Academy Awards: Movies Must Meet Diversity Standards To Be Considered for Best Picture Award
The film doesn’t matter. If your awesome film doesn’t have enough diversity on and off the screen then the Academy won’t give you the time of day.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences used to only require a movie run longer than 40 minutes and had specifics “about how, where and when it’s screened in a public venue” in order to be considered for best picture.
Now the organization has four new standards based on inclusion.
The movie must have diversity in:
- On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives
- Creative Leadership and Project Team
- Industry Access and Opportunities
- Audience Development
Change starts now. We’ve announced new representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture eligibility, beginning with the 96th #Oscars. Read more here: https://t.co/qdxtlZIVKb pic.twitter.com/hR6c2jb5LM
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) September 9, 2020
The change comes as the Academy wants “to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.”
The Academy developed a task force “to develop and implement new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility.” This task force used guidelines in place by the “British Film Industry (BFI) Diversity Standards used for certain funding eligibility in the UK and eligibility in some categories of the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards.” The Producers Guild of America also chipped in.
The new requirement will begin in 2024. However, filmmakers must submit an Academy Inclusion Standards form in 2022 and 2023 in order for the Academy to consider the film for best picture.
STANDARD A: ON-SCREEN REPRESENTATION, THEMES AND NARRATIVES
To achieve Standard A, the film must meet ONE of the following criteria:A1. Lead or significant supporting actors
At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
• Asian
• Hispanic/Latinx
• Black/African American
• Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native
• Middle Eastern/North African
• Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
• Other underrepresented race or ethnicityA2. General ensemble cast
At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two of the following underrepresented groups:
• Women
• Racial or ethnic group
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearingA3. Main storyline/subject matter
The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).
• Women
• Racial or ethnic group
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing
The one that really gets me is the Audience Development because it has nothing to do with the actual film.
Instead, it’s all about diversity “in marketing, publicity, and distribution.”
The studio and/or film company has multiple in-house senior executives from among the following underrepresented groups (must include individuals from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups) on their marketing, publicity, and/or distribution teams.
• Women
• Racial or ethnic groupAsian
Hispanic/Latinx
Black/African American
Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native
Middle Eastern/North African
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
Other underrepresented race or ethnicity
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing
I have a few questions:
- I see “women” in these lists. Does this include white women?
- Will a white male be suitable to fulfill the requirement of having someone “with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing?”
The Academy only changed the best picture requirements. The other categories will keep their current standards.
So as long as your film has diversity on and off the screen the Academy could consider it for best picture.
It’s not about merit or hard work. It’s all about skin color, chromosomes, sexual orientation, etc.
Final question: Is this genuine or another way for white liberals to feel better about themselves? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question.
[Featured image via YouTube]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
So you can kiss off Oscars if you plan to make an historical documentary.
Documentaries have their own category. This only affects films in the “Best Picture” category.
Not that it matters. There won’t be a film industry in 2024 at this rate.
If it means bombs like “Brokeback Mountain” that no one saw no longer qualify, maybe it’s worth it. From now on, the “Best Picture” Oscar will signify movie with diversified cast that no one saw.
LOL
THE FOOLS THINK THERE IS STILL A HOLLYWOOD AFTER ITS BEEN DEAD AND BURIED ALREADY FOR MONTHS.
LOL
The simple solution is for everyone to feel their African heritage and the whole country can become one race. If you believe in science then you must accept this because scientists have determined that mankind originated in Africa. Problem solved!
The only “documentaries” that will be made will be VICTIM statements as prescribed by bLM.
“To achieve Standard A, the film must meet ONE of the following criteria: …
A3. Main storyline/subject matter
The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).”
So if I interpret this correctly, a movie about “women” satisfies the criteria, but it isn’t required to actually have any women in it.
“And the Best Picture is….. Blazing Saddles!
Cue theme music.
I am buying up everything Mel Brooks that I can find – sad we can no longer laugh.
<i?"Where da white women!"
“And the winner for the most Politically Correct Film is….”
Please feel free to supply the answer. This should be great fun.
I can’t wait for that coming period picture set in 18th Century Japan with the largely White, Black, and Hispanic cast of feudal lords and samurai swordsmen. I’ve always felt excluded from the genre. Like I was unseen or something.
Of course, Schindler’s List will need to be remade with the original reels junked. Don’t equality, equity, and all the other good things tell us it’s long overdue to bring in vastly underrepresented Pallywood production teams and make the story at least partially one of Palestinian suffering?
The Last Sumarai should still be good to go. Only had two white guys in it, everybody else native Asian. Of course there were no gays so maybe I’m off.
Not that I give a damn about the narcissistic festival of self-reverential ego-massaging that is the Oscars and all other entertainment industry award ceremonies (I stopped watching this farce in 1999), but, I write to observe that this idiocy represents the natural progression of the Dhimmi-crats’ corrosive racial totalitarianism. Intrinsic merit and achievement must now be subordinated to Dhimmi-crat notions of “Diversity,” which simply means handing out jobs, contracting awards, school admission slots and artistic awards solely based upon assessments of contestants’/applicants’ skin pigmentation, genitalia, sexual predilections, etc.
