Senior Correspondent

Pete Docter Breaks Record With Most Best Animated Feature Oscar Wins

Academy Awards Awards Oscars Pete Docter Soul

Soul took the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars last night! And Atticus Ross, Trent Reznor, and Jon Batiste won Best Original Score for composing its jazzy-ethereal soundtrack.

There’s always a serious discussion to be had around Pixar’s Oscar wins, but it’s impossible to argue that Soul hasn’t been a record-breaking film in a huge number of ways. Soul is now the first film to win Best Animated Feature without releasing in US theatres. It’s also the first Pixar film with a black protagonist, the first Pixar film to be completed while staff were working from home, and – it’s set a new record for Pete Docter.

Pete Docter, who also directed the Best-Animated-Feature-winning movies Up and Inside Out, is now the record holder for the director with the most Best Animated Feature wins – three! (Monsters Inc. lost to Shrek which we still have mixed feelings about).

My wish for all of us tonight, is that we could follow the example of jazz musicians. That wherever we are, whatever we have: we turn it into something beautiful.

Pete Docter (representing himself, co-director Kemp Powers, and producer Dana Murray at the Academy Awards ceremony last night)

Congratulations to the Soul crew, and congratulations to the Onward and Burrow crew whose films were also nominated!

Tags: , Last modified: April 26, 2021

Joanna Peaker is a Senior Correspondent for Upcoming Pixar. Joanna's love for Pixar blossomed after watching Up for the first time in 2009, and it has continued to grow ever since. Joanna brings an artistic eye to Upcoming Pixar, delivering a unique editorial perspective on Pixar's aesthetics.