EXCLUSIVE
A significant number of Best Picture ballots could end up essentially discarded as the result of the new Best Picture rules instituted by the Academy last week, TheWrap has discovered.
The Academy conceded that an increased number of ballots will no longer influence the slate of Best Picture nominees, but said its figures put the potential number of those ballots at less than 10 percent.
On the other hand, a simulation done by TheWrap (using critics' Top 10 lists rather than real Oscar ballots) shows the number of "unused" ballots topping 25 percent under the new rules.
The good news is that the new system brings some needed unpredictability to the Best Picture race, and guarantees that every nominee has a significant level of voter support.
But the new rules could very well change Oscar campaigning, hurt consensus movies that would have fared well in the past, and essentially take the decision out of the hands of hundreds of Academy members in the Oscars' marquee category.
Also read: Academy's Best-Pic Change: A Smart Way to Fix Something That Wasn't Broken
This impact has not been publicly discussed since the Board of Governors agreed on the new rules on June 14. But the Academy's outgoing executive director Bruce Davis, who proposed the system after consultation with the AMPAS accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, admitted to TheWrap that more voters "have lost their chance to influence the nominations slate" under the new rules, adding, "we're accepting that as one of the givens of the new system."
He also told TheWrap via email, "It's not as though those voters have been disenfranchised. They had a fair chance to help choose a nominee, but not enough other voters shared their admiration for their top-line film. Their situation is similar to that of a voter who endorses the least successful, most outlying candidate in a political primary.
"He voted his heart the first time around and lost, but he'll have another chance in the next round of voting to indicate which of the more mainstream candidates he most prefers."
Exact figures are impossible to come by, since PwC doesn't share them with the public. But under the old system, according to simulations conducted by TheWrap, the Best Picture count could last for 10 rounds or more, and eventually almost every ballot would be used. The new system ends after a single round of counting and redistribution, before many ballots can come into play.
In addition, while voters are asked to list up to 10 films in order of preference, the new system will place enormous weight on a voter's first choice, and make all but the first two or three choices meaningless in the vast majority of cases.
(An aside: I support the change to a variable slate of five to 10 nominees, and think the new rule is a smart one that corrects a flaw in the decision to move to 10 nominations.
