Academy Award for Best Picture

The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (also known as Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.
The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception. There have been 611 films nominated for Best Picture and 97 winners.
At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929 (for films made in 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the night: "Outstanding Picture" and "Unique and Artistic Picture", the former being won by the war epic Wings, and the latter by the art film Sunrise. Each award was intended to honor different and equally important aspects of superior filmmaking. In particular, The Jazz Singer was disqualified from both awards, since its use of synchronized sound made the film a sui generis item that would have unfairly competed against either category, and the Academy granted the film an honorary award instead.
The following year, the Academy dropped the Unique and Artistic Picture award, deciding retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor that could be awarded, and allowed synchronized sound films to compete for the award. Although the award kept the title Outstanding Picture for the next ceremony, the name underwent several changes over the years, as seen below. Since 1962, the award has been simply called Best Picture.
Until 1950, this award was presented to a representative of the production company. That year the protocol was changed so that the award was presented to all credited producers. This rule was modified in 1999 to apply a maximum limit of three producers receiving the award, after the five producers of Shakespeare in Love had received the award.
As of 2020, the "Special Rules for the Best Picture of the Year Award" limit recipients to those who meet two main requirements:
The rules allow a bona fide team of not more than two people to be considered a single "producer" if the two individuals have had an established producing partnership as determined by the Producers Guild of America Producing Partnership Panel. Final determination of the qualifying producer nominees for each nominated picture will be made by the Producers Branch Executive Committee, including the right to name any additional qualified producer as a nominee.
The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously included among the four producers nominated for The Reader. As of 2014 the Producers Branch Executive Committee determines such exceptions, noting they take place only in "rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."
Steven Spielberg currently holds the record for most nominations at thirteen, winning one, while Kathleen Kennedy holds the record for most nominations without a win at eight. Sam Spiegel and Saul Zaentz tie for the most wins with three each. During the time when the Oscar was given to production companies instead, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer received the most, with five wins and 40 nominations.
The Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director have been closely linked throughout their history. Of the 97 films that have won Best Picture, 70 have also been awarded Best Director. Only six films have been awarded Best Picture without receiving a Best Director nomination: Wings directed by William A. Wellman (1927/28), Grand Hotel directed by Edmund Goulding (1931/32), Driving Miss Daisy directed by Bruce Beresford (1989), Argo directed by Ben Affleck (2012), Green Book directed by Peter Farrelly (2018), and CODA directed by Sian Heder (2021). The only two Best Director winners to win for films that did not receive a Best Picture nomination were during the early years of the awards: Lewis Milestone for Two Arabian Knights (1927/28), and Frank Lloyd for The Divine Lady (1928/29).
On June 24, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that the number of films to be nominated in the Best Picture award category would increase from 5 to 10, starting with the 82nd Academy Awards (2009). Although the Academy never officially said so, many commenters noted the expansion was likely in part a response to public criticism of The Dark Knight and WALL-E (both 2008) (and, in previous years, other blockbusters and popular films) not being nominated for Best Picture. Officially, the Academy said the rule change was a throwback to the Academy's early years in the 1930s and 1940s, when 8 to 12 films were nominated each year. "Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," AMPAS President Sid Ganis said in a press conference. "I can't wait to see what that list of 10 looks like when the nominees are announced in February."
At the same time, the voting system was switched from first-past-the-post to instant runoff voting (also known as preferential voting). In 2011, the Academy revised the rule again so that the number of films nominated was between 5 and 10; nominated films must earn either 5% of first-place rankings or 5% after an abbreviated variation of the single transferable vote nominating process. Bruce Davis, the Academy executive director at the time, said, "A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn't feel an obligation to round out the number." This system lasted until 2021, when the Academy reverted back to a set number of ten nominees from the 94th Academy Awards onward.
Nineteen non-English language films have been nominated in the category: La Grande Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and Whispers (Swedish, 1973); The Postman (Il Postino) (Italian/Spanish, 1995); Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin Chinese, 2000); Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006, but ineligible for Best Foreign Language Film because it was an American production); Amour (French, 2012); Roma (Spanish/Mixtec, 2018); Parasite (Korean, 2019); Minari (Korean, 2020, but ineligible for Best International Feature Film because it was an American production); Drive My Car (Japanese/Korean/Mandarin Chinese/German/Korean Sign Language, 2021), All Quiet on the Western Front (German, 2022), Anatomy of a Fall (French, 2023), Past Lives (Korean, 2023, but ineligible for Best International Feature Film because it was an American production), The Zone of Interest (German/Polish/Yiddish, 2023), Emilia Pérez (Spanish, 2024), and I'm Still Here (Portuguese, 2024). Parasite became the first film not in English to win Best Picture.
