Okay, so Wolfwalkers just won its first major-to-semi-major Animated Feature Award. It was the New York Film Critics Circle, and that's a pretty big one. Uh, Soul will probably still win the Oscar. About the best chance Wolfwalkers has is an anti-Disney/anti-Pixar "They've been winning too much!" backlash against Soul, but ... that didn't help Kubo and the Two Strings against Zootopia (and not even Moana possibly splitting the Disney vote didn't help, either, so don't think Onward will be a spoiler). During the last decade, basically, in hindsight, if Pixar had an original movie out, it won (Brave, Inside Out and Coco) even if it was, you know, Brave (The Good Dinosaur is an anomaly, but Inside Out took up it's slack); if it had a sequel, however, it struggled to be nominated. The Incredibles 2 was the only Pixar movie to be nominated outside of Toy Story sequels, which is the exception to the "no Pixar sequel wins" rule with Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4 beginning and ending the decade, respectively. Okay, so Pixar wins unless it has a non-Toy Story sequel; if that's the case, Disney's home animation studio wins (Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia), though the sequel rule applies to them as well (with only one being nominated again, Ralph Breaks the Internet in the same year as The Incredibles 2). So, there have been basically two years in the last decade where there has been no original Disney or Pixar movies (or Toy Story sequels), and in those cases non-Disney studios won with Rango and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So, if the 2020s continue as the 2010s, well, Soul is statistically so far ahead here as to not even be funny. However, this pattern didn't develop until really the 2010s, and was not true in the 2000s, so ... a non-Pixar movie beating an original Pixar movie (Shrek over Monsters Inc. and Happy Feet over Cars, as well as Spirited Away over Disney's Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch in a Pixar-free year) has occurred.
Adding another wrinkle is that Soul had a lot of thunder early on as a possible Best Picture nomination; this was actually another way, by kind of circuitous and torturous logic, that Wolfwalkers might take the win. If Soul was nominated for and won Best Picture, enough voters might split their Animated Feature vote to Wolfwalkers or another, non-Soul movie. Now, as for Soul for Best Picture, well, the argument was maybe, seeing as how Parasite became the first foreign language film to win Best Picture, perhaps the Academy is looking to lodge another "first" in their belt with an animated feature BP this year, or otherwise to burn through a "bucket list" item before they hit the century mark later this decade. Well, that's not very likely, as the whole "well, COVID's gonna make this an odd year anyway" was part of that theorizing, and it turns out Oscar bait that barely makes it to the theaters in a regular year doesn't need the theaters as much. In fact, Soul is at best a "it could happen" as a nominee, which would pretty much seal the deal it wins Animated Feature as a consolation prize for not winning BP. Besides, it's not like Parasite didn't win International Feature last year. However, Soul is basically a lock for Original Screenplay (which is actually apparently kind of scant this year), and any animated feature that's gotten that nomination has went on to win Animated Feature.
The only other possibility is kind of stated earlier that Onward and Soul split the Pixar vote and Wolfwalkers splits the middle, but that doesn't seem to ever actually happen (see above: Zootopia), or there is something completely out there (as the pandemic will mean movies have an exceptionally long time before nominations and the actual awards) like everyone involved with Soul turns out to be evil (which, to be fair, that would be very Pixar). Or, hell, maybe Academy members will actually watch Wolfwalkers and like it. Obviously, winning Critics awards helps that.
For his part, director Tomm Moore has basically already signaled on Twitter that Soul is a great movie and he doesn't mind losing to it at all and he's always been of the "it's an honor just to be nominated school; also, great publicity" when actually pressed about his feelings on the Oscars.
Okay, so Wolfwalkers just won its first major-to-semi-major Animated Feature Award. It was the New York Film Critics Circle, and that's a pretty big one. Uh, Soul will probably still win the Oscar. About the best chance Wolfwalkers has is an anti-Disney/anti-Pixar "They've been winning too much!" backlash against Soul, but ... that didn't help Kubo and the Two Strings against Zootopia (and not even Moana possibly splitting the Disney vote didn't help, either, so don't think Onward will be a spoiler). During the last decade, basically, in hindsight, if Pixar had an original movie out, it won (Brave, Inside Out and Coco) even if it was, you know, Brave (The Good Dinosaur is an anomaly, but Inside Out took up it's slack); if it had a sequel, however, it struggled to be nominated. The Incredibles 2 was the only Pixar movie to be nominated outside of Toy Story sequels, which is the exception to the "no Pixar sequel wins" rule with Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4 beginning and ending the decade, respectively. Okay, so Pixar wins unless it has a non-Toy Story sequel; if that's the case, Disney's home animation studio wins (Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia), though the sequel rule applies to them as well (with only one being nominated again, Ralph Breaks the Internet in the same year as The Incredibles 2). So, there have been basically two years in the last decade where there has been no original Disney or Pixar movies (or Toy Story sequels), and in those cases non-Disney studios won with Rango and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So, if the 2020s continue as the 2010s, well, Soul is statistically so far ahead here as to not even be funny. However, this pattern didn't develop until really the 2010s, and was not true in the 2000s, so ... a non-Pixar movie beating an original Pixar movie (Shrek over Monsters Inc. and Happy Feet over Cars, as well as Spirited Away over Disney's Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch in a Pixar-free year) has occurred.
Adding another wrinkle is that Soul had a lot of thunder early on as a possible Best Picture nomination; this was actually another way, by kind of circuitous and torturous logic, that Wolfwalkers might take the win. If Soul was nominated for and won Best Picture, enough voters might split their Animated Feature vote to Wolfwalkers or another, non-Soul movie. Now, as for Soul for Best Picture, well, the argument was maybe, seeing as how Parasite became the first foreign language film to win Best Picture, perhaps the Academy is looking to lodge another "first" in their belt with an animated feature BP this year, or otherwise to burn through a "bucket list" item before they hit the century mark later this decade. Well, that's not very likely, as the whole "well, COVID's gonna make this an odd year anyway" was part of that theorizing, and it turns out Oscar bait that barely makes it to the theaters in a regular year doesn't need the theaters as much. In fact, Soul is at best a "it could happen" as a nominee, which would pretty much seal the deal it wins Animated Feature as a consolation prize for not winning BP. Besides, it's not like Parasite didn't win International Feature last year. However, Soul is basically a lock for Original Screenplay (which is actually apparently kind of scant this year), and any animated feature that's gotten that nomination has went on to win Animated Feature.
The only other possibility is kind of stated earlier that Onward and Soul split the Pixar vote and Wolfwalkers splits the middle, but that doesn't seem to ever actually happen (see above: Zootopia), or there is something completely out there (as the pandemic will mean movies have an exceptionally long time before nominations and the actual awards) like everyone involved with Soul turns out to be evil (which, to be fair, that would be very Pixar). Or, hell, maybe Academy members will actually watch Wolfwalkers and like it. Obviously, winning Critics awards helps that.
For his part, director Tomm Moore has basically already signaled on Twitter that Soul is a great movie and he doesn't mind losing to it at all and he's always been of the "it's an honor just to be nominated school; also, great publicity" when actually pressed about his feelings on the Oscars.