A crowd of the most established artists of the modern era sit in the Dolby Theater, right in the heart of Hollywood. A host stands on stage with an envelope, and everyone in the crowd shudders with anticipation as the fateful words are said.
“And the Oscar goes to…”
In that moment, nothing else exists. It’s the artists alone with the art they’ve brought into the world.
That art deserves recognition, and it gets it in the form of the annual Academy Awards. On Apr. 21, 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new rules and regulations for the upcoming 98th Oscars.
The first and most well-known change had to do not with the films nominated, but with the people voting for them. It is now required for Academy voters to watch every nominated film in order to be eligible to vote.
This rule sparked controversy and discussion, as many people thought this was already a rule. In fact, the absence of this rule was highly controversial last year, as voters came forward to admit that they hadn’t seen Oscar frontrunner “Dune: Part Two” due to its length.
Even with the rule in place, many Oscar voters are finding loopholes to avoid watching all the movies. Many admit to pressing play on the movie and then doing something else, effectively tricking the verification app they use into thinking they had seen the whole thing.
However, it might be important to look at the screen for the new category the Academy is adding for the 98th ceremony, Achievement in Casting. This new award recognizes the casting directors behind the scenes, and the rules for the category have now been codified.
Achievement in Casting will make use of a shortlist, a technique used by many technical awards to narrow down the competitors to 10 movies before the final nominations. The Casting Director’s Branch will then host presentations and interviews with each shortlisted director to determine the final five nominees.
The Achievement in Casting category isn’t the only one introducing a shortlist, as the Best Cinematography award will also release a shortlist beginning this year. The shortlist will consist of 10 to 20 movies, all competing for the 5 nominations.
In other news, the Academy introduced an official stance on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in nominated films. Using AI will neither harm nor help the chances of a movie to be nominated, but the “degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship” will be taken into consideration.
This comes on the heels of major AI controversies last year, with highly nominated films “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Perez” and “A Complete Unknown” making use of AI technology to enhance certain parts of the movies. The Academy put into place rules requiring films to disclose their use of AI, and now these rules further clarify how the Academy deals with this new technology.
Lastly, the wording for the Best International Feature has been updated to allow submissions to be from a country in which the filmmaker has asylum seeker status. This may allow for more submissions like “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which was submitted as Germany’s entry to the category because director Mohammad Rasoulof was forced to flee his home country, Iran, due to the movie.
The Academy’s rules change every year to reflect the current climate of the entertainment industry and to properly recognize the greatest achievements in filmmaking. These changes are another step in the direction of recognizing the beautiful world of film.