Ten films wholly financed outside the United States have won Best Picture, eight of which were financed, in part or in whole, by the United Kingdom: Hamlet (1948), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and The King's Speech (2010). The ninth film, The Artist (2011), was financed in France, and the tenth film, Parasite (2019), was financed in South Korea.
Since 1968, most Best Picture winners have been rated R under the Motion Picture Association's rating system. Oliver! is the only G-rated film and Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film (what is categorized as an NC-17 film today), so far, to win Best Picture; they won in back-to-back years, 1968 and 1969. The latter has since been changed to an R rating. Eleven films have won with a PG rating: the first was Patton (1970) and the most recent was Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Eleven more films have won with a PG-13 rating (which was introduced in 1984): the first was The Last Emperor (1987) and the most recent was CODA (2021). For unrated films, A Room with a View (1985) is the first film to not be rated by the MPA and be nominated Best Picture, though no unrated films have won Best Picture.
Three animated films have been nominated for Best Picture: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010). The latter two were nominated after the Academy expanded the number of nominees, but none have won.
No comic book film has won, although three have been nominated: Skippy (1931), Black Panther (2018), and Joker (2019).
Two fantasy films have won: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Shape of Water (2017), although more have been nominated.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is the only horror film to win Best Picture. Six others have been nominated: The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Sixth Sense (1999), Black Swan (2010), Get Out (2017), and The Substance (2024).
Several science-fiction films have been nominated for Best Picture, though Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) was the first one to win.
Titanic (1997) is the only disaster film to win Best Picture, though other such films have been nominated, including Airport (1970) and The Towering Inferno (1974).
No documentary has been nominated for Best Picture, although Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness was nominated in the Unique and Artistic Picture category at the 1927/28 awards. A Best Documentary Feature category was introduced in 1941.
Several musical adaptations based on material previously filmed in non-musical form have won Best Picture, including Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver!, and Chicago.
Several epics or historical epic films have won Best Picture, including the first recipient Wings. Others include Cimarron, Cavalcade, Gone with the Wind, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Gandhi, The Last Emperor, Dances With Wolves, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Oppenheimer.
Ten films that were presented as direct sequels have been nominated for Best Picture: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945; the sequel to the 1944 winner, Going My Way), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Godfather Part III (1990), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and Dune: Part Two (2024).
Toy Story 3, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Top Gun: Maverick are the only sequels to be nominated without any predecessors being nominated. The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are the only sequels to have won the award, and their respective trilogies are the only series to have three films nominated. The Godfather series is the only film series with multiple Best Picture winners, with the first film winning the award for 1972 and the second film winning the award for 1974.
Another nominee, Broadway Melody of 1936, was a follow-up of sorts to previous winner The Broadway Melody, but beyond the title and some music, the two films have mutually independent stories. The Silence of the Lambs was adapted from the sequel novel to Red Dragon. The latter had been adapted for film as Manhunter by a different studio, and the two films have different casts and creative teams and were not presented as a series. Conversely, 2024's Wicked uses iconography and characters who appeared in 1939's The Wizard of Oz and other Oz films, but is not a direct prequel to any film.
The Lion in Winter features Peter O'Toole as King Henry II, a role he had played previously in the film Becket, but The Lion in Winter is not a sequel to Becket. Similarly, The Queen features Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, a role he had played previously in the television film The Deal. Christine Langan, producer of both productions, described The Queen as not being a direct sequel, only that it reunited the same creative team.
Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was a companion piece to his film Flags of Our Fathers that was released earlier the same year. These two films depict the same battle from the different viewpoints of Japanese and United States military forces; the two films were shot back-to-back.
In addition, Black Panther is a continuation of the events that occurred in Captain America: Civil War and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Along similar lines to sequels, there have been few nominees and winners that are either remakes or adaptations of the same source materials or subjects.
Ben-Hur, which won Best Picture of 1959, is a remake of the 1925 silent film with a similar title and both were adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The Departed, which won Best Picture of 2006, is a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and is the first remake of a non-English language or international film to win.
Other nominees include 1963's Cleopatra about the titular last queen of Egypt following the 1934 version, 2018's A Star is Born following the 1937 film of the same name, and 2019's Little Women following the 1933 film of the same name with both being adaptations of the 1868 novel. True Grit, which was nominated for Best Picture at the 83rd Academy Awards, is the second adaptation of Charles Portis's 1968 novel following the 1969 film of the same name.
Four of the nominees for the 94th ceremony were based on source material previously made into films: CODA, Dune, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story. The 2021 version of West Side Story became the second adaptation of the same source material for a previous Best Picture winner to be nominated for the same award after 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty. For that same ceremony, CODA became the second remake of a non-English-language or international film to win.
