It’s about time.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board of governors is reportedly ready to consider throwing in the towel on its failed 6-year experiment to draw larger Oscars-night TV audiences by increasing the number of Best Picture nominees.
The Hollywood Reporter claims a “large portion” of the board feels the move to as many as 10 Best Picture nominees has devalued the award while failing to draw ratings-bait nominations for megahits like “The Dark Knight,” whose 2009 snub prompted the change in the first place.
This couldn’t be more true, with only one mega-hit blockbuster making the cut over the past 6 years — “Avatar” in 2010, the first year with the extended field of 10. (After 2 years, the rule was amended to require a minimum percentage of votes, which yielded 3 years of nine-picture fields and eight this year.)
The prestige was diluted as Best Picture nominations were given to a large number of films that had no realistic chance of winning because — the very special case of Ben Affleck and “Argo” aside — they lacked Best Director nominations.
This year, that second-class category included mainstream films like “American Sniper” and “Selma” as well as “Whiplash” — all probable scratches in a Best Picture race with only five slots.
There’s some guesswork because we don’t know the actual vote totals, but it seems likely that both big-studio fare like “The Blind Side” and “Captain Phillips” would have failed to make the cut in a five-film universe, as well as smaller contenders like “Beasts of the Southern Wild’’ and “Winter’s Bone.”
A change may also affect the Oscars’ acting nominees, whose ranks have largely been drawn from the expanded Best Picture field in recent years.
But it would be wrong to conclude that the absence of blockbusters from the Best Picture field (no superhero movie ever, not even the 1978 “Superman,” has been nominated) and Academy voters’ increasingly arty tastes (manifested this year in the choice of “Birdman,” which mocks the very idea of a superhero movie) are the only things turning off TV audiences.
In recent years, the Oscars-night show is invariably far less entertaining than the Golden Globes’, no matter how many jokes about the Oscars’ lack of populism.
And not since “Crash” won 10 years ago has there been a genuine surprise winner for Best Picture. The Oscars have become more and more predictable as voters seem to take their cue from earlier awards and the ever-more-intense analysis that accompanies them.
A couple of years ago, the Academy floated the idea of moving the Oscars (which used to be held as late as April) all the way up to the end of January to combat awards-season fatigue.
But that didn’t go very far because of the logistical problems of getting the membership to see enough movies and vote on them before Christmas.
There was also an abortive proposal to increase the number of Best Director nominees.
I doubt any change is going to happen soon since, among other things, the Oscars are one of the industry’s biggest marketing tools.
Almost all of the $330 million in North American tickets for “American Sniper” were sold after it received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
That’s the biggest Oscar “bump” in history — even if, in the end, “American Sniper” ended up winning nothing except Best Sound Editing.