Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences owes you an apology.
While the awards show presenters may have utterly botched the award for Best Picture in 2017, the Academy has only itself to blame for 2020’s biggest flub.
Last week, the honorary organization debuted its new “Prediction Experience” widget that would allow film fans to tweet their awards night predictions before Sunday’s broadcast from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
But in a bizarre move, the official Twitter account for the Academy also shared its own forecast for its 3.4 million followers.
Apparently realizing the absurdity of sharing its own award projections ahead of this year’s ceremony, the tweet was quickly scrubbed from the account, although it couldn’t erase the many retweets.
Turns out those “predictions” were suspiciously spot on.
During the awards show leadup, @TheAcademy predicted “Parasite” for Best Picture, Sam Mendes for Best Director for his film “1917,” “Parasite” for Best Original Screenplay and “Jojo Rabbit” for Adapted Screenplay. In the acting categories, it selected Joaquin Phonenix as Best Actor for “Joker,” “Judy” star Renée Zellweger for Best Actress, and in the supporting categories, “Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood” actor Brad Pitt and “Marriage Story” actress Laura Dern.
The nearly perfect score was marred only by the pick for Best Director, Sam Mendes, who in fact lost to “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho.
The Academy has not yet responded to The Post’s request for comment, asking whether the predictions gaffe had inspired a, shall we say, “recanvass” of the Best Director honors.
The Oscars was just beginning to salvage its reputation following its most embarrassing moment in history, when in 2017, veteran stars Beatty and Dunaway accidentally handed the award for Best Picture to “La La Land” instead of the true winner, “Moonlight.” The mistake was quickly corrected — live on-air — and later revealed to be a result of a botched hand-off by the Academy’s accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Partner.
Cinephiles on Twitter had been quick to point out that the Academy’s predictions fell predictably in line with critics’ top picks, including The Post’s picks for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress.
“We invited fans on Twitter to make and share your #Oscars predictions. A ton of you already have,” the Academy said in a statement at the time, claiming it had chosen based on fans’ votes. “A brief issue on Twitter made some of yours look like they came from our account. They didn’t. This error is now resolved. And we’ll reveal our picks on Sunday.”