Disney plans to put everything it has into getting Toy Story 3 a Best Picture win

By Sean O'Neal | November 17, 2010 | 9:36pm

Aux Features Film

Having surveyed the competition for Best Animated Feature and safely assumed they can aim higher, Disney has announced that it will do everything it can to get Toy Story 3 a Best Picture win at the upcoming Oscars. Confident that its status as both the best-reviewed movie and No. 1 box-office hit of the year (plus its landmark $1 billion-plus take) counts for something, the studio will debut an ad campaign this week that features Toy Story characters reenacting scenes from past Best Picture winners—such as one with mob boss bear Lotso emulating Al Pacino under the tagline “Not since The Godfather II…” Future ads will incorporate scenes from films like West Side Story, On The Waterfront, Silence Of The Lambs (possibly featuring a “disembodied Mr. Potato Head”), Titanic, The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, and Forrest Gump (featuring Tom Hanks’ Woody character, naturally). Here’s a look at one parodying Shakespeare In Love:

Even if it just gets nominated, Toy Story 3 would be only the third animated film to make it that far—after Beauty And The Beast and Up—and if it were to win somehow, it would be the first time Disney has ever taken home the award. Of course, however deserving, the Academy obviously doesn’t take animated films (let alone sequels to animated films) as seriously as its live-action fare, so the chances of its members voting for something like Toy Story 3 over The King’s Speech, for example, seem pretty slim. If it doesn’t win, hopefully Disney can continue to take solace in the fact that Toy Story 3 will continue to make them insanely fucking rich years after everyone has forgotten “that stuttering Colin Firth movie.”