“Flushed Away,” the joint animated feature from DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations, was the big winner at the 34th Annual Annie Awards Sunday night in Glendale. The tale of London sewer dwellers earned awards in five categories: animated effects, feature character animation, feature production design, feature writing, and feature voice acting by Ian McKellen for the character of Toad. The win for DreamWorks and Aardman comes two weeks after the two companies announced they were severing ties on a five-picture deal because of different business goals. In November, DreamWorks announced it would take a substantial earnings write-down on “Flushed Away” because the film had only taken in $40 million in its early weeks of release. The film’s budget was $142.9 million. Another DreamWorks Animation film, “Over the Hedge” came away with three Annie Awards. “Cars” from The Walt Disney Co. and Pixar Animation was named the best-animated feature and for best feature music for Randy Newman’s score. Bill Plympton, Genndy Tartakovsky and Andreas Deja received Winsor McCay Awards recognizing their career achievements. Stephen Worth received the June Foray Award for benevolent contributions to the art and industry of animation. The awards are presented by ASIFA-Hollywood, based in Burbank.
