Awards Updates: ‘Bob’s Burgers’ Wins WGA, ‘Wild Robot’ Nabs ADG Prize

Two more key audiovisual media awards took place this weekend, in addition to Britain’s BAFTA Film Awards, and animated achievement was represented at both in dedicated categories.

Held Saturday, the Writers Guild of America Awards announced the year’s recognized pieces of film, television, radio and promotional media.

In a category dominated by FOX favorites, the Animation award went to Bob’s Burgers – “Saving Private Drive-In,” written by Katie Crown. An actress, writer and producer, Crown has served as a writer, story editor and executive story editor on dozens of episodes of the show, with other animation writing credits including Sanjay and Craig and Clarence. She was part of the 2024 Primetime Emmy-nominated team for Bob’s Burgers episode “The Amazing Rudy,” and was previously nominated for a WGA for the 2020 episode “Prank You for Being a Friend.”

The other nominees were three episodes of FOX’s The Simpsons: “Bottle Episode” (Rob LaZebnik & Johnny LaZebnik), “Cremains of the Day” (John Frink) and “Night of the Living Wage” (Cesar Mazariegos); Bob’s Burgers ep. “The Tina Table: The Tables Have Tina-ed” (Greg Thompson); and Netflix’s Blood of Zeus, “Winter Is Born” (Charles Parlapanides & Vlas Parlapanides).

The live-action and mixed-media Children’s Episodic,  Long Form and Specials category was won by The Spiderwick Chronicls – “Welcome to Spiderwick” (Roku Channel), written by Aron Eli Coleite.

The full list of winners is available at awards.wga.org.

Fresh off of its stunning nine-for-nine categories win at the Annie Awards, DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot claimed the prize for Animated Feature Film, awarded to production designer Raymond Zibach. The critically acclaimed pic is currently nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

The other feature animation nominees this year were Dream Well/Sacrebleu/Take Five’s Flow (Gints Zilbalodis), Pixar/Disney’s Inside Out 2 (Jason Deamer), Disney’s Moana 2 (Ian Gooding) and Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Matt Perry).

The full list of winners is available through adg.org.

The Wild Robot earned Zibach the Annie Award for Best Production Design in a Feature Film (shared with Ritchie Sacilioc), an honor which he previously won for Kung Fu Panda 2. Zibach has been additionally nominated for the production design awards in the Annies film and TV categories five other times. He has also been nominated for VES Awards for Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2. This marks his first honor from the ADG.