The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (also known as Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot.[1] The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.[2][3][4]
The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception.[5] There have been 601 films nominated for Best Picture and 96 winners.[6]
History
Category name changes
At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929 (for films made in 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the night: "Outstanding Picture" and "Unique and Artistic Picture", the former being won by the war epic Wings, and the latter by the art film Sunrise. Each award was intended to honor different and equally important aspects of superior filmmaking. In particular, The Jazz Singer was disqualified from both awards, since its use of synchronized sound made the film a sui generis item that would have unfairly competed against either category, and the Academy granted the film an honorary award instead.[7]
The following year, the Academy dropped the Unique and Artistic Picture award, deciding retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor that could be awarded, and allowed synchronized sound films to compete for the award.[8] Although the award kept the title Outstanding Picture for the next ceremony, the name underwent several changes over the years, as seen below. Since 1962, the award has been simply called Best Picture.[6]
Until 1950, this award was presented to a representative of the production company. That year the protocol was changed so that the award was presented to all credited producers. This rule was modified in 1999 to apply a maximum limit of three producers receiving the award, after the five producers of Shakespeare in Love had received the award.[9][10][11]
As of 2020[update], the "Special Rules for the Best Picture of the Year Award" limit recipients to those who meet two main requirements:[12]
Those with screen credit of "producer" or "produced by", explicitly excluding those with the screen credit "executive producer, co-producer, associate producer, line producer, or produced in association with"
those three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing functions
The rules allow a bona fide team of not more than two people to be considered a single "producer" if the two individuals have had an established producing partnership as determined by the Producers Guild of America Producing Partnership Panel. Final determination of the qualifying producer nominees for each nominated picture will be made by the Producers Branch Executive Committee, including the right to name any additional qualified producer as a nominee.[12]
The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously included among the four producers nominated for The Reader.[13] As of 2014[update] the Producers Branch Executive Committee determines such exceptions, noting they take place only in "rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."[12]
Steven Spielberg currently holds the record for most nominations at thirteen, winning one, while Kathleen Kennedy holds the record for most nominations without a win at eight. Sam Spiegel and Saul Zaentz tie for the most wins with three each. As for the time when the Oscar was given to production companies instead, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer holds the record with five wins and 40 nominations.
On June 24, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that the number of films to be nominated in the Best Picture award category would increase from 5 to 10, starting with the 82nd Academy Awards (2009).[15] Although the Academy never officially said so, many commenters noted the expansion was likely in part a response to public criticism of The Dark Knight and WALL-E (both 2008) (and, in previous years, other blockbusters and popular films) not being nominated for Best Picture.[16][17][18] Officially, the Academy said the rule change was a throwback to the Academy's early years in the 1930s and 1940s, when 8 to 12 films were nominated each year. "Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," AMPAS President Sid Ganis said in a press conference. "I can't wait to see what that list of 10 looks like when the nominees are announced in February."[15]
At the same time, the voting system was switched from first-past-the-post to instant runoff voting (also known as preferential voting).[19] In 2011, the Academy revised the rule again so that the number of films nominated was between 5 and 10; nominated films must earn either 5% of first-place rankings or 5% after an abbreviated variation of the single transferable vote nominating process.[20] Bruce Davis, the Academy executive director at the time, said, "A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn't feel an obligation to round out the number."[21] This system lasted until 2021, when the Academy reverted back to a set number of ten nominees from the 94th Academy Awards onward.[22]
Since 1968, most Best Picture winners have been rated R under the Motion Picture Association's rating system. Oliver! is the only G-rated film and Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film (what is categorized as an NC-17 film today), so far, to win Best Picture; they won in back-to-back years, 1968 and 1969. The latter has since been changed to an R rating. Eleven films have won with a PG rating: the first was Patton (1970) and the most recent was Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Eleven more films have won with a PG-13 rating (which was introduced in 1984): the first was The Last Emperor (1987) and the most recent was CODA (2021).
Three animated films have been nominated for Best Picture: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010). The latter two were nominated after the Academy expanded the number of nominees, but none have won.
No comic book film has won, although three have been nominated: Skippy (1931), Black Panther (2018), and Joker (2019).[27]
No documentary feature has been nominated for Best Picture, although Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness was nominated in the Unique and Artistic Picture category at the 1927/28 awards. A Best Documentary Feature category was introduced in 1941.
Toy Story 3, Mad Max: Fury Road and Top Gun: Maverick are the only sequels to be nominated without any predecessors being nominated. The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are the only sequels to have won the award, and their respective trilogies are the only series to have three films nominated. The Godfather series is the only film series with multiple Best Picture winners, with the first film winning the award for 1972 and the second film winning the award for 1974.[23]
Another nominee, Broadway Melody of 1936, was a follow-up of sorts to previous winner The Broadway Melody, but beyond the title and some music, the two films have mutually independent stories. The Silence of the Lambs was adapted from the sequel novel to Red Dragon. The latter had been adapted for film as Manhunter by a different studio, and the two films have different casts and creative teams and were not presented as a series.[29]
Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was a companion piece to his film Flags of Our Fathers that was released earlier the same year. These two films depict the same battle from the different viewpoints of Japanese and United States military forces; the two films were shot back-to-back.
Along similar lines to sequels, there have been few nominees and winners that are either remakes or adaptations of the same source materials or subjects.
