Best Picture – The Last Year of the Flexible Number

Can you believe, dear readers, that it’s been ten years since the Academy swapped out its Best Picture expansion from an even ten nominees to a range of nominees between five and ten?

You might remember it, you might not. But if you read this site, you will have been through it with me as we dug into the numbers. For a very long time, we’ve been advocating for the Academy to expand back out to ten each year — the reason being, Academy members could add more diverse choices to the lineup. If you give voters only five choices or set tabulation thresholds that result in numbers between five and ten, they default to the kinds of movies they like the most. So, with a few exceptions, you get the same kind of movie — just more of that kind of movie.

In 2009, after The Dark Knight failed to receive a Best Picture nomination, the Academy changed its ballot to make room for an even ten nominees. For a brief period, here’s how that worked out:

2009
The Hurt Locker — directed by a woman
Avatar — sci-fi
The Blind Side
District 9 — sci-fi
An Education — directed by a woman
Inglourious Basterds
Precious — black director and predominantly black cast
A Serious Man
Up — animated
Up in the Air

2010
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception — sci-fi
The Kids Are All Right — directed by a woman
The Social Network
Toy Story 3 — animated
Winter’s Bone–directed by a woman

After that, many voters complained that they preferred to choose only five film on their nominations instead of trying to remember 10 movies they liked. So the Academy gave them the option of naming between five and ten and leaving blank spaces on their ballots, but I’m guessing many of the old-school members fell back to their familiar routine of naming five, since they’d been doing that for decades. New tabulation methods were refined that set arbitrary thresholds for inclusion in the Best Picture category, resulting in an unpredictable number of BP nominees. Those changes had an immediate impact on diversity, and gave us this:

2011
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Animated – 0
Sci fi – 0
Films by women – 0
Non-white director – 0

2012
Argo
Amour
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Animated – 0
Sci fi – 0
Films by women – 1
Non-white director – 1

2013
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
Wolf of Wall Street

Animated – 0
Sci fi – 1
Films by women – 0
Non-white director – 2

2014
Birdman
American Sniper
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Imitation Game
Selma
Theory of Everything
Whiplash

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 0
Films by women – 1
Non-white director – 2

2015
Spotlight
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 2
Films by women – 0
Non-white director – 1

2016
Moonlight
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Lion
Manchester by the Sea

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 1
Films by women – 0
Non-white director – 2

2017
The Shape of Water
Call Me By Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 1
Films by women – 1
Non-white director – 2

2018
Green Book
Black Panther
BlackKklansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 1
Films by women – 0
Non-white director – 3

2019
Parasite
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
1917
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Animated – 0
Sci fi/genre – 1
Films by women – 1
Non-white director – 2

Nobody wants to assess Oscar prospects or award films simply because they fulfill a desire for diversity and inclusion. The movies should also be good enough to make the cut. There is no denying that having ten slots to fill, at least judging by 2009 and 2010, gave voters room to choose movie they like best of all and then expand their tastes with other films they liked but might not be among their top five. Year after year, I watched my friends falsely believe an animated film was going to make it into Best Picture. But to get there, that movie has to make the #1 slot on roughly 300 ballots. How many adults do you know would put an animated movie as their favorite of the year? Well, depending on the calibre of the animated movies they have to choose from, surely some voters would. But that means they think it’s better than every other movie out there. Somehow with the option of naming ten, they can get around that. This is what must account for two animated films being nominated in years where they had a solid ten.

I know I sound like a broken record on this and I have been advocating long and hard for this expansion. But — but — but….

The new changes to the ballot don’t take effect until next year. This is the last year where they still have a choice from five to ten. And this year’s slate of possibilities is smaller than in years past so I am not sure how it’s going to go. Does that mean a film like Soul has a better chance to get in for Best Picture given its timely subject matter? And given a relative lack of big-gun competition in a thinned out year? I do not know, but a quick look over at Gold Derby and it’s clear that many over there do in fact believe Soul will get in for Best Picture.

Look, never say never. Precedents we once thought were ironclad have been recently defied. Parasite won Best Picture. Black Panther was nominated. Anything can happen if people are motivated enough, whether that motivation comes from pure love or whether it comes from being hyper-conscious of the inclusion mandate coming that they want to show in advance that they aren’t all about awarding only white men. I do not know. But my guess is that, at least from where I sit now, Soul has a reasonable shot. However, there are other narratives that will compete with Soul getting in, like whether films directed by women will get in and how many, etc.

Either which way, just remember — we have one more year of the current process before we move onto next year. Soul is, of course, a wonderful film and worthy of a nomination, and come to that, so is Wolfwalkers. Both are artistic high points in a difficult year for filmmakers.