^{After Flow's win, will the Golden Globes shake up the Best Animated Feature race again?}

The Golden Globes made several inspired choices at their last ceremony, with Fernanda Torres and Demi Moore both winning Best Actress awards. While those victories didn’t translate to wins at the Oscars, the Globes did change the trajectory of one race. With four Globe nominations, many assumed The Wild Robot would at least win Best Animated Feature. It was a genuine surprise when presenter Harrison Ford announced Flow as the winner. Those who wrote Flow’s Globe win off as a fluke felt vindicated when The Wild Robot went on to win the Critics' Choice Movie Award and PGA. Neither The Wild Robot nor Flow won at BAFTA, which went to home team favorite Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. By Oscar Night, the Golden Globes were the only televised award show where The Wild Robot lost to Flow. Turns out that’s all it needed, as Flow ultimately triumphed at the Academy Awards.

This year, KPop Demon Hunters is the designated Best Animated Feature frontrunner. Even if KPop Demon Hunters wins at CCA and PGA, the Globes could shake up the animation race with a curveball. Which film stands the best chance at dethroning KPop Demon Hunters, though? Of the six Globe nominees, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle was the most pleasant surprise. While nothing would fill anime fans everywhere with more joy than to hear Demon Slayer’s name called on Golden Globes Night, the nomination is its win. The same can be said about Pixar’s Elio, which can still compensate for its financial losses with a few notices on the awards trail.

Disney has a better shot with the blockbuster Zootopia 2, which is also nominated alongside KPop Demon Hunters in the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement category. If Zootopia 2 takes the Best Animated Feature Globe, it would echo when How to Train Your Dragon 2 beat presumed frontrunner The Lego Movie and eventual Oscar winner Big Hero 6. The original Zootopia won this award almost a decade ago. In the event that Zootopia 2 wins the Globe, it’d be the only franchise to prevail here twice. A win certainly isn’t out of the question, but considering that Inside Out 2, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and several other sequels couldn’t win the Globe, Zootopia 2 may have to settle for being a billion-dollar crowdpleaser.

Arco and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, both French productions, are perhaps in the best position to be the next Flow. However, Flow’s Globe win didn’t come out of absolutely nowhere. It won a wave of critics' awards heading into the Globes, including the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. There hasn’t been a sweeper this awards season. Arco won at NBR, but Little Amélie won at LAFCA. That doesn’t mean KPop Demon Hunters is down for the count, being the LAFCA runner-up. Even more telling, KPop Demon Hunters won at NYFCC. If KPop Demon Hunters can win over the New York Critics, they can win over any group.

KPop Demon Hunters has won several regional critics' prizes as well. One award the film can’t win is the BAFTA, where KPop Demon Hunters was deemed ineligible due to its ill-conceived theatrical rollout. Since the British Academy introduced a category for animated features in 2006, no film has gone on to win the Oscar without being nominated at BAFTA. This year might be an exception to the rule, especially if KPop Demon Hunters sweeps at every other televised award show. If Arco or Little Amélie wins the Globe and then the BAFTA, though, KPop Demon Hunters is in trouble. Of course, Arco and Little Amélie could also split votes among voters who want to support international animation.

As of now, it’s hard to get a read on which film is more well-liked in the industry. Although France selected It Was Just an Accident as their submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars, Arco was shortlisted over Little Amélie. That might give Arco the edge, but Little Amélie has slightly better reviews on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Neither is as strong as Flow was in the awards conversation this time last year. The Globes can change that in one night. While Arco or Little Amélie shouldn’t be underestimated at the Globes, we may find that it was KPop Demon Hunters all along.

^{Is KPop Demon Hunters winning the Globe a done deal?}

Perhaps this year will be less like when Flow won and more like when the Globe went to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, another Sony Pictures Animation film. As acclaimed and groundbreaking as Into the Spider-Verse was, awards experts weren’t sure if it could go the distance. Spider-Verse‘s Globe win gave Academy members permission to vote for it. KPop Demon Hunters is a big swing that isn’t quite like anything the Oscars or Globes have awarded in the past. Neither was Into the Spider-Verse. As different as Flow and KPop Demon Hunters are, both were severely underestimated. Few believed that Flow could win the Golden Globe until it happened. If you told people six months ago that a movie called KPop Demon Hunters would generate awards buzz, they might’ve called you crazy. Now, not so much.

When Spider-Verse won, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association still presented the Golden Globes. The show has been under new management since 2023, which is when we started to see a shift in the Best Animated Feature winners. After seventeen winners in a row that were all from American studios, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron took home the gold. Flow won the following year, marking the first Golden Globe for Latvia. A win for Arco or Little Amélie would continue the trend of the “New Globes” awarding international animation. Then again, KPop Demon Hunters draws inspiration from anime and Korean culture. Even if it’s technically an American production, a win for KPop Demon Hunters would still be a celebration of international animation.

One of the most interesting hypotheticals would be if KPop Demon Hunters lost Best Animated Feature, but won Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. That would still arguably make it competitive to win the Oscar. The box office category is essentially a popularity contest, and few films from the past year were more popular than KPop Demon Hunters. That said, Cinematic and Box Office Achievement might be a consolation prize for Sinners, which will likely lose to Hamnet in Best Motion Picture – Drama. KPop Demon Hunters will also be going up against Sinners in Best Original Song, which is a two-horse race between “Golden” and “I Lied to You.”

If the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature goes to KPop Demon Hunters, then rest assured that it’ll win everything else (save the BAFTA) on its way to the Oscars. If Arco, Little Amélie, or even Zootopia 2 wins the Globe, then we’ll just have to go with the flow.

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