Wreck It Ralph delivered a great Pixar style idea, a computer animated story inside the world of video games, and it ended up beating Pixar at its own game with terrific reviews and strong box office results.
Now Wreck it Ralph is the big winner at the 40th annual Annie Awards, bringing home five trophies, including best animated feature and best directing.
As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Ralph was up against Pixar’s Brave, which won two awards, ParaNorman, and Rise of the Guardians. Oddly enough, two of the big contenders for Oscars in animation, Frankenweenie, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits, didn’t win anything this year.
Not only did Ralph win the two aforementioned awards, it also won for best writing, music, and voice over work for Alan Tudyk, who did vocal duties for King Candy. As for ParaNorman, it won for character animation and character design, Brave won for editing and production design, and Rise of the Guardians won for animated effects and storyboarding.
So does this mean Ralph could sweep the Oscars as well? It looks pretty good, especially considering how it cleaned up at the Annies. Indeed, even The New York Times boldly predicted, “Wreck It Ralph is headed to the Oscar podium, at least if the animation industry’s biggest awards gala is any indicator.”
Right before the big Annie wins, Ralph director Rich Moore told the Huffington Post he would do a sequel to Ralph, and that, “We’re all crossing our fingers about as far as you can cross them that we get a chance to do that. I’ve talked with John [C. Reilly] and Sarah [Silverman] and we would all love to visit that world again and work with those characters again.”
Wreck It Ralph would indeed make a great franchise, and we’re willing to bet that if it wins the Oscar gold on February 24 that he will have further adventures down the road. We’ll be watching, and keeping our fingers crossed as well.
