "Zootopia 2" made $1.86 billion at the worldwide box office, exceeding 2024's "Inside Out 2," which made almost $1.7 billion. The photorealistic animated remake of "The Lion King" similarly made over $1.66 billion back in 2019, while "Frozen 2" brought in $1.45 billion that same year. Where Disney and Pixar appear to be struggling, weirdly, is in their cultural clout. For every mega-hit, they have a bomb. 

Case(s) in point: "Zootopia 2" did well critically and commercially, but "Elio" tanked at the box office. It also invited controversy due to Disney and Pixar removing its queer elements, leaving the movie feeling empty and cowardly. Of course, "Moana 2" made over a billion dollars in 2024, but 2023's animated "Wish" — meant to celebrate Disney's centennial — was a debacle. "Encanto" was likewise a hit on streaming. 2022's "Strange Worlds," though? Not so much.

Indeed, the 2020s have so far been something of a contraction period for Disney. "The Mandalorian and Grogu" will only be the first Disney-era "Star Wars" movie to hit theaters since 2019 when it arrives this year, while Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe — once the Colossus of the film industry — has seen intermittent success since 2019. Marvel's 2025 box office further cemented that the MCU has fallen from grace, even as the MCU titles "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" and "Thunderbolts*" earned positive reviews. Will that change when "Avengers: Doomsday" arrives at the end of 2026? Disney and Marvel are clearly hoping it will.

Moreover, it's very telling that Disney's biggest hits of the past six years have pretty much all been sequels and remakes. It appears the company doesn't know how to draw in audiences right now other than by leaning on what we're already familiar with. That kind of thing worked quite well with, say, its live-action "Lilo & Stitch" remake, but the Mouse House only revisit certain wells so many times.

And if it's only being successful by being unoriginal, then the Academy is hardly going to recognize its art. We'll have to wait and see if either Disney or Pixar can move the needle at the 2027 Oscars.