I have some friends who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I mention this not to show off but because one of them was visiting SA in December and was in a permanent state of anxiety about not having watched all the films eligible for the Oscars race before the deadline that members had to vote to finalise the nominations list for each category.
In the not-so-distant past, academy members would be sent watermarked DVD screeners towards the end of the year when award season swings into full gear. Today they can watch all the longlisted films through access to a special online screening platform. Its convenience doesn’t change the fact that there are often a wide selection of different films nominated across categories that dedicated academy members should watch before filling in their nomination ballots.
This year the deadlines for nominations were extended after the Los Angeles fires swept through the areas that many members lived in and gave them something more pressing to worry about. Those of us who are not members of the academy would like to believe that members of the organisation are serious enough about their task to watch all the shortlisted films before whittling them down to final nominations and eventual winners. We could have gone on believing this were it not for this week’s announcement of the academy’s new rules for the Oscars.
In its new rules, the academy insists that “academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category to be eligible to vote in the final round for the Oscars”. This of course led to amused, outraged and bemused reactions from commentators who, like many of us, had assumed that this had always been the case. As one commentator on X quipped, “Were they just going on vibes?”
In recent years a trend has developed where, ahead of the announcement of Oscar nominations and winners, film and entertainment websites make much clickbait hay out of reporting on anonymous ballots they’ve been shown or interviews with unnamed voters. One of these anonymous academy members told Entertainment Weekly last year, “I’m bummed because I haven’t seen The Substance or I’m Still Here yet,” adding, “The first Dune, I couldn’t get through; I’m not rushing for another three hours of Dune. There’s still time to re-evaluate, but I really struggled.”
Voters who haven’t seen the nominations in their categories ahead of the final vote are supposed to abstain from voting in the final round, but there’s no enforcement mechanism or penalty for violating this rule, so we will never know how many previous Oscar winners owe their success to votes by members who hadn’t seen all the films before casting their ballots.
Theoretically, the use of the screener platform as the main means of viewing nominated films will allow the academy to keep Big Brother tabs on its members by tracking which films they’ve watched and ensuring they’ve been watched all the way to the end. Currently, though, the academy has no way of stopping you from clicking play and answering emails or WhatsApp video calling your mother instead of paying attention.
Members who see films at physical screenings are supposed to submit forms indicating where and when they watched them, but, again, there are no academy Stasi to make sure they do so. What we will now have, after a century of the Oscars, is some sort of AI-approved checklist that demonstrates that all the members of the increasingly larger, more diverse and internationally representative academy are doing their homework.
AI is also the subject of a new academy rule, following storm-in-a-teacup controversies over the use of AI tools in two of this year’s hot favourite titles: The Brutalist and Emilia Perez. The academy has decided that the use of AI and digital tools does not “help or harm” a film’s chances of an Oscar nominations, so they can’t count against it.
After years of lobbying by their unions, the casting directors, who make the choices about who gets to be in the movies, will finally be recognised for their contributions next year when the first Oscar for casting is awarded. It’s not exactly clear how the academy will go about selecting the nominees, but they’ve drawn up a plan that includes a round in what Variety describes as “a dedicated ‘bake-off’ event, where [casting directors’] branch members will view five-minute reels and participate in a Q&A with the casting directors.
And finally, the academy has decided that international directors who have refugee or asylum status can be eligible for nomination in the Best International Feature Category. This won’t fundamentally change the way that category is run but it will open a small but necessary space for filmmakers who are stateless.
• The Academy Awards nominations will take place on January 22 2026, with winners announced on March 15 2026.
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