So far, people have been focusing on the perverse incentives the award creates for Academy voters. But even more pernicious could be the incentives it creates for filmmakers and studios.<\/b>
\nThe votes are in, and the Oscar for Worst Idea goes to\u2026 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for its plan to add a new trophy for \u201coutstanding achievement in popular film.\u201d Like the Academy\u2019s 2009 decision to expand the roster of Best Picture nominees from five to 10\u2014a rule that was tweaked two years later, permitting between five and 10\u2014the move is universally seen as an effort to keep the Oscars \u201crelevant,\u201d especially with younger audiences.
The 2009 decision was generally viewed as a response to the failure of The Dark Knight and Wall-E to garner Best Picture nominations the previous year. This time, it seems a reaction to the broader phenomenon of falling ratings. As my colleague David Sims noted, ratings were way down this year, after dropping the year before as well. The underlying logic is the same as in 2009: When in doubt, get more blockbusters nominated. But the new category could create far more problems than it solves, and not merely the ones that have already been widely discussed.
The irony, of course, is despite these occasional bouts of \u201care we too artsy?\u201d self-flagellation, the Academy has always loved blockbusters. If one goes by the inflation-adjusted data provided by boxofficemojo.com, the nine top-grossing pictures of all time have all been nominated for Best Picture, and three ( Gone With the Wind, The Sound of Music, and Titanic) took home the statuette. Doing well at the box office has always given movies a huge boost in the Best Picture category, whether you\u2019re talking about surprise-success indies ( Slumdog Millionaire, Get Out) or over-achieving schmaltz-fests ( Forrest Gump, The Blind Side). The truly awful Avatar was considered an Oscar frontrunner through most of 2009, based principally on the fact that it probably made more money in its opening hour than most films make during their entire theatrical runs.
The Academy\u2019s creation of this wildly unnecessary new \u201cpopular film\u201d category has thus, inevitably, been met mostly with groans. The principal complaint has been that it will create perverse incentives for Academy voters as, arguably, have categories such as Best Animated Film and Best Foreign-Language Film. Though voters are allowed to nominate films both for Best Picture and these more narrow categories (also Best Documentary, although that rarely comes up), the idea is that the latter give voters an excuse not to vote for them for Best Picture at all. (See Wall-E .) If we\u2019d had this new \u201cpopular\u201d category back in 2016, for instance, would Mad Max: Fury Road have gotten its delightful Best Picture nod, or simply been relegated to the lesser category?
As David put it in his piece:
(David also said precisely what needs saying about the only slightly less disappointing decision to limit the length of the Oscar ceremony to three hours by handing out \u201csmaller\u201d awards during commercial breaks and then showing edited versions of the acceptance speeches.)
But I\u2019d like to suggest another downside to the new award that, while slightly more nebulous, could prove more pernicious still: its effect not on Academy voters, but on filmmakers themselves. Here\u2019s the thing: The director of an animated movie knows he or she is making an animated movie. Likewise, the director of a foreign-language film or a documentary. The categories aren\u2019t fungible in any meaningful sense. But whatever benchmark the Academy sets for a \u201cpopular film\u201d\u2014it hasn\u2019t yet announced its criteria\u2014it will be eminently fungible and, by definition, determined by audience response as much as directorial intent.
To put it another way: Christopher Nolan never asked himself, \u201cShould I do Dunkirk as an animated movie in order to increase my odds of winning an Oscar?\u201d Get Out \u2019s Jordan Peele never wondered whether he might be better positioned if he filmed his movie in French. But in the future, directors with movies such as theirs, which straddle the Best Film and Popular Film categories, will face just such decisions. If I\u2019m a long shot for Best Picture, maybe I should just dumb my movie down a little and aim for best popular film? There will be all kinds of new cinematic arithmetic in play. Which is worth more? A bit more highbrow critical praise or an extra $40 million at the box office? Is it more important that a movie be really good or really popular?
These sorts of calculations exist already, of course. But the Academy\u2019s new award will turbo-charge them. And that\u2019s to say nothing of the incentives that will emerge once the Academy announces its criteria for what makes a movie \u201cpopular.\u201d Say it\u2019s a threshold, as David suggests, of $100 million at the box office. Is the Academy really going to bar a movie that makes $98 million? $96 million? Will studios launch frantic last-minute PR campaigns to get their films over whatever arbitrary threshold the Academy sets? Stranger still, if a studio has what it believes to be a strong Best Picture contender, will it pull the PR plug early\u2014or even remove the movie from theaters\u2014to prevent it from potentially being ghettoized as a \u201cpopular\u201d film? We have already seen plenty of occasions in which studios have lobbied to put \u201clead\u201d acting performances into the \u201csupporting\u201d category, and vice versa, to improve their odds. This new trophy invites exactly the same kind of venue-shopping for \u201cbest\u201d and \u201cpopular\u201d Oscars.
I\u2019m not saying that all of these sorts of machinations will take place. But none strikes me as particularly improbable. And they seem like precisely the kind of unintended consequences that arise from poorly thought out, short-term responses to problems\u2014in this case, the Academy\u2019s perceived aversion to money-making films\u2014that don\u2019t actually exist.
The \u201cpopular film\u201d category will almost certainly prove to be a mistake\u2014and one that will probably be self-evident as soon as next year\u2019s voting gets underway. I\u2019d put the over-under on how long the category lasts, at least without significant revision, at three years.<\/p>\n

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