The 2022 German-language All Quiet on the Western Front is the second adaptation of the 1929 novel after the 1930 English-language film, and the third adaptation of the same source material of a previous Best Picture winner.
At the 1st Academy Awards, the Best Picture award (then named "Academy Award for Outstanding Picture") was presented to the 1927 silent film Wings.
The Artist (2011) was the first essentially silent (with the exception of a single scene of dialogue, and a dream sequence with sound effects) film since Wings to win Best Picture. It was the first silent nominee since 1928's The Patriot and the first Best Picture winner to be produced entirely in black-and-white since 1960's The Apartment. (Schindler's List, the 1993 winner, was predominantly black-and-white but contains some color sequences.)
No Best Picture winner has been lost, though a few such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Lawrence of Arabia exist only in a form altered from their original, award-winning release form. This has usually been due to editing for reissue (and subsequently partly restored by archivists). Other winners and nominees, such as Tom Jones (prior to its 2018 reissues by The Criterion Collection and the British Film Institute) and Star Wars, are widely available only in subsequently altered versions. The Broadway Melody originally had some sequences photographed in two-color Technicolor. This footage survives only in black and white.
The 1928 film The Patriot is the only Best Picture nominee that is lost (about one-third is extant). The Racket, also from 1928, was believed lost for many years until a print was found in Howard Hughes' archives. It has since been restored and shown on Turner Classic Movies. The only surviving complete prints of 1931's East Lynne and 1934's The White Parade exist within the UCLA film archive.
The Academy has established a set of "representation and inclusion standards", called Academy Aperture 2025, which a film will be required to satisfy in order to compete in the Best Picture category, starting with the 96th Academy Awards for films released in 2023. There are four general standards, of which a film must satisfy two to be considered for Best Picture: (a) on-screen representation, themes and narratives; (b) creative leadership and project team; (c) industry access and opportunities; and (d) audience development. As explained by Vox, the standards "basically break down into two big buckets: standards promoting more inclusive representation and standards promoting more inclusive employment". The standards are intended to provide greater opportunities for employment, in cast, crew, studio apprenticeships and internships, and development, marketing, publicity, and distribution executives, among underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, women, LGBTQ+ people, and persons with cognitive or physical disabilities (not counting developmental disabilities like the autism spectrum), or who are deaf or hard of hearing.
For the 94th and 95th Academy Awards (films released in 2021 and 2022), filmmakers were required to submit a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form to be considered for Best Picture but were not required to fulfill the standards. These standards will only apply to the Best Picture category and do not affect a film's eligibility in other Oscar categories.
At the 89th Academy Awards on February 26, 2017, presenter Faye Dunaway read La La Land as the winner of the award. However, she and Warren Beatty had mistakenly been given the duplicate envelope for the "Best Actress in a Leading Role" award, which Emma Stone had won for her role in La La Land. While accepting the award, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, who was given the correct envelope, realized the mistake and announced that Moonlight had won the award.
Many film historians believe that High Noon lost out to The Greatest Show on Earth due to the initial release of High Noon showing a panoramic view of modern downtown Los Angeles. Retrospectively, The Greatest Show on Earth has been considered by some to be one of the worst Best Picture winners in history.
In general, the awardees of that category have been criticized for disproportionately recognizing films about white men over those of women or non-white people.
In opposition, the Academy's decision to favored Best Picture winning films with depiction of race relations among people of color (most primarily Driving Miss Daisy, Crash and Green Book) was heavily criticized; all winners labeled are directed by white filmmakers. This led to significant backlash over racism against the Academy.
In 2005, Brokeback Mountain losing the Best Picture to Crash was heavily criticized, with some critics such as Kenneth Turan accusing the Academy members of homophobia and benefitting from making a non-groundbreaking choice in Crash, considered as one of the most notable Oscars upsets. After announcing the award, presenter Jack Nicholson was caught on camera mouthing the word "whoa" out of apparent surprise at the result. The film's use of moral quandary as a storytelling medium was widely reported as ironic since many saw it as the "safe" alternative to Brokeback Mountain, which is about a gay relationship (the other nominees, Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, and Munich also tackle heavy subjects of McCarthyism, homosexuality, and terrorism).
Though there have been exceptions like Barry Jenkins's Moonlight, films like Precious and Get Out have been seen as potentially being shut out of the Best Picture race because of older and white Academy voters choosing not to see them. From 2018 onwards, the Academy made an effort to add more younger, female, non-white and non-American voters, and to create a non-voting "emeritus" status for people who had not worked in the film industry after a certain length of time, in order to diversify and rejuvenate their voter bloc.
