Oscars
Changes for the 2025 award ceremony
Innovations for the 2025 Oscars.
© carrie-nelson/ImageCollect
More statues for film musicians, but a legacy from the Corona period will be abolished: New rules for the Oscars 2025.
On March 11, 2024, the last Oscar season ended with a shower of awards for “Oppenheimer,” and now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is looking forward. The organization that awards what is probably the most important film award in the world has just made a few changes for the Oscars 2025 announced.
More chances for “Best Music”
The AMPAS introduces the most important adjustments in the “Best Film Music” category. In the future, the shortlist for this award will feature 20 instead of 15 films. The expanded preselection will be announced in December 2024, and the final five nominations will be announced on January 17, 2025.
There will be more Oscars up for grabs in the “Best Music” category in the future. Previously, several composers had to share a statue if they were awarded together. This was the case for Jon Batiste (37), Trent Reznor (58) and Atticus Ross (56) when they won together for the Pixar film “Soul”. From 2025, up to three people will each receive their own statue.
In the future, only classical bands will be recognized as a group. One example is the trio Son Lux, which was nominated in 2023 for the score for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. They would also have to share a golden boy from 2025.
Drive-in cinemas are no longer enough for “Best Film”
Further changes: Starting next year, a film can be nominated for “Best Documentary” and “Best International Film” at the same time. The Irving Thalberg Award, which is given irregularly for a producer’s life’s work, is changing shape. In the future it will come in the form of a classic Oscar statue and no longer as a bust of its namesake, producer legend Irving Thalberg (1899-1936).
A legacy from the Corona period will be abolished. Next year, it will no longer be enough for a film to be shown in a drive-in cinema to qualify. This special rule was introduced during the pandemic when only drive-in theaters were open. In order to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Film, an entry must have been shown regularly for one week in one of six American territories.
So the really big changes are missing. A new category will only come for the Oscars in 2026. Then an Academy Award for “Best Casting” will be awarded for the first time. It is the first new regular award since the introduction of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2001.
Candidates for several nominations for the 2025 Oscar include “Dune 2”, the episodic film “Kinds of Kindness” by “Poor Things” maker Yorgos Lanthimos (50) and the “Joker” sequel “Folie à Deux” with Joaquin Phoenix (49) and Lady Gaga (38).