With the 2023 Oscars now behind them, the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can look toward the future. This is often the time of year when the leadership makes notable changes that will affect next year’s race, and some major shifts are already underway, with potentially more to come.
The board made its first big announcement on Friday with the creation of the Production and Technology Branch, which gives the previously labeled members-at-large a place to call home. Made up of about 400 members, the new branch includes chief technology officers, senior department heads in technology and creative services, and preservation and restoration specialists, along with those with production roles like stunt coordinators, script supervisors, choreographers, and line producers.
It’s the first new Academy branch since 2013, when the Casting Directors Branch was created. This brings the total to 18 branches, and will create a new Board of Governors position for the newly created department.
This is the first of many changes we can probably expect in the coming months. After the To Leslie drama of last season, the Academy announced it would be looking closely at its campaigning and social media rules in an effort to make it crystal clear what can and can’t be done. For those who may have already erased the season’s biggest drama from their minds, the To Leslie Oscar campaign—which earned star Andrea Riseborough her first Oscar nomination—came under fire for its aggressive outreach campaign to fellow members of the acting branch, and its social media blitz the week before voting. The Academy reviewed the situation and determined that Riseborough’s nomination would not be rescinded, but that some of the tactics uses “caused concern.”
More importantly, CEO Bill Kramer said the incident forced them to look at the rules as they stand, and plan on making some changes. “Given this review, it is apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive, and unbiased campaigning,” he said in a statement. “These changes will be made after this awards cycle and will be shared with our membership. The Academy strives to create an environment where votes are based solely on the artistic and technical merits of the eligible films and achievements.”
There is a range of possibilities for what those new campaign rules could look like, since the existing rules are extremely vague.
There’s another rumored change that could have an even bigger impact on Oscar campaigns, particularly for small films like To Leslie. As reported in Puck last week, the Academy is said to be mulling the idea of expanding the theatrical requirement to 15 or 20 of the top 50 markets in the US. Right now, the Academy only requires that a film play theatrically for one week in one of six major markets (New York, LA, Chicago, Bay Area, Miami, or Atlanta).
It’s still early days, but if the rumored guideline passes—the Academy had no comment —it could very well be called the Netflix rule. The streamer has qualified many of its major films for Oscar consideration with cursory theatrical releases, but with the exception of last fall’s Glass Onion which showed in just over 600 theaters, none have gotten the kind of robust theatrical run of its competition. A rule like this from the Academy could force them to embrace theaters much more significantly to keep seeking that ever-elusive best picture statue.
There is also some concern that a new theatrical requirement could hurt independent films, especially those from newer filmmakers or filmmakers of color, as The Black List’s Franklin Leonard pointed out on Twitter. Theatrical releases are costly for a distributor, and a newer filmmaker may not have the power to demand such a release that would allow it to be eligible for the Oscars.
The Academy has not confirmed that they are considering this new expanded requirement, and it would have to be approved by the Board of Governors, which will next meet in late April. But we can expect some significant changes to shake up the system in the coming months. The question is how much drama will follow these hard decisions.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.