‘Kung Fu Panda 2′ leads Annie noms

Awards will be held on Saturday, Feb. 4, at UCLA’s Royce Hall

By TERRY FLORES for Variety

”Kung Fu Panda 2” leads a very mixed field in the 39th annual Annie Awards nominations. The DreamWorks Animation sequel picked up 12 bids, including best feature, followed closely by stablemate ”Puss in Boots” and Paramount/Nickelodeon’s ”Rango,” with nine each.

The nominating committees of ASIFA-Hollywood opened up the best pic field for 10 nominees, including Steven Spielberg’s motion-capture toon ”The Adventures of Tintin.” It is only the second motion-caption film to be nominated for an Annie Award. Columbia’s ”Monster House” was nommed in 2006.

In addition to ”Panda 2,” ”Puss,” ”Rango” and ”Tintin,” best pic nominees are: ”A Cat in Paris” (Fromage), ”Arthur Christmas” (Sony Pictures Animation), ”Wrinkles” (Perro Verde Films), ”Cars 2” (Pixar), ”Chico and Rita” (Chico and Rita Distrib’n) and ”Rio” (Blue Sky Studios).

The Annie Awards will be held on Saturday, Feb. 4, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.