Oscar Introduces a New Category: Popular Film

With the Oscar Ceremony fixed in February next year, here is the news of introducing a new category. On Wednesday, it was announced that the Oscars will have the “Popular Film” category. Film experts are saying that this would be a great opportunity for films like, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Black Panther, and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

Many in the film fraternity are criticizing the decision. To set examples, here is what Andy Richter said: "Finally the Oscars will be giving a statue based on popularity so that those poor mountains of box office money won't be lonely anymore." Mark Harris said that there is already an award for the popular movies and that is money and there is no need of putting this category on the Oscars. Some experts are saying that this change has been brought keeping in mind the interest of the audiences. The actors are not the prime focus of this particular award. Some experts in the industry say that the nominees of the best picture must be the ones that the audience go and watch in theatres rather than having movies with lesser-known titles. As per the records of the last year, it had the lowest viewers that counted to 26.5 million. This number was 20% less than the previous year records.

The discrepancy between the popular and the best was not from the beginning. As per earlier records, movies like Forrest Gump, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Titanic were all box-office hits as well as winners of titles in the Oscar. But in the last few years, a change has been seen where there is a discrepancy among the audience choice and Oscar awards, the movie that has got huge box office records only end up having few technical awards or sometimes it has been seen that it is not involved in the nominees itself. But there were exceptions as well.

This, keeping the audience choice in focus has a different motive as per sources. Going by the reports of the viewership of Academy Awards, there has been a steady downfall. Some of the industry stalwarts were really concerned on the matter as it is one of the most prestigious awards of the industry and people losing the interest in this award show might later result in losing interest in films. Experts already say that the people are comparatively more into Hollywood movies if compared to the records published a few years back. TV series and Netflix have taken a lot over the film industry that has extensively hit the movie audience. With all these issues, the authorities felt there is an ardent need for change in the awards and thus they have taken such a decision of putting a new category in the Oscars. The news was not much appreciated by the industry, however, Twitterazzi showed their immense support for the decision.

Some other changes to look forward

There have been reports that the event will have some changes too. The pattern will change and the political speeches are speculated to be removed absolutely. There is no absolute news about this ban but the shortening of speeches can definitely be expected from the next Oscars. The best song nominees were given the stage for a live performance. The stage time of these performances might even get shortened. The technical awards that are termed as “boring” by the audience might also get cut off. As per reports, the ceremony will be completed within 3 hours as that will make it more accessible and viewable for the audience worldwide. The ceremony will have all the 24 categories and there have been reports that said some of the awards would be presented when the event gets the commercial break.

The winning moments would go through the editor’s knife and would be broadcasted later. There is a speculation that technical awards like lights, editing and sound will fall into the category that will be kept for highlights of the show. One of the experts in the editing industry said that this would be very much demeaning and this will not get a very good response from the internal team. The technical team usually waits for such ceremonies where their work is appreciated in front of a great audience and is obviously a very great moment of their career and lives when they win an award on the Oscar stage. The inside news says, that it was not necessary to cut off these technical awards from the show as there are other unimportant things that could be cut off as the idea is only to streamline the program.

Source:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45117793

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/08/entertainment/academy-popular-film-category/index.html