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Best Picture Facts & Trivia (1) |
 Introduction to Academy Awards and Best Pictures: The Academy
Awards®, affectionately known as the Oscars®,
have been presented annually since 1927 (the first awards
ceremony was held in May 1929) by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
The most outstanding or "Best Picture" category is one of the original categories of the awards, although this awards category has been identified with different names over the years:
For the 1927/28 through the 1950 Awards, the nomination and 'Best Picture' Oscar went to the production company or studio that produced the film. [For example, Gone With the Wind's Best Picture Oscar was officially presented to Selznick International Pictures, not to David O. Selznick.] Thereafter, the 'Best Picture' Oscar was given to the producer(s).
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Facts & Trivia (1) The First Best Picture Winners: In the first year of the awards, there were two "Outstanding Picture" winners: Wings (1927/28) for Best Production and Sunrise (1927/28) for Unique and Artistic Picture (a category that was immediately dropped).
Obviously, the first and only silent film to win 'Best Picture' was Wings (1927/28). The Artist (2011) was mostly-silent, although had a soundtrack with sound effects, music, and a few characters speaking dialogue at the end. At the 1928/29 Academy Awards (held in 1930), no film won more than one statuette (there were seven films honored in seven categories) - something that hasn't been duplicated since. The Top Best Picture Award Winners and Nominated Films:
Titanic's awards included two sound awards and no acting prizes, and its screenplay wasn't even nominated. On the other hand, All About Eve (1950), also with 14 nominations, had one acting Oscar (Best Supporting Actor for George Sanders). And Ben-Hur (1959), with 11 Oscars from 12 nominations, lost only its Screenplay nomination, plus it racked up two acting awards (Charlton Heston for Best Actor and Hugh Griffith for Best Supporting Actor) - and there was only one sound category in 1959. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) won Best Adapted Screenplay, but had no acting nominations in its clean-sweep win. The Big Five: Only three films have won the top five awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay): Best Picture-Winning Sequels: The first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture was The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), the sequel to the previous year's Going My Way (1944); other sequels (or second and third installments) that were nominated for Best Picture include The Godfather, Part II (1974) - a winner and the first sequel to win Best Picture, and The Godfather, Part III (1990) - a loser; also The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - a loser, but its 'sequel' The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) was a Best Picture winner; although The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was a 'sequel' of sorts, it was made under a different studio, production company, director, and set of actors. Only nine sequels have ever received a Best Picture nomination (to date), and only two won the top prize:
Only two sequels have won Best Picture: Clean Sweeps: Only seven Best Picture winners have won every award for which they were nominated (Grand Hotel was a 'clean sweep' at one for one, followed by It Happened One Night (1934) at five for five; the next two were nine for nine, and LOTR was 11 for 11, while CODA (2021) was three for three. Except for the 1934 and 2021 films, none of the films were nominated for acting awards. One can count Wings (1927/1928) as the 6th film, although it was tied for the 'Best Picture' win:
Shut Outs: Two films hold the dubious distinction of being nominated eleven times without a single Oscar win. Other films with 8 or more competitive nominations are also included:
Best Pictures that Failed to Win Any Other Awards: All MGM productions
And Grand Hotel (1931/2) was the only Best Picture winner to receive only one nomination. It was the only film to win Best Picture without receiving any other nominations. Films That Won Best Picture Without a Single Acting Nomination: There are only 12 films that have won Best Picture without receiving a single acting nomination:
Conversely, Best Picture-nominated films that have won the most Oscar awards without winning Best Picture include the following films:
Below are the films that received the most Oscar nominations - without a nomination for Best Picture:
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) holds the record for receiving the most nominations (9) without being nominated for Best Picture. Its sole Oscar win was Best Supporting Actor, for Gig Young. But They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) didn't have the most Oscar nominations in its year of competition. In the same year, Anne of a Thousand Days (1969) had more nominations (10), but it was nominated for Best Picture. Therefore, Dreamgirls (2006) with 8 nominations was the first-time ever in Academy history that the film with the most nominations in its year failed to earn a Best Picture slot. Crash (2005) marked the first time a film-festival acquisition (after its premiere at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival) won Best Picture. Animated Films Nominated for Best Picture: There have only been three animated feature films nominated for Best Picture (number of nominations in parentheses):
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The Golden Globes vs. The Academy Awards Best Pictures: There is a long-standing idea that the Golden Globes (set up by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) are predictive of Best Picture Oscar wins, but that is mostly a myth. [Note: The Golden Globes were established in the year 1943.] Back to the 1950s, just about 50% of the Golden Globes' winning Best Picture dramas were repeated on Oscars night. From 1951-2019 (a period of 70 years), they agreed on 33 out of 70 Best Picture Dramas (45 out of 70 if you also included the Globes' Best Musical or Comedy category).
In the years from 2000-2009, Gladiator (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), and Slumdog Millionaire (2008) were the only four Best Picture dramas to win both major prizes. In addition, only one Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) also matched up with an Academy Best Picture winner: Chicago (2002). In the years from 2010-2019, Argo (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Moonlight (2016) were the only three Best Picture dramas to win both major prizes. In addition, two Golden Globe winners for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) also matched up with Academy Best Picture winners: The Artist (2011) and Green Book (2018). |
The Box-Office Boost of a Best Picture Nomination - and Win: The Best Picture Oscar nomination (and subsequent) win for a solid blockbuster film such as Gladiator (2000) or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) helped boost the bottom line, but not as significantly as it would have for a lesser-known film. Here are some major examples in the past where a Best Picture Oscar nomination (and the subsequent post-nomination period) made a major difference in its total box-office (domestic) revenue, measured in percentage of total revenue. Included are Best Picture-winning films that made over 35% more revenue (percentage of total revenue) following their nominations:
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