The flubbed stat came after “KPop Demon Hunters” had been announced as the winner of Best Animated Film.

Golden Globes announcers goof on stat about 2025’s top movies

The flubbed stat came after "KPop Demon Hunters" had been announced as the winner of Best Animated Film.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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January 11, 2026 11:54 p.m. ET

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Stills from 'A Minecraft Movie,' 'Lilo & Stitch,' and 'Superman'. Credit:

Warner Bros. Pictures (2); Disney

2025 was a big year for animated films. But animation wasn't the only thing that made movies big last year.

While the team behind *KPop Demon Hunters *walked to the stage to accept the award for Best Motion Picture - Animated at the 2026 Golden Globes, announcers Marc Malkin and Kevin Frazier regaled the audience with facts about the film and its win.

"You talk to the stars of *KPop Demon Hunters *and you ask them, 'What's been the most special part of this?'" Frazier said, with Malkin responding, "It's James Cameron, who has given a big shout-out to this movie. James Cameron is one of those gazillion viewers of *KPop Demon Hunters*."

*KPop Demon Hunters* indeed set streaming records on Netflix, which doesn't, unlike most of its animated counterparts this year, translate to box office success. Frazier then underlined the success of animation at the box office this year by stating, "And by the way, the top five highest-grossing films worldwide this year were all animated" — which isn't entirely true.**

Keegan-Michael Key and Mila Kunis present the award for Best Animated Film at the 2026 Golden Globes.

Rich Polk/2026GG/Penske Media via Getty

Though the five highest-grossing films at the global box office this year all contained animated elements, they weren't all animated films. The top two were - China's record breaking *Ne Zha 2*, which grossed over $2.2 billion across its theatrical run, and *Zootopia 2*, which earned $1.6 billion in just a month, after releasing in late November.

The following three entries on the international top 5 liberally employ animation in their respective mise-en-scènes, but wouldn't qualify at the Golden Globes in the Best Animated Film category. Indeed, neither *Avatar: Fire and Ash*, nor Disney's live-action *Lilo & Stitch *remake, nor *A Minecraft Movie *snagged a spot on this year's slate, which also included *Arco*, *Elio*, *Little Amélie or the Character of Rain*, and *Zootopia 2.*

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which determined each year's nominees until they were deposed as the deciding committee in 2022 in the wake of a scandal, revised its rules around animation in 2014. From that point on, films had to be at least 75 percent animated in order to be considered.

Former HFPA president Theo Kingma elaborated that the primary work of that 75 percent or more must be "done by an animator or through hand drawings or stop-motion or pixelation."

That would discount *Avatar*, which primarily uses motion capture to bring the world of Pandora to life. In a December interview with the Motion Picture Association, franchise stunt coordinator and second unit director Garrett Warren even said, "Some people think that *Avatar* is very digital or animated, but it's not animated at all. If there's a wolf, that’s a human being on all fours acting like a wolf."

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Those rules also discount the No. 4 and No. 5 highest-grossing films at the global box office - *Lilo & Stitch *and *A Minecraft Movie*, which employ CGI elements in a piecemeal fashion. But both movies take place primarily in live-action settings.

The stat doesn't hold domestically either, which swaps *Ne Zha 2 *and *Avatar *out for *Superman*, which doesn't use any animated elements, and *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, which uses CGI imagery in a similar fashion to *Lilo & Stitch *and *Minecraft*.

Following its June release, *KPop Demon Hunters*, which took home the Golden Globe, became the most-watched film in Netflix history, animated or otherwise.

*See the full list of Golden Globes 2026 winners*.****

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