Four of the nominees for the 94th ceremony were based on source material previously made into films: CODA, Dune, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story. The 2021 version of West Side Story became the second adaptation of the same source material for a previous Best Picture winner to be nominated for the same award after 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty.[32] For that same ceremony, CODA became the second remake of a non-English-language or international film to win.
At the 1st Academy Awards, the Best Picture award (then named "Academy Award for Outstanding Picture") was presented to the 1927 silent filmWings.
The Artist (2011) was the first essentially silent (with the exception of a single scene of dialogue, and a dream sequence with sound effects) film since Wings to win Best Picture. It was the first silent nominee since 1928's The Patriot. It was the first Best Picture winner to be produced entirely in black-and-white since 1960's The Apartment. (Schindler's List, the 1993 winner, was predominantly black-and-white but contains some color sequences.)[26]
Version availability
No Best Picture winner has been lost, though a few such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Lawrence of Arabia exist only in a form altered from their original, award-winning release form. This has usually been due to editing for reissue (and subsequently partly restored by archivists). Other winners and nominees, such as Tom Jones (prior to its 2018 reissues by The Criterion Collection and the British Film Institute) and Star Wars, are widely available only in subsequently altered versions. The Broadway Melody originally had some sequences photographed in two-color Technicolor. This footage survives only in black and white.[34]
The 1928 film The Patriot is the only Best Picture nominee that is lost (about one-third is extant).[35]The Racket, also from 1928, was believed lost for many years until a print was found in Howard Hughes' archives. It has since been restored and shown on Turner Classic Movies.[36] The only surviving complete prints of 1931's East Lynne and 1934's The White Parade exist within the UCLA film archive.[37]
Diversity standards
The Academy has established a set of "representation and inclusion standards", called Academy Aperture 2025, which a film will be required to satisfy in order to compete in the Best Picture category, starting with the 96th Academy Awards for films released in 2023.[38][39] There are four general standards, of which a film must satisfy two to be considered for Best Picture: (a) on-screen representation, themes and narratives; (b) creative leadership and project team; (c) industry access and opportunities; and (d) audience development.[38] As explained by Vox, the standards "basically break down into two big buckets: standards promoting more inclusive representation and standards promoting more inclusive employment".[40] The standards are intended to provide greater opportunities for employment, in cast, crew, studio apprenticeships and internships, and development, marketing, publicity, and distribution executives, among underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, women, LGBTQ+ people, and persons with cognitive or physical disabilities (not counting developmental disabilities like the autism spectrum), or who are deaf or hard of hearing.[38][41]
For the 94th and 95th Academy Awards (films released in 2021 and 2022), filmmakers were required to submit a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form to be considered for Best Picture but were not required to fulfill the standards.[40] These standards will only apply to the Best Picture category and do not affect a film's eligibility in other Oscar categories.[38]
In the list below, winners are listed first in the gold row, followed by the other nominees.[6] Except for the early years (when the Academy used a non-calendar year), the year shown is the one in which the film first premiered in Los Angeles County, California; normally this is also the year of first release; however, it may be the year after first release (as with Casablanca and, if the film-festival premiere is considered, Crash and The Hurt Locker). This is also the year before the ceremony at which the award is given; for example, a film exhibited theatrically during 2005 was eligible for consideration for the 2005 Best Picture Oscar, awarded in 2006. The number of the ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony. Each individual entry shows the title followed by nominee.
Until 1950, the Best Picture award was given to the production company; from 1951 on, it has gone to the producer or producers. The Academy used the producer credits of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) until 1998, when all five producers of Shakespeare in Love made speeches after its win.[9][10] A three-producer limit has been applied some years since.[10][11] There was controversy over the exclusion of some PGA-credited producers of Crash and Little Miss Sunshine.[11] The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously among the four nominated for The Reader.[13] However, now any number of producers on a film can be nominated for Best Picture, should they be deemed eligible.
For the first ceremony, three films were nominated for the award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945, it was further reduced to five. This number remained until 2009, when the limit was raised to ten; it was adjusted from 2011 to 2020 to vary between five and ten, but has been a full ten since 2022.
For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. For example, the 2nd Academy Awards presented on April 3, 1930, recognized films that were released between August 1, 1928, and July 31, 1929. Starting with the 7th Academy Awards, held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31. This has been the rule every year since except 2020, when the end date was extended to February 28, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2021, which was correspondingly limited to March 1 to December 31.
Production companies and distributors with multiple nominations and wins
Columbia Pictures and United Artists have the most wins with 12, while 20th Century Studios has the most nominations with 64. Focus Features has the most nominations without a win with 16.
^The 2nd Academy Awards is unique in being the only occasion where there were no official nominees. Subsequent research by AMPAS has resulted in a list of de facto nominees, based on records of which films were evaluated by the judges at the time.
^The Academy also announced that A Farewell to Arms came in second, and Little Women third.
^The Academy also announced that The Barretts of Wimpole Street came in second, and The House of Rothschild third.
^The Academy also announced that The Informer came in second, and Captain Blood third.
^ ab"Who gets the Oscar?". Sydney Morning Herald. Associated Press. February 4, 2005. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved October 23, 2013.
^ abc"92ND ACADEMY AWARDS OF MERIT"(PDF). Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 2019. p. 23. Archived(PDF) from the original on April 24, 2019. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
^"The Broadway Melody". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 7, 2014. The Technicolor footage for this sequence has since been lost, and only a black-and-white version is now available.
^"Oscar's Most Wanted". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on October 1, 2012. Retrieved May 24, 2012.