Just like youngsters’ sports: everyBODY gets a trophy. Show up and carry away an award. Now, get a statuette from a bunch of toadies, sycophants and lickspitters (a real word) to reward nothingness in movies.
You are wrong. Not everyone gets a trophy here. Heterosexual white males do not get a trophy, unless you consider unemployment a trophy of some sort.
“And now, for the Movie with the Best White to Minority Ratio…”
Don’t give ’em any ideas!
And by “best” surely you mean “lowest.”
I do indeed.
Okay Branco, this should be a lay-up for you!
who cares
Personally, I only consider black & white movies for Best Picture. (Probably a childhood trauma, or something.) Do I now have to consider only black & black movies?
Hollywood needs to go back to Silent Films. The sounded such more erudite in those films.
No more left wing actresses with terminal cases of white privilege? Cast male roles with females? Or perhaps a remake of When Harry Met Sally with Sally played by Don Lemon?
Imagine them trying for a hip-hop musical accompaniment on a Wurlitzer theater organ!
“Castaway” would likely fail standard “A.” Unless soccer balls are considered “underrepresented.”
It’s a volleyball…how dare you stereotype?!!
You are correct!
How do you know it doesn’t identify as a soccer ball…are transballphobic, or something…
Wilson does make soccer balls…
Soccer balls can be painful.
The Oscars and most other ‘awards’ lost all relevance for me when I realized it was just a bunch of elitists giving each other awards. A friend of mine and his wife were members of the Academy and received their ballots to vote for the awards. Why were they members? They were clowns who had appeared as extras once. Honest-to-God, red rubber ball nose, floppy shoes, clowns, but they were voting for the Oscars. Not only have they run out of anything resembling creativity to the point they can only re-make films (and ruin them in the process), now this. And they wonder why nobody wants to go see their movies?
How long until someone comes up with the idea to ‘cancel’ non-compliant films from the past and demands the revocation of past awards for not being ‘woke’ enough?
Already underway. HBO pulled “Gone With The Wind” until a far left political harangue was added that “contextualized” the classic. Netflix pulled practically all of its classic movies, and I’ll bet the main reason was they weren’t commie enough. DVDs of old “Tom and Jerry” cartoons come with For Adults Only labels and an obnoxious lefty speech by Whoopie “”Rape-Rape” Goldberg (fortunately you can skip it).
At some point the only culture you will be able to get is Mao’ Little Red Book and reruns of “The L Word”.
Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who goes to a theater maybe twice a year, I really don’t care. The quality of the product has suffered for years, and now it will get worse by requirement.
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
.
I have not used these meaningless pieces of crap as a watch barometer in decades.
I can see the job listings now: “New film production, Oscar Bound. Now seeking tokens of every race, creed, color and sexual orientation!”
Haven’t been inside a movie theater in over 30 years and that was when my granddaughter demanded to see “Beauty and the Beast”
I am waiting for the reboot of “Shaft” with a gender-fluid Andorian using xis/xer Twitter account to do battle with climate-deniers and Zionists while bedding wide-booty Antifa chicks with purple hair and 30 pounds of body piercings. There at least five Academy Award nominations lurking in there (Andorians being the textbook definition of “marginalized group”).
I think I would actually watch such a movie.
Participation trophies, nothing more.
If I were a wealthy man, I would find a really good script, cast all parts with whites, use a competent crew regardless of what boxes they check, and market it to the audience I felt would be the most likely to enjoy it.
When it got done breaking all kinds of records, I would advertize it was “Winner of no Oscars!”
“Banned in Hollywood!”
“The movie Hollywood hopes you won’t see!”
“Audience development’ sounds like it’s only a matter of time before audiences are screened for diversity too.
Has anyone commenting here even seen most of the recent Best Picture winners? The last one I saw and liked was King’s Speech from ten years ago.
Compare to the list of movies from the late ’80’s, ’90’s and early ’00’s — almost all top-ten-grossing movies of their years.
At this point, a high score on Rotten Tomatoes is a much better indicator of quality.
Was just logging in to essentially say the same thing.
I bet some production companies and possibly a major studio will close or merge in the next year or so because of the wokeness scramble. After all, it’s money made from the blockbuster movies that allow the studios to make the ones most people have never heard of. You that audience, you’re in trouble.
Not to mention that even before the WuFlu plenty of people would just wait until a movie got released for home viewing vs. going to the theater with expensive tickets, expensive refreshments, and people who talk and can’t keep off their phones. IMO, the movies that have to be seen in a theater for the community experience are fewer and fewer.
Oops. Missed a word: Lose that audience.
The only two movies I’ve actually gone to see in the theater in recent years were “America Sniper” and “Darkest Hour.” Wanted to support the increasingly rare, almost extinct category of movies – i.e., good ones with a patriotic theme.
Oh, and Kerstie Alley, in a since-deleted tweet, basically called this garbage and ended the tweet with ORWELL.
