[Focus Features]

Welcome to the Weekly News… well, kinda. To be honest, there was very little animation news to report on this week, down to the point where theres only one noteworthy story. That one would be Kubo and the Two String’s win at the BAFTA Awards.

Kubo and the Two Strings wins the BAFTA Award

While we all patiently wait for the Academy Awards, it’s Britain’s turn to deliver film awards. On February 12, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA for short) presented the 70th British Academy Film Awards in Royal Albert Hall of London. No shock, La La Land was the big winner with five wins. But for the Best Animated Film category, it tuned out that the winner of that award was Kubo and the Two Strings.

[Focus Features]

Laika’s stop-motion masterpiece was nominated alongside Finding Dory, Moana, and Zootopia, but managed to overcome the near-dominant Disney list to earn the award. It also marks as the first time that a non-computer-animated feature has won the award at this ceremony. We highly congratulate Travis Knight and his team at Laika for their triumph win of the BAFTA!

But the question remains, will Kubo or Zootopia win the Oscar? We’ll find out on February 26, but in the meantime, you can check out all the BAFTA winners and nominees in this WIRED article.

I do apologise if this is week’s article is seriously short, but don’t worry. Hopefully more news will be available to report on next week.

And speaking of next week, we’ll be getting the next theatrical animated release, which is the Chinese-American animal cartoon Rock Dog (摇滚藏獒). Will this movie succeed with American audiences? We’ll find out the answer to that soon!

[Huayi Brothers/Summit Premiere]

• Karlamon