10 Best Picture nominees: How it will affect the Oscars

June 25, 4:35 PMAtlanta Movies ExaminerRyan McNally

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With the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ recent announcement that it was expanding the Best Picture nominee field from five movies to 10, two immediate questions come to mind: Why was this decision made, and how will it impact the Academy Awards?

The official reason, as provided by AMPAS President Sid Ganis, is that “after more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year." Unofficially, the reason is likely the Oscars’ flagging viewership in recent years, a trend the Academy presumably hopes to reverse with the inclusion of more films in the Best Picture race—and the presumed likelihood that more “blockbusters” will make it into the mix.

For example, how would the 2009 race have looked if expanded to 10 films? It might have been as follows (actual nominees listed in bold):

Changeling

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Doubt

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

Wall-E

The Wrestler

Or maybe we would have seen Gran Torino, Rachel Getting Married, Iron Man or even Man on Wire scoring a Best Picture nomination. Who knows?

One thing’s for sure: The Academy’s biggest rule change in decades is going to shake things up. Here are seven ways the Academy Awards expansion to 10 Best Picture nominees could affect the Oscars.

1) There will be even more Oscar campaigning. You can bet that doubling the field will have big studios salivating at the chance to see their “prestige” pictures make it to the red carpet on Academy Awards night. So expect the already ridiculous Oscars campaigning process to become even more over-the-top.

2) More blockbusters will be nominated. As the Academy is undoubtedly hoping, expanding the field could lead to more box-office favorites scoring nominations. Would, for instance, The Bourne Ultimatum or Pirates of the Caribbean have scored an Oscar nomination with 10 slots to go around?

Perhaps. But given the Academy Awards voting system, films with broad but less passionate followings may continue to find themselves on the outside of the Kodak Theatre looking in.

3) More “genre” films--comic book adaptations, animated fare, sci-fi, etc.—will be nominated. Traditionally, films from less “respected” genres have fared poorly in the Best Pic nominee race—see this year’s exclusion of The Dark Knight and Wall-E as Exhibit A. But the addition of five more films to the race could help “niche” genres make it in, from box-office hits (The Matrix, Shrek 2) to the more cultish (Kill Bill, Donnie Darko).

4) More “small” films--independents, documentaries and foreign films--will be nominated. With the number of votes required to get a nomination halved, it could become less important for the majority of Academy members to have seen a film to get it nominated. Presumably, art-house films with a passionate following (Into the Wild, Fahrenheit 911, The Lives of Others) might now have a better shot.

5) More bad movies will be nominated for Best Picture. As I reported in my article on whether The Reader was the worst Best Picture nominee of the decade, the Academy has actually done a respectable job in the last decade of avoiding embarrassing Best Picture nominations. But that could all change with the expansion to 10 films. Of course, the flip side is that with 10 nominees, the chances of the Academy missing a classic film would be slimmer—we hope.

6) The show will be even longer. Somehow, the Oscars will need to recognize all 10 nominees at some point during the telecast, with the likely effect that the already-marathon running time stretches even further.

7) There will be more Best Picture upsets on Oscar night. With the vote split 10 ways instead of five, it’s possible we could see a more wide-open Best Picture race. Could Dreamgirls, Children of Men or Volver have taken 2007’s wide-open race (won by The Departed) if the field had been expanded to 10?

Ultimately, the jury’s still out on whether expanding the field will add excitement to the Academy Awards and result in a more-well rounded Best Picture field, or simply dilute the quality of the awards and actually lessen interest in the Oscars in the long run. Fingers crossed.

Related Articles:
1) Oscars 2009 show recap: Highlights and lowlights, from Hugh Jackman to Anne Hathaway to Seth Rogen
2) Is Gran Torino the best film ever shut out of the Oscars?
3) Oscars 2009 analysis: Did Academy politics cost In Bruges, Waltz with Bashir and Charlton Heston?