The Academy is bring out aBest Popular Film Oscar , but what exactly limit a popular flick ? The late alteration to the Academy Awards in a bid to increase ratings have proven rather controversial , with the Modern Oscar specially bemoan - not least because it does n’t really make sense .

While it ’s clearly intend to reach the field up to blockbusters that , despite reliably being some of the best - critique films of the year are often ignored by non - technical Oscar category , the word " popular " is puzzling . Is it based on budget ? Box office?Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score ? All of these are flawed metric function that conflate art and stage business , and that says nothing of what it mean for popular Oscar   contenders likeLa La Land , The RevenantandGravity(which made over $ 1.5 billion between them ) .

relate : Screen Rant ’s Thoughts On The Oscars & The New " Popular Film " class

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The Academy is yet to announce the rule for the young family , but from how comparable Oscar are gifted , we can figure out what the potential fit will be .

The one thing that the Academy has clarify is that ( unsurprisingly)Best Popular Filmis an accessory Oscar , not a parallel one . A film can be in argument and indeed gain both Popular Film and the even Best Picture . This is the same situation as with Best Foreign Language Feature and Best Animated Feature , where films that stipulate for the respective awards are also eligible for the big prize ( although no film from either descriptive has ever won ) .

liken the fresh   category to Foreign Language and Animated award make the most sense , as they are both   intended to honor typically underrepresented films ( whether blockbusters can numerate as " underrepresented " anywhere other than the Oscars is up for debate ) . It ’s probable the Best Popular Film Oscar will operate in a standardised manner .

Both awards have a lot of guidelines ( rather evidently , link to chiefly speak language and animated substance ) that qualify a motion picture for nomination . The Academy will surely likewise congeal a loose number   of parameter that   cast a wide net : number of screens , budget , and box seat role are all possibility , with the entrance - level slightly - above - mid - range . However , they wo n’t just pick the   contender from these limits - it will then be up to the distributor to in reality put up the movie .

Related : Working Out The Best Popular Film Oscar Winner For The Past 10 Years

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And that ’s the big thing that much of the confusion of the award logistics are miss .   Plainly , a movie ’s classification and bearing at the Oscars is not down to the Academy : voters do n’t pick any film out at random . Movies are put forward by their distributor " for your condition " . This is how moving picture likeTransformersend up in the discussion and means , at last , whether a movie die hard in the Popular Film Oscar category is down to the multitude who made it .

You see the impact of this pick good with Lead and Supporting acting awarding , where the category an player appears in is often refer more to their chances of a nomination or bring home the bacon rather than screentime or importance to the story , but it ’s also happened in these tiered - picture show class : The Jungle Bookwon Best Visual Effects but , had Disney pushed it , could have been a intimately animise Feature contender ( well over the needed 75 % was animated via CGI ) .

How this would figure out in practice depends on how ballot is perceive - will being in a in high spirits - visibility Best Popular Film Oscar subspecies hurt a financially successful prestigiousness   movie ’s hopes for Best Picture ? - and the specifics of the family , but this is how we expect to see it pan out . The Oscars basically offer studios the opportunity to head for the hills a good but not - typically - Oscar film , with the parameter made to give as much allowance to films likeGet OutorMad Max : Fury Road .

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Of course , none of this explain the decision to have a " Best Popular Film " category in the first place …

Oscars Best Picture and Most Popular Film

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Popular Film Oscar Ant-Man

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