Academy Expands Best Picture Eligibility Requirements – Deadline

AMPAS

Long in the works, and signaling stronger support for theatrical showing in the growing age of streamers, the Board of Directors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved a historic change to the Best Picture eligibility rules.

Beginning with the 97th Academy Awards for films released in 2024, there are some significant additional requirements for Best Picture eligibility after completion of the current preliminary qualifying round for a one-week theatrical release in one of six US cities. These include:

AMPAS makes it clear that these new additional requirements are strictly for Best Picture and not for the other 22 categories, but of course Best Picture is the one everyone wants to consider.

“As we do every year, we have been reviewing and assessing our theatrical eligibility requirements for the Academy Awards,” Academy CEO and President Janet Yang said in a statement. “In support of our mission to celebrate and honor the arts and sciences of filmmaking, we hope this expanded theatrical footprint will increase film visibility around the world and encourage audiences to experience our art in a theatrical setting. Based on many conversations with industry partners, we feel this development benefits film artists and movie lovers alike.”

These new standards are the result of many conversations with different distributors of different sizes, some of which we’re hearing in the show community as well. Ideas for it have been floating around for quite some time, and there have been suggestions we’ve even heard of long The qualification is run for two or more weeks at a time during the discussions. It will be interesting to see how this affects smaller or niche distributors who tend to go slow in their release patterns. For example, Sony Pictures Classics often does a movie-quality week-long in Los Angeles/New York, reopens on a limited basis in the new year and then slowly rolls it out across the country. Everyone has their own release strategies, but these new rules can definitely affect them.

The deadline was originally recognized several months in advance of plans even when Dawn Hudson was still CEO. It’s a problem that seems to come up yearly in one way or another. We hear that the current effort has been instigated by members of the Producers Branch, with a charge led by AMPAS Producers Branch Governor Jason Blum and some others of making these changes in order to recognize that the Academy’s primary mission is to support films for the big screen, even as broadcasting companies like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, and more have been huge successes in the Oscar races in seasons past.

In fact, Apple became the first streaming company to win its Best Picture award coda winning last year and hardly had any race play when it was first released other than the minimum required to qualify. This past March, Netflix — still hunting for its first Best Picture win — came closest All Quiet on the Western Front It scored four wins, the most by any film other than the eventual Best Picture winner Everything everywhere at once from A24. This broadcast will generally give exclusive limited theatrical screenings before going live for a period longer than three to four weeks to select the top Oscar hopefuls as he will almost certainly plan to do so this year with Bradley Cooper. Musical band leader And a pickup in Cannes May/December From director Todd Haynes, among others.

With these changes, the Academy hopes to strengthen its commitment to theaters and an unparalleled movie-watching experience on the big screen, even as the organization acknowledges that the way people watch movies continues to evolve.

With a lot of industry input in recent months, and key support from AMPAS’ new CEO Kramer, this plan was put in place to encourage theatrical distribution beyond the minimum limits currently required for Best Picture, which is that eligible films must run theatrically for at least a week in one of Six supported markets – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami or Atlanta – with some prime show times selected. Streaming organizers could not stream a movie before it had an eligible theatrical run but were able to play online on the day and date after that condition was met. In fact, even those minimum requirements were abandoned due to the pandemic but have now been fully reinstated and went into effect last year. Now is the time to seize the moment and expand the scope of theatrical requirements after the upcoming 96th Academy Awards – but not including -, but sources in favor of the move indicate that it is not in order to punish the streamers but in fact can helps It is widely believed that theatrical presentation gives films more visual value. As now many films, some very expensive ones, get a nominal theatrical release in LA and New York, if that’s the case, and soon end up in a “larder” (as veteran director Paul Schrader once described it to me). ) with all the other programming, and thus soon out of the limelight were successful theatrical shows. Ironically, this push by AMPAS may actually help He increases Their success in streaming

In fact, the streamers were experimenting with a larger theatrical footprint for this very reason. In November, Netflix opened Glass Onion: Takes the mystery out of the cutlery A week-long release in the three major show series (they called it “Previews”) that largely avoided running the streaming product before it was shut down and then brought into service a month later. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Amazon jumped onto the stage in a bigger way earlier this spring with over 3,000 theatrical releases directed by Ben Affleck. air Several weeks before it began airing and grossing $50+ million at the box office. Paramount and Apple are collaborating on a large-scale theatrical adaptation of Oscar Martin Scorsese. Moonflower Killers Starting in October with a limited tour before expanding to wide release in theaters followed by streaming on Apple TV+ on an unspecified start date. It debuted in Cannes on 20 May to positive reviews. Sony Pictures is doing what Charming Tom Rothman described at CinemaCon as a “strong” theatrical remake of Ridley Scott’s epic, Napoleon in November which will then hit Apple’s stream at a date to be determined.

With these new eligibility requirements, it appears the Academy is doing its own thing at encouraging films to come back into theaters, something that, as the Motion Picture Academy approaches its centenary in 2028, is part of their DNA for much of it. time, and now it is recognized again, no matter how many times they represent a change.”