Annie Awards Cancel Live Edition, Postpone Virtual Event Until March 12

The 49th Annie Awards are the latest event to be pushed online by the Omicron wave.

The ceremony was due to take place at UCLA’s Royce Hall on February 26. ASIFA-Hollywood will now hold it virtually on March 12 and livestream it for free to the public. A recording will be available on the awards’ website the following day.

This is the second year running in which the Annies pivot to virtual. Many U.S. events in the coming weeks and months have done the same or been postponed, including Sundance, Kidscreen, and E3.

Frank Gladstone, ASIFA’s executive director, said in a statement:

When we announced that the Annies would be in-person this year on February 26, the Omicron variant was not even on the horizon. But now it is here and so highly infectious that, after much debate and discussion, ASIFA’s board of directors has decided, in an abundance of caution, to once again move to a virtual ceremony. We’ve also moved the date of the event by two weeks to give our production crew time to gather and edit the huge amount of additional material it takes to construct the virtual ceremony.

Nominees for the Annies were announced in December. Netflix dominates the series categories, its Arcane leading with nine nominations. Among features, Disney is well set up: Raya and the Last Dragon has ten nominations, more than any other film.