The 2021 Academy Award nominations were announced on Monday.
Opening up the nominations was Actress in a Supporting Role with Maria Bakalova for Borat, Glenn Close Hillbilly Elegy, Olivia Colman for the Father, Amanda Seyfried, for the 93rd Academy Awards which were announced by actress Priyanka Chopra and musician husband Nick Jonas in a livestream.
This year’s Oscars will be broadcast live and ‘in-person’ from multiple locations, the Academy said last month, as details of Hollywood’s pandemic-delayed big night finally begin to take shape.
The Academy Awards in recent decades have taken place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, but with the United States’ second largest city still under COVID-19 restrictions, the ceremony is ‘adapting to the requirements of the pandemic,’ said a spokesperson.
‘To create the in-person show our global audience wants to see… the ceremony will broadcast live from multiple locations, including the landmark Dolby Theatre,’ they said in a statement to AFP.
Leading lady: The 2021 Academy Award nominations were announced on Monday
The 93rd Academy Awards will be ‘an Oscars like none other, while prioritizing the public health and safety of all those who will participate,’ the spokesperson added.
No further new details were offered on the ceremony, which caps Hollywood’s lengthy award season.
For the first time, and only for this year, movies that debuted on a streaming service without a theatrical run will be eligible for some of the industry’s most prestigious gongs.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences lifted a longstanding requirement that films needed to screen for seven straight days in Los Angeles
It is not the first time the Oscars will take place at multiple locations. As far back as 1953 — the first time the ceremony was televised — proceedings were split between Los Angeles and New York.
This year, other award shows are already experimenting with multiple locations including last month’s Golden Globes.
The Globes saw a’first-ever bicoastal telecast’ in which Tina Fey hosts from New York’s Rainbow Room and Amy Poehler from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, organizers said.
Television’s Emmys in September were broadcast from a near-empty Los Angeles theater, with nominees and winners dialing in from their homes and socially distanced gatherings via video call.
With Covid-19 shuttering movie theaters and wreaking havoc on Hollywood’s release calendar, the all-important Academy Awards have already been postponed by two months to April 25.
Because many studio blockbusters and indie arthouse movies have been forced to push back their release dates until theaters reopen, the cut-off date for Oscar-eligible films was also extended by two months, to the end of February.
Contagion director Steven Soderbergh will produce this year’s Oscars ceremony, which has been billed as ‘the perfect occasion for innovation and for re-envisioning the possibilities for the awards show’ by Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson.
‘We’re thrilled and terrified in equal measure,’ said Soderbergh in an earlier joint statement with co-producers Jesse Collins and Stacey Sher of Django Unchained.
The event was scheduled for February 28, 2021, but after the coronavirus pandemic caused chaos in Hollywood and put the movie industry on hold, the governors decided to move the ceremony to April 25, 2021, according to Variety.
‘For over a century, movies have played an important role in comforting, inspiring, and entertaining us during the darkest of times,’ began a statement from Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson.
‘They certainly have this year. Our hope, in extending the eligibility period and our Awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalized for something beyond anyone’s control.’
The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who organize the annual ceremony, met via Zoom on Monday to discuss the date the 93rd Oscars will take place on.
‘For over a century, movies have played an important role in comforting, inspiring, and entertaining us during the darkest of times,’ began a statement from Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson.
‘They certainly have this year. Our hope, in extending the eligibility period and our Awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalized for something beyond anyone’s control.’
She added, ‘This coming Oscars and the opening of our new museum will mark an historic moment, gathering movie fans around the world to unite through cinema.’
The rules have also changed. A feature film must have been released between January 1, 2020, and February 28, 2021.
December 1, 2020 was the deadline for the ‘specialty categories’ such as animated feature film.
January 15, 2021 became the new deadline for ‘general entry categories,’ such as best picture.
The Academy also decided the annual Governors Awards gala has been postponed to a later unspecified date.
And the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will now open in April 2021 to line up with the Oscars rather than December 2020.
The Oscars were previously delayed on three occasions, due to flooding in Los Angeles in 1938, following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and again in 1981, following an assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan.
In 1934, the Oscars had a 17-month eligibility window, which ran from 1 August 1932 until 31 December 1933 so thereafter the eligibility period would be a full calendar year.
This follows news that the Academy Awards are setting up a special task force ‘to develop and implement new representation and inclusion standards’ for Oscars eligibility by July 31, 2020.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Friday that there will be now be a fixed number of 10 best picture nominees beginning with the 94th Academy Awards in 2022.
The organization is also planning to implement new eligibility requirements with an eye toward diversity in collaboration with the Producers Guild of America that will be finalized by the end of July.
The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was created by activist April Reign in January 2015 to call out the awards ceremony for their lack of diversity, as that year, only two people of color were nominated in major categories.
Since then, the Academy has sought to double the number of women and people of color among its membership. The Academy is now said to have 26 women and 12 people of color on its 54-person board of governors – a first for the organization – which includes director Ava Duvernay.
The most recent changes will not impact the 93rd Academy Awards set to be held in Los Angeles on Feb. 28, 2021, because it is already deep into the eligibility calendar.
The film academy has shifted the number of best picture nominees several times in its history.
In 2009, it was expanded from five to 10, which many thought at the time was in response to the lack of a nomination for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
In 2011, the field was allowed to fluctuate from five to 10, which led to some years having more than others.
Last year there were nine. In the Academy’s early years, anywhere from eight to 12 films could be nominated for best picture.
The organization that puts on the Oscars is also committing to a new phase of diversity and inclusion initiatives, which it calls Academy Aperture 2025. The first phase, which ended this year, was in response to the #OscarsSoWhite criticisms.
Academy President David Rubin said that the organization had surpassed the goal to double the number of women and diverse members by 2020.
The Emmys ceremony in September was a hybrid event that had some in-person elements with host Jimmy Kimmel and most nominees watching the show from home over Zoom.
It’s not clear how many of the nominees will be able to – or will agree to – in-person attendance. In the acting races, many seasoned actors include Anthony Hopkins, 82; Ellen Burstyn, 88; Sophia Loren, 86; Meryl Streep, 71; David Strathairn, 72; and Yuh-Jung Youn, 73.
Andra Day won best actress at the first ever bi-coastal Golden Globes for her role in The United States Vs BIllie Holiday.
She faced heavy competition including Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Vanessa Kirby for Pieces of a Woman, Frances McDormand for Nomadland, Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman.
According to projections, Day had the smallest chance to win in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama category when it came to betting odds as she was a sizable underdog.
The late Chadwick Boseman won Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – as well as the Critics’ Choice Award.
Jodie Foster won Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for The Mauritanian while Daniel Kaluuya won in the Best Supporting actor category for Judas and the Black Messiah.
Nomadland was directed, written, edited and co-produced by Chloé Zhao, with actress Frances McDormand (who also produced the film) starring as a woman who leaves her small town to travel around the US.
The film, which was based on the 2017 non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, began a one-week-only streaming release on December 4, 2020.
It has already picked up Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, along with Best Adapted Screenplay at the latter awards.
Nomadland and Rocks lead the way with seven nods each at the BAFTAS 2021, while late star Chadwick Boseman has scored a posthumous Leading Actor nomination in a historically diverse list.
In a historic moment for the Academy, four women have been nominated in the director category for the first time ever, while 15 of the 24 actors announced in the main categories are Black or Asian.