So entertainment value still hasn’t played in yet?.
Nor profits…..
Isaiah 48:17
……I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.
The word is להועיל, “to be useful”, i.e. “Who teaches you the things you need to know for your own good”.
I guess 12 Angry Men would be out of consideration
So would “Dunkirk”.
.
It will be amusing to see losers who pushed movies with these criteria checking all the right boxes and it ends up costing the producers money as no one goes out to see it.
Best picture, under these new restrictions, doesn’t mean it is the best picture or anything close. Don’t you just love it when the left screw with language so much that words have lost their meaning?
This is stupid, in that Hollywood is going to end up just like sports.
I started tuning out ten years ago. Most of what hey are producing, I do not want to watch. he same with news, so 5-6 years ago I dropped cable. Besides, Comcast is a royal POS.
For he past 5 years I have buying whole DVD collections, for about 20 cents per DVD. Part of this was driven by moving to a more rural area, where broadband may be a problem. Another part was suspicion that streaming services would jack up their prices. THat is now happening in ha every content provider is trying to get people to pay separately for their content. I am not going to pay these clowns $10 a month x 5-7 sources. I dropped Netflix 2 years ago, and in the past week boh Amazon & Hulu.
I dropped Netflix because I had watched what I was interested in, and they raised their price while they were adding obnoxious Obama content.
Hulu is cheap, but they generally only have a small amount of a show available at a time. And if I am going o put up with commercials, then there are better sources.
Amazon really pissed me off with their treatment of LI, and then again when they weaseled on two day deliveries. On top of that, they were pushing BLM, and I detest BLM just as much as the KKK. Over time, they have been moving content that was included before in Prime to separate pay, and they were adding ads before shows.
In the last 6 months I cancelled Netflix and Hulu. Don’t miss either. Won’t even consider CBS All Access, Disney Plus, HBO Max etc.
While Amazon Prime PO’d me I’ll probably stay with it because I want to keep one streaming service and they have the deepest library. But, they are on probation and could suffer the same fate.
Also, Amazon went from my goto merchant for shopping to a merchant of last resort. I’ll buy from almost anyone else first.
I wish I could find a book source as deep as Amazon, but for just about everything else, I look for other sources on line.
I can see a remake of Death Wish winning a best picture award. Charles Bronson and a large crew of mixed race thugs. We could have him married to a asian for diversity’s sake.
The 2+2=5 Tinseltown mutual admiration society is stupid enough to think this matters to anyone other than themselves.
So, just look at the nomination list to see the movies that aren’t worth watching.
Reason #1,489 why I no longer go to movies or watch them on TV. I’m down to Fox News (almost done with them) and reruns of The Andy Griffith Show with occasional Frasier shows. The only current shows I watch are Last Man Standing and NCIS. All sports are gone, all awards shows, all gone. Thinking seriously about dumping TV altogether.
So thats why period movie about history now has to have a odd race person out of place and a sex changed character though none was known.
What do you look like and who do you have sex with? Nothing else matters more.
Democrats: we’re the smart ones!
Quota, token trophies. Notice that diversity and excellence are not used together.
I have a few questions:
Will the check-off box / report card for the quota compliance will appear in the opening credits, or the closing credits?
If only in the closing credits (that many miss because they’re leaving the theater as those credits run), will that itself be evidence of “implicit bias?”
Will the higher scoring report by the tie-breaker for movies vying for “best picture?”
I guess these new rules won’t affect my movie watching since I’ve just started going through my catalogue of the 100+ DVDs I own. So if I figure a movie a week (what I have time for), that will be at least two years, and then I can start over again.
According to “science”, aren’t we all from Africa? //snark
I have their diversity right here. Like I give a shit.
as long a funding sources are available to independent filmmakers(Sundance, etc), quality, original films will continue to be made
the idea that the academy is the sole arbiter of what the best film of any particular year, in any particular category happens to be is preposterous
Since when were women underrepresented in the main storyline of a movie? Have romance flicks and rom-coms stopped being a thing?
As long as Ricky Gervais hosts, I’ll still watch the youtube clips the next day.
I love it when the left starts eating its own! Kind of a self destruct move. So does this mean no more all black films? And what about historical films, how do you actually depict ancient populations that are void of many of these diversity requirements? I stopped watching TV/Movie/Music awards shows years ago when they started turning political. The exception being the CMA, but even the CMA are starting to veer down the path of political correctness.
Hahaha, Hollywood types making themselves even more irrelevant. Who cares what you people do. That’s right I said you people!! lol.
Why is this article classed as “culture”? Yes, bLM and Hollywood are a fit, but … the “academy’s” nonsensical act of toadyism, sycophantism and lickspitting is an ABSENCE of culture.
I can’t “boycott” Hollywood…. I refuse to watch any movie with anti- pretty much everything or that promotes any of H-wood’s ridiculous extreme views….which is basically everything from the major studios. Thanks, Hollywood! I’ve saved enough from not going to movies that I can buy a new truck WITH a new shotgun, too!