The Academy has been under fire to make the Oscars more diverse for several years
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the people who run the Oscars, have announced that from 2024, film productions will need to meet certain diversity criteria in order to be nominated for the Best Picture award.
For the 2022 and 2023 awards, films with have to submit a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form to be considered for the top award.
The criteria will only affect nominations for the Best Picture Oscar, and entry to every other category will remain the same.)
The new rules will require the production to have requirements for underrepresented groups (including women, racial and ethnic groups, LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities) met in two of four set categories.
The four categories are:
A: On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives: A film will have to have at least one of its lead actors, or 30% of its supporting cast, from underrepresented groups, or a main storyline focused on those groups.
B: Creative Leadership and Project Teams: A film must have two people from underrepresented groups as leads of key departments, including casting directors, producers, writers and composers, or at least 30% of the film’s crew from underrepresented groups.
C: Industry Access and Opportunity: The film’s distribution or financing company must offer paid apprenticeship and training to underrepresented groups.
D: Audience Development: The film company must have senior executives from underrepresented groups in its marketing, publicity, and/or distribution teams.
The #OscarsSoWhite campaign started in 2015, when all the acting nominees and four of the five directing nominees where white (the same was also true about the 2016 Oscars ceremony as well).
The new Best Picture criteria is just the latest measure the Academy has introduced to address these issues.
In 2016, the A20202 Initiative was launched to double the number of women and people of colour amongst Oscar voters.
