Nobody who has seen Pixar's The Incredibles or Disney's Bolt should be in any doubt that animated superheroes can work superbly on the big screen. So it should come as no surprise that the Mouse House's first venture proper into comic-book territory, Big Hero 6, is picking up plenty of buzz ahead of its UK release in January (November for North America). US bloggers, who saw 25 minutes of footage earlier this week, reckon it could be a frontrunner for next year's best animated film Oscar.

We do know that the new film is culled from a Marvel comic about a Japanese team of superheroes, though to call it a loose adaptation would seem to be putting it mildly. While the original print series centred on the titular team of costumed crime-fighters, the movie seems to be a quirkier piece about the relationship between bright schoolboy inventor Hiro and his machine pal Baymax, a sort of "How to Train Your Robot" if you like. It is set in "San Fransokyo" and has been described by the film-makers as a "love letter to Japanese culture".

The fact that Walt Disney Animation Studios and Marvel are working together hints at Disney finally putting the power of its abundant holdings to good use, eight years after purchasing Pixar and five years after buying Marvel Studios. Fans who dream of a Pixar Star Wars movie – Disney also owns LucasFilm after a $4.05bn (£2.44bn) buyout in October 2012 – will be hugely encouraged by rumours that this is already happening.

There have also been rumblings – denied in all quarters – that Marvel might not be taking too kindly to having its territory infringed upon. But the real question here is why nobody has thought about big budget, big-screen animated comic-book adaptations before. I've argued previously on this blog that live action is not necessarily the most natural form for properties that begin life as hand-drawn creations.

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There's little doubt that the Hollywood machine has achieved a level of excellence with live-action comic-book fare that few expected to see. Marvel has become expert in using stunningly spiky screenwriting as a deft sleight of hand so that audiences look the other way when confronted with preposterous Norse demi-gods in outlandish costumery, not to mention barmy anthropomorphic space raccoons.

And that's absolutely fine, but there are stories within the comic book milieu that would benefit from a straight telling. Not all superhero stories ought to be reframed for the big screen through a postmodern filter, and animation allows for a simpler, ready-made mechanism for suspending belief. The bountiful box-office returns for Pixar's films, and more recently Disney's Frozen, suggest audiences aren't turned off by the absence of real actors on screen. Neither does Hollywood need the live action format to create the sense of an "event" movie. So why do studios seem convinced that animated superhero fare should remain the preserve of the small screen?

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A movie such as Warner Bros' adaptation of the DC Comics character Green Lantern, with its fanciful corps of intergalactic space crime-fighters, might have fared better with critics had it not attempted to transform Mark Strong into a slightly rubbish space David Niven. True, the CGI was appallingly realised by the film's makers and the story wasn't much cop, but one can imagine an animated version getting a lot more leeway.

Big Hero 6 will most likely be up against The Lego Movie, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and (possibly) Laika animation's The Boxtrolls for the best animation gong at next year's Oscars. If it does manage to carry all before it – Disney has been hinting it wants a best film nod, not just a nomination in the disappointingly ghettoised best animated film category – then we might start to see a long-overdue revolution in the way studios think about superhero movies.

• This article was amended on Tuesday 2 September 2014. Big Hero 6 is not a Disney Pixar production as we said originally. This has been corrected.