Oscars adds new category: Best Casting

[Mister Mets]

The Academy Awards have announced a new category for 2026: Best Casting. This will take effect for films made in 2025.

https://variety.com/2024/film/awards...ry-1235902419/

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a pleasant surprise Thursday morning by creating a new competitive Oscar category for best achievement in casting. It will begin at the 98th annual ceremony for films released in 2025.

This is the first new category created by the Academy since 2001 for best animated feature film. The Casting Directors Branch was formed in July 2013 and has nearly 160 members.

“Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang. “We congratulate our Casting Directors Branch members on this exciting milestone and their commitment and diligence throughout this process.”

It makes sense as something that will get more interest than Best Sound Mixing or Best Short Documentary, and it will also help the Academy's stated purpose of educating people about the film industry.

I suspect it will mainly go towards prestige pictures with large casts. If it was a category this year, I suspect the selections would be Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, American Fiction and Poor Things (with Anatomy of a Fall as a spoiler.) It seems like it'll go to the Best Picture films with the largest cast.

In theory, this could go towards films like Saltburn or May November, which didn't get much Oscar love.

It'd be cool if they introduced the category by allowing people to vote on all-time favorite casting, so you could have a competition with the likes of Casablanca, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars and Gone With the Wind.

The one new category I would have preferred they introduce would be something like Best Collaborative Performance, where one individual isn't responsible for the performance. This would go to CGI creations, characters in animated movies, animal performances and related characters who are clearly the work of multiple individuals. This year's nominees might be the dog in Anatomy of a Fall, Oscar Issac's Miguel O'Hara in Across the Spider-Verse, Bradley Cooper and co's Rocket Racoon in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Godzilla in Godzilla: Minus One and the best performance from The Boy and the Heron- although that immediately gets messy since there are dubbed and subtitled versions.

[Username taken]

Interesting, I wonder what the criteria will be for measuring the best casting.

Is it the casting process? Is it the performance?

[amerigo178]

This sounds like a participation trophy to me Might as well just give everyone in industry an award Soon have award for best catering on a movie set Doesn’t diminish the other awards

[Frobisher]

It’s good that they’re announcing it for next year so the studios know to try and do good casting in advance.