Two years after expanding the field of Best Picture nominees from five to 10, the Academy's Board of Governors threw the category into deliberate disarray on Tuesday night, instituting new rules that could lead to a different number of nominees each year.
The change, which according to AMPAS was recommended by retiring executive director Bruce Davis, will require that a film receive at least five percent of the first-place votes during the first round of balloting to receive a Best Picture nomination. A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers determined that if the rule had been in effect between 2001 and 2008 (before the move to 10 nominations) it would have resulted in years of five, six, seven, eight and nine nominees.
The Academy, however, did not say how many nominees it would have produced in 2009 and 2010.
While the change may not persuade critics who think that the move to expand the slate of nominees waters down the value of a Best Picture nomination, it does take the crucial step of eliminating a case where the slate of 10 has to be filled out with films that did not receive significant support from the voters.
The preferential system of counting final Best Picture ballots will remain the same as it has been for the past two years.
At Tuesday night's meeting, the Board of Governors also made a few other changes to Oscar rules. Among them:
The Best Animated Feature category, which formerly contained five nominees if more than 16 qualifying films were released, and only three if the field was smaller than that, will now include a provision for four nominees in a year in which 13 to 15 films qualify. If the rule had been in effect last year, four rather than three films would have been nominated.
The "bakeoff" used to produce nominees in the Visual Effects category has been expanded from seven to 10 participants, following last year's expansion of the category from three to five nominees.
The qualifying period for Documentary Feature and Documentary Short categories has been adjusted to the calendar year, which is used in almost all other categories. To make the adjustment, those categories will cover a full 15 months of eligible films at the next Oscars.
One change the governors did not make was to add an Oscar for stunt work, which has been proposed repeatedly over the years, and always voted down.
The AMPAS press release:
Beverly Hills, CA — The governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted on Tuesday (6/14) to add a new twist to the 2011 Best Picture competition, and a new element of surprise to its annual nominations announcement. The Board voted to institute a system that will now produce anywhere between five and 10 nominees in the category. That number won’t be announced until the Best Picture nominees themselves are revealed at the January nominations announcement.
