Now on to a new angle on how to fix the Oscars…

This year’s Academy nominees reception and class photo event was an understandably muted
affair. Due to the L.A. fires, the usual boozy lunch during the Oscars voting window—an annual showcase for enthusiastic, face-to-face politicking, and the occasional dog stunt—became a more casual cocktail hour on Tuesday night after
voting closed, and before the individual branch dinners. Still celebratory, but Appropriate with a capital A, as Academy president Janet Yang has been meticulously messaging this season.  

The nominees I chatted with were as pumped as ever, of course. But with everything going on, it’s hard not to observe the hoopla leading up to Sunday’s Oscars through the lens of diminishing
relevance and the financial and cultural realities that are transforming Hollywood into a quaint vestige of its former self. The Oscars, which were conceived by the original 1920s movie moguls as a grand promotion for the nascent art of American filmmaking, have always mattered so much inside the industry because they have always mattered outside, too. People in the Real World care about this stuff, we always told ourselves. But with the exception of last year’s social
media–fueled Barbenheimer phenomenon, which led to a slight uptick in ratings, the box office and cultural relevance of the nominated films have been in decline for some time, as has the TV audience.

We all know the reasons: the end of monoculture; the Academy’s stubborn unwillingness to evolve its broadcast for the times, as the Grammys have; and, most of all, I think, the divergence in
the taste of mainstream American audiences and the people who make movies—especially movies outside the U.S. As a result, even as the nominees congratulated each other on Tuesday over mini pizzas and squash fritters (delicious, by the way), it was hard not to wonder why the Academy wasn’t doing more to evolve its own organization in ways that can reinvent and supercharge its signature asset: the Oscars show.

After all, it’s sort of the only thing that matters. AMPAS made $147 million in 2024 from the Oscars and “related activities” like the Governors Ball, the vast majority of the overall income for the nonprofit group. As viewership for the show has dipped below 20 million, and as the expiration of the current Disney/ABC deal nears in 2028, Academy C.E.O. Bill Kramer has become concerned enough about the possibility of a haircut in its next broadcast deal that he launched a
separate fundraising drive. In short, it’s crunch time for the Oscars.

I’ve already written about how to improve the annual telecast, and why an organization with 55 members on its board of governors is set up for indecision and chaos. But an underappreciated—and, yes, potentially controversial— aspect of the
Academy’s problem lies in the makeup of the organization itself: At this point, there are too many foreign members.

Hear me out. I swear this is not an anti-D.E.I. screed, and I’m not trying to land a
spot in the Trump-approved White House press corps. As we know, the Academy has been adding members at a furious pace over the past decade. The organization, which counted around 6,100 voting members in 2014, now boasts nearly 10,000. For reasons including racism and cronyism, the Academy was overwhelmingly white, male, and older, and it tended to produce nominees that were white, male, and older. In 2015, the organization finally recognized the severity of its problem. But to
diversify without kicking elderly members out and prompting mob riots at the Motion Picture & Television Fund home, it added members. As a result, both the makeup and the nominees changed a bit. A 2023 study by USC found that 8 percent of Oscar nominees between 2008 and 2015 were from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups. Between 2016 and 2023, that number increased to 17 percent.

That’s
better. The Academy still has a diversity problem, but its steps to rectify that issue have been slowly working. Beyond the inclusion push, I’d argue the overt internationalization of the Oscars, while cool in many ways, has fundamentally altered the taste of the Academy, and it threatens to further niche-ify the Oscars telecast right when it needs to pivot toward the mainstream. 

Over the
past 10 years, as many as 40 percent of the invites went to new members from outside the U.S. In contrast with the diverse new members from America, or those who appear more regularly in television shows, these foreign invitees are often not actors or filmmakers who regularly work within the U.S. film industry. A typical recent invite is
someone like Rima Das, an Indian filmmaker whose 2017 coming-of-age drama Village Rockstars was India’s submission in that year’s foreign language film category. An achievement, for sure, but Village Rockstars was not nominated, and Das has never made a film released in the U.S., according to IMDb. Jayro Bustamante, another recent invite, is a Guatemalan filmmaker whose Ixcanul was the country’s submission in that category in 2015 (it
also wasn’t nominated). His only film to get a U.S. release, according to Box Office Mojo, was the 2019 thriller Tremors, which grossed just $24,000 in this country and $122,000 worldwide from two territories. Despite their disconnection from mainstream filmmaking, Das and Bustamante are now both Oscar voters.    

This isn’t an artistic point, or even a complaint about the
“qualifications” of these international invites. But when voters have no connection to the Hollywood film industry—or, in some cases, even an interest in the kinds of movies that are shown in U.S. theaters—how can the Academy expect them to nominate movies that appeal to the American audience that consumes mostly Hollywood films and might want to watch the Oscars on a Sunday night? As one film sales agent pointed out to me, many of the overseas filmmakers actively dislike the U.S.-based
industry or view it as imperialistic. It’s pretty easy to join the BAFTAs, but they aren’t exactly falling over themselves to invite more U.S. members. Neither are Spain’s Goyas, or France’s César awards. Only AMPAS has decided to become a global film organization yet also try to maintain the large U.S. audience for an Oscars telecast that serves as the greatest promotional platform ever conceived—and also pays the bills.

To be fair, whenever I
bring this topic up with Academy members, they convincingly defend the expansion overseas. Today I was emailing with producer Michael Shamberg, a frequent critic of the Oscars, and he argued that “more foreign Academy members reinvigorate the Academy and expand its global brand.” Like with the NBA or MLB, what professional talent wouldn’t want to compete against the best in the world? 

A good point. But this is kinda different. Sports leagues welcome the most talented athletes; they don’t let them vote on who wins MVP—or whether to put teams in Berlin or Budapest. Even Shamberg admits that “smaller foreign films like I’m Still Here are just as worthy of nominations as American indies, but they have less awareness for the American audience.” And the Academy can welcome foreign talent with at least tenuous connections to the U.S. film industry without going to 40
percent of invites. As Oscar-ologist Scott Feinberg noted back in 2015, the Academy has been somewhat welcoming to foreign members for most of its history.       

Another argument: If the Oscars want
to further diversify away from old white men—and they should—there simply aren’t enough legitimately diverse U.S. film professionals to invite. The foreign selection pool is larger, and fishing in that ocean leads to a more qualified and, honestly, more sophisticated electorate. True, and the board of governors might feel better about inviting a global membership. But we then need to accept that the Oscars will no longer be a populist broadcast in this country when six of the 10 films
nominated for best picture are niche art house titles; two are in a foreign language; and all but Wicked and Dune: Part Two have little connection to the broader culture. The Oscars will become the Tonys.  

Maybe that’s fine with the average AMPAS member. But with so much on the line, and so many pressures on the continued power and relevance of the Oscars, it’s increasingly difficult for the
Academy to have it both ways.

See you Monday,

Matt

Got a question, comment, complaint, or anyone else who should be launched into space with Lauren Sánchez and Katy Perry? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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