Will the Oscars think about expanding Best Actor, Actress nominations to 7 or 10?
Posted: June 2025
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on June 24, 2009, that it was expanding the field of Best Picture Oscar nominations from 5 to 10, most people obviously got it wrong.
CNN reported that the move was “apparently aimed at bolstering sagging ratings for the Academy Awards broadcast.”
CNN quoted Steve Pond, an author who has written about the Academy Awards, as deciding, “This clearly is a reaction to declining ratings.”
Pond said that if “The Dark Knight” had simply received a Best Picture nomination for the prior year, there somehow “clearly would have been some kind of bump in the ratings.”
According to Nielsen, the highest-rated Oscars broadcast was 1998, when “Titanic” won Best Picture. It beat “As Good as It Gets,” “Good Will Hunting,” “L.A. Confidential” and “The Full Monty.”
Pond’s theory suggests that a movie like “Star Wars” would be golden for Oscars ratings. The 1978 show, per Nielsen, is the fourth-most-watched ever, but it trails 1983 (“Gandhi” prevailed in a field including “E.T.”) and 1980 (“Kramer vs. Kramer” won over “Apocalypse Now” and “Norma Rae.”)
Academy President Sid Ganis said at the news conference that it was decided that there were more than 5 worthy Best Picture nominees the previous year, and that doubling the amount of nominees would give comedies, international films and documentaries a better chance to win Best Picture.
Hmmmm, isn’t there a more important reason to the Academy? That doubling the Best Picture nominee field means about 15 more producers receive Oscar nominations each year than otherwise would.
Look no further than Steven Spielberg, a wonderful fellow and entertainer. He’s known as a director. He does have 9 Academy Award nominations for Best Director. But he suddenly has 13 Academy Award nominations for Best Picture.
Of those 13, the first 6 occurred in the first 35 years of his career. The last 7 have occurred since the Best Picture field was expanded, or only the last 16 years of his career.
On the other hand, as a director, a category that has held steady with 5 nominees, he has 6 nominations before 2010 and 3 afterwards, or close to the same percentages.
Nowhere in the CNN or Associated Press coverage of this expansion decision is it explained how a movie that is not among the top 5 nominees would figure to have any chance of actually winning the statue, given that the voting pool — the entire Academy (all branches) — is the same each time.
That argument lends credence to Pond’s theory that expanding Best Picture is only about goosing TV ratings. But if Pond’s logic were accurate, then surely by now, AMPAS already would’ve considered expanding the Best Actor and Best Actress fields.
To, who knows, maybe 7 nominees, or maybe 10.
Let’s hope they won’t.
Pond’s theory makes far more sense for the acting categories than the Best Picture category. Expanding the field means you could have Tom Cruise or Angelina or Brad Pitt or Gaga or Harrison or “Avengers” or “Harry Potter” or “Brady Bunch” actors nominated every year, and then they basically have to attend the ceremony (although in past decades, a lot of nominated actors often did not), and then, according to this curious conventional wisdom, more people will supposedly watch the all-important telecast.
The truth is that a few extra actors/actresses receiving an Oscar nomination each year matters far less to AMPAS than whether producers — the biggest movers and shakers in the industry — are able to beef up the résumés.
And the truth is that the Academy, to its credit, is more concerned about safeguarding the prestige of the Oscar than attempting dubious, unlikely-to-succeed gimmicks at boosting TV ratings. The ratings are irrelevant. The Oscars will forever be a trophy property. (That’s “trophy” in terms of being desirable, not “trophy” in terms of what’s being handed out at the show.) AMPAS does not want to turn the Oscar statue into what the Olympics have done with gold medals. Safeguarding the prestige of the Oscars means not only limiting the statues, but the nominations, which show up constantly in advertising and press releases and newspaper articles. A nomination is a big deal. Keeping it that way means not watering down the most important fields of film awards with floods of “contenders.”
So in conclusion ... it seems that, because of theories like Pond’s and because of possible future humdrum ratings and because of the constant tinkering that goes on with the Oscars telecast, AMPAS is bound to consider expanding actor nominations, if it hasn’t already. And it also seems like, because acting nominations don’t reverberate nearly as high up the Hollywood food chain as producer nominations do, AMPAS will arrive at the right decision and not expand the number of acting nominations.
And hopefully, at some point, re-invigorate the stature of best picture by limiting nominations to 5.
Stand up for fine art. Not phantom TV ratings.