Saving Private Ryan was immediately pegged as a favorite for the category by many members and fans of Spielberg's films, but it lost to Shakespeare in Love. The Academy's decision was widely criticized. The choice was seen as one of the biggest upsets in the awards history, and led to DreamWorks executives (including Terry Press) and many industry pundits accusing Miramax and one of the Shakespeare in Love producers, Harvey Weinstein, of winning due to their award campaign's negative messaging against Saving Private Ryan rather than their own film's merits. Press stated that Weinstein and Miramax "tried to get everybody to believe that Saving Private Ryan was all in the first 15 minutes".
The category of Best Animated Feature was created for the 74th Academy Awards to ensure the recognition of animated films; prior to its creation, the only animated film ever nominated for Best Picture was 1991's Beauty and the Beast. However, the award has since received criticism on the grounds that it discourages animated films from being eligible to win Best Picture. While the Academy rules allow for a film to be nominated in both categories, only two animated films (Up and Toy Story 3) have been nominated for Best Picture since the creation of the two categories.
A prominent example was the 2001 film Shrek; Dreamworks and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg campaigned heavily for the film to be awarded Best Picture, but it was not nominated in the category despite receiving nominations for a Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, PGA Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture, BAFTA Award for Best Film, and Critics' Choice Awards for Best Picture (and was the first animated film nominated in the latter three categories). Similarly, the 2008 film WALL-E received many accolades and garnered speculation that it might be nominated for Best Picture, but it was instead nominated for six categories, tying with Beauty and the Beast as the most nominated animated films in Oscar history, and won the award for Best Animated Feature Film. Other animated films that garnered Best Picture speculation but were ultimately not nominated include Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, The Boy and the Heron, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with the former two films winning Best Animated Feature Film at back-to-back ceremonies.
Critics and audiences criticized Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close's nomination for Best Picture, with some calling the film one of the worst Best Picture nominees ever. Chris Krapek of The Huffington Post wrote very negatively about the film's nomination, calling the film "not only the worst reviewed Best Picture nominee of the last 10 years, [but] easily the worst film of 2011". Paste Magazine's Adam Vitcavage called the film's consensus for a Best Picture nominee "certainly the worst for at least 28 years", and David Gritten of The Telegraph called the nomination "mysterious".
The nomination of Emilia Pérez for Best Picture, among other categories, was heavily criticized. The main causes for criticism was that the film's trans representation was stereotypical and backwards, and its portrayal of Mexican culture being inaccurate, along with director Jacques Audiard's comments about the Spanish language being "a language of developing countries, it's a language of countries of few means, of poor people, of migrants."
Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the titular role, accused the team of fellow Best Picture nominee I'm Still Here (as well as its lead, fellow Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres) to run a smear campaign against her and Emilia Pérez, which is explicitly against AMPAS' rules of campaigning. The accusations were found to be baseless and itself perceived as an attempt to smear Torres' and I'm Still Here's reputation. As attention grew around Gascón, a series of tweets in which she made several bigoted comments, of racist and Islamophobic nature, were unearthed by Canadian journalist Sarah Hagi. The majority of Oscar pundits agreed that they marked the end of Emilia Pérez's, the year's most nominated picture, chances of winning Best Picture.
In the list below, winners are listed first in the gold row, followed by the other nominees. Except for the early years (when the Academy used a non-calendar year), the year shown is the one in which the film first premiered in Los Angeles County, California; normally this is also the year of first release, but it may be the year after first release (as with Casablanca and, if the film-festival premiere is considered, Crash and The Hurt Locker). This is also the year before the ceremony at which the award is given; for example, a film exhibited theatrically during 2005 was eligible for consideration for the 2005 Best Picture Oscar, awarded in 2006. The number of the ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony. Each individual entry shows the title followed by nominee.
Until 1950, the Best Picture award was given to the production company; from 1951 on, it has gone to the producer or producers. The Academy used the producer credits of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) until 1998, when all five producers of Shakespeare in Love made speeches after its win. A three-producer limit has been applied some years since. There was controversy over the exclusion of some PGA-credited producers of Crash and Little Miss Sunshine. The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously among the four nominated for The Reader. However, now any number of producers on a film can be nominated for Best Picture, should they be deemed eligible.
For the first ceremony, three films were nominated for the award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945, it was further reduced to five. This number remained until 2009, when the limit was raised to ten; it was adjusted from 2011 to 2020 to vary between five and ten, but has been a full ten since 2022.
For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. For example, the 2nd Academy Awards presented on April 3, 1930, recognized films that were released between August 1, 1928, and July 31, 1929. Starting with the 7th Academy Awards, held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31. This has been the rule every year since except 2020, when the end date was extended to February 28, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2021, which was correspondingly limited to March 1 to December 31.
Since 2023, the category's winners and nominees from the 1927/28 and 1928/29 ceremonies have entered the public domain.
Columbia Pictures and United Artists have the most wins with 12, while 20th Century Studios has the most nominations with 64.