'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' Sweeps Pixar, Disney at Golden Globes

Spider-Man swung into the Golden Globes on Sunday and swiped Disney and Pixar to win the Best Animated Feature award for Sony.

During the evening ceremony for the Golden Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for Best Animated Feature. The film beat Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, Pixar’s Incredibles 2, the Japanese anime drama Mirai, and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs.

The trophy, the first awarded that night, was given to Spider-Verse directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman by the cast of Marvel’s Black Panther, thus allowing something of a mini-crossover between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony’s Spider-Man universe live on stage.

“We were trying to make a movie that anyone can be behind the mask,” Ramsey said in his brief acceptance speech. “Anybody can be behind the mask, we’re counting on you. you can do it.”

The filmmakers also thanked Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, the two Marvel creators who introduced the film’s protagonist, Miles Morales, to comics in 2011’s Ultimate Spider-Man.

Spider-Verse, which has been celebrated by critics since its release in December, was an exciting underdog heading into the ceremony as it stood against category veterans Disney and Pixar, which together had two films in the running, and awards juggernaut Wes Anderson.

Why This Win is Historic for ‘Spider-Verse’

Historically, Best Animated Feature has been Pixar’s to win at the Globes. Since the category’s introduction in 2006, the studio has won the award eight times; it also won the first four years, with Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010) all crowned until Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Tintin won in 2011. Pixar won again a year later, for 2012’s Brave.

Disney Animation Studios, a kind of rival sibling studio to Pixar, has also dominated the category, with movies like Frozen (2013), Zootopia (2016), and Coco (2017) having been crowned by the HFPA.

The film is also the first animated feature from Marvel (produced and distributed by Sony) to participate in the Golden Globes. Before this year, the last animated superhero film to be considered for the award was Big Hero 6, a Disney feature based on a short-lived Marvel comic book series.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in theaters now.