[Movies] Academy Reconsidering Best Original Song Oscar Nomination Process

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 02.09.2012

After they angered everyone...

Following an uproar over only two songs getting nominated for Best Original Song this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences say they are going to take a good, long look at their nomination process. The current method involves a point process, with a up to five songs that get an 8.5 average getting nomination. This year it resulted in only "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets and "Real in Rio" from Rio earning nominations.

Bruce Broughton, the Academy Music Branch Governor, said, "There were angry members that I spoke to, sure. And I can understand people getting ticked off, especially songwriters. Some people have said, 'Oh, you blew it this year.' I don't know. Maybe we blew it. Maybe we didn't. As soon as the Oscars are over, we're going to look at it."

He noted that the point was to ensure quality, saying, "The intent of the [point] rule, whether or not it worked out this way, is to raise the level of quality in the song nominations. We talked about it last year, and asked, do we want to keep that system, knowing that there could have been no nominations? And we voted to keep it this way. I can promise you that we're going to take a hard look at the point system. We're going to try to see if we can get the rules to do what we hoped they would do: raise the quality of the nominated songs, so we can stand back proudly and look at our nominees."