Why Are They Pushing Back the Oscars?

Due to the Coronavirus situation, the 2021 Oscars are being pushed back about two months to April 25. More importantly, the eligibility window for these Oscars is also being extended by two months, to the end of February. Note that this extension doesn't apply to "specialty" categories like animated films, documentaries, or any international releases. The Academy is essentially giving the studios an extra two months to get its planned award season contenders out in theaters. And frankly, I find this kind of infuriating.

I understand some of the reasoning for the move. The Oscars largely exist to be a marketing tool for the movie industry, and the movie industry has been hit especially hard by the pandemic. The prestige films losing the awards season boost from the Oscars would be a catastrophe. Since all of the spring and summer blockbuster films are being crammed into the fall, this means that the prestige films are being squeezed later into the winter months. In a regular year, there's already a mad crush of films being released at the end of December for awards eligibility. This year would be much worse, even with the Academy adjusting the rules to allow digital releases to be eligible for awards this year.

However, it's not like there haven't already been plenty of awards-worthy films released this year. There have been a lot of jokes about "Sonic the Hedgehog" or "Bad Boys 4 Life" being up for Best Picture, but I like "Da 5 Bloods," "Emma," "Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always," "Shirley," "The Invisible Man," and "Wendy" for potential contenders. Upcoming 2020 titles that look very promising include "Tenet," "Mank," "Soul," "The French Dispatch," "West Side Story" and "The Personal History of David Copperfield." Delaying the award ceremony itself is one thing, but extending the eligibility window strikes me as unnecessary when there are already going to be plenty of titles to fill in the nominee slots. Frankly, less competition would be a nice change too, because it would give some less traditional contenders like "Invisible Man" a shot.

I can only speculate about some of the reasoning behind the decision, but speculate I will. Limiting the awards to the calendar year of 2020 might be seen as giving the advantage to the films that premiered on streaming services. Netflix has been gunning for a Best Picture win for the last few years, and this could be their best chance at victory. They're fielding several big hopefuls this year, including "Da 5 Bloods" and "Mank." However, with theatrical exhibition having suffered such a blow, and with several prominent members of the film community strongly advocating for support of theaters, sentiments may be more sympathetic toward boosting the chances of traditional theatrical releases. Many of the Academy's fussier rules have been all about protecting and promoting theatrical exhibition, and theater owners will definitely benefit from more eligible films in the mix.

This decision may also be related to another major rule change. The Best Picture nominations will be fixed at ten slots going forward, after a decade of varying between eight and nine. The given reason is that this will help to promote more diverse nominees. Extending the eligibility period may help to ensure more quality nominees to fill those extra slots - which, again, I don't think is necessary. One drawback I don't think anyone thought through is that if the Oscars move the eligibility window into 2021, we might end up with fewer films available for the 2022 awards.

However, the most likely reason for the rule change is simply because the studios and distributors wanted this for economic reasons. The film industry is very time sensitive, and delaying so many films for an entire year until the next awards season will be very costly. Note that the eligibility exception is only applicable to general releases, meaning none of the films in the niche categories that arguably need it more will be able to take advantage of it. That nixes any of the arguments that this is being done to ensure more or better nominees.

In the end, there's no guarantee that a vaccine will be available next year, or that audiences will be ready to go back to theaters for the foreseeable future. There's still a strong possibility that a second wave of Coronavirus will force further closures in the fall. It might make more sense to cancel the awards entirely and lump 2020 and 2021 together, depending on how the rest of the year goes. There's too much up in the air to say anything for sure, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the last round of changes we're going to see before the next Oscar night.
---