^{Credit: The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Ketchup Entertainment, Warner Bros. Animation)}

2024 gave us one of the best animation lineups ever, creating genuine suspense heading into the Oscars. While Flow ultimately won Best Animated Feature, one could easily see The Wild Robot, Inside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, or Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl winning in a year like 2025. That said, 2025 hasn’t delivered many Oscar hopefuls on the animation front, at least compared to last year. Of course, it’s premature to say this with more than a few contenders gearing up for award season releases. 2025 hasn’t been devoid of worthy animation either. KPop Demon Hunters is still reaching milestones on the Netflix charts, Elio received critical acclaim despite underwhelming box office, and Ne Zha 2 is the highest-grossing animated film of all time. For many, 2025’s best animated film so far is The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Don’t expect to see that film at the Oscars, though, as it was submitted last year.

We should consider ourselves fortunate that Pete Browngardt’s sci-fi B-movie parody and love letter to the Looney Tunes exists at all. Despite once being a premier brand for Warner Bros., the studio has repeatedly done Looney Tunes dirty as of late. At one point set for an HBO Max release, The Day the Earth Blew Up fell into limbo amid WB’s merger with Discovery. Some feared the film might meet the same fate as Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt, which were denied releases for tax write-off purposes. Thankfully, the Looney Tunes movie not only premiered at Annecy in June 2024, but Ketchup Entertainment picked up the North American distribution rights.

An independent company with no more than 10 employees, according to LinkedIn, Ketchup Entertainment is emerging as a savior of cinema. In addition to saving The Day the Earth Blew Up, Ketchup secured an August 28, 2026 theatrical release for Coyote vs. Acme, a finished film everybody assumed Warner Bros. had killed for good. With the resources they had, Ketchup also gave The Day the Earth Blew Up a proper push for Oscar consideration, screening it in Los Angeles for a week last December to qualify. Alas, the Best Animated Feature race was simply too stacked for The Day the Earth Blew Up to break through, especially this late in the game. Had Ketchup waited until 2025 for an awards campaign, the Looney Tunes movie might’ve stood a better chance.

While The Day the Earth Blew Up had its festival debut in 2024, that didn’t automatically qualify it for Oscar eligibility. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On premiered at Telluride in 2021, but wouldn’t be given an Oscar-qualifying release until 2022. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon opened in the UK in October 2019, but its Oscar campaign was reserved until 2020. Not to play Captain Hindsight, but it might’ve been wiser if The Day the Earth Blew Up followed a similar strategy. Perhaps the idea was to generate awards talk before the film’s general theatrical release in February 2025, which was ultimately pushed back to March. While an Oscar nomination might’ve compelled more audiences to seek the film out, that’s not what happened.

The Day the Earth Blew Up went on to make $15.1 million at the box office against its $15 budget. Some may debate whether or not that makes the film a financial success when you take advertising and other costs into consideration. For a movie that essentially had a grassroots marketing campaign and was abandoned by WB, though, making its production budget back was perhaps the best-case scenario. The film has continued to find an audience through HBO Max, with many hailing it as one of the funniest and most visually enticing movies of 2025. As far as the Academy is concerned, though, it’s a 2024 release.

Ketchup offered digital screeners to critics' groups during the 2024 awards season. I was among the lucky ones who got to see the film before its theatrical rollout. I can’t say how many other critics watched early screeners, although it apparently wasn’t enough. A few critics' prizes might’ve caught the attention of Oscar voters, but The Day the Earth Blew Up went overlooked this past awards season. The Day the Earth Blew Up was one of the numerous screeners that critics received late last year. With so many movies piling up, there’s never enough time to watch them all. And let’s face it, most critics weren’t going to prioritize The Day the Earth Blew Up over Anora or even other animated films like Flow.

Critics groups raised Flow’s profile, leading to its win at the Golden Globes and later the Oscars. The Day the Earth Blew Up needed a similar endorsement, but not enough critics saw it. By mid-December 2024, the film only had 12 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. That number has since grown to more than 100. Critics caught up with The Day the Earth Blew Up in 2025, but by then, its Oscar eligibility window had closed. All that being said, would The Day the Earth Blew Up have gotten an Oscar nomination if its campaign had been saved for this year? At this point, it’s easy to say yes, although we don’t know how the rest of the year will play out.

Arco won the Cristal at Annecy, with Neon picking it up for North American distribution. Disney likely has a huge moneymaker on their hands with Zootopia 2, a sequel to the 2016 Oscar winner. Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet will be playing and Venice and TIFF, signifying Sony’s faith in the project. With other possible contenders like In Your Dreams, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, and I Am Frankelda on the way, the Best Animated Feature race is about to get more crowded than people think. So, the competition might’ve eclipsed The Day the Earth Blew Up anyway. With the film gaining a passionate fan base over the past few months, though, perhaps it could’ve blown up on the awards trail in a year like 2025. In any case, Daffy Duck is still waiting for that Oscar nomination.

Nick Spake is the Author of Bright & Shiny: A History of Animation at Award Shows Volumes 1 and 2. Available Now!