How Awards Season Really Works: From Screeners to Statuettes
A contender's year runs on a fixed calendar: festivals, guilds, two rounds of Academy voting, and one envelope.
Awards
Awards follows the season end to end: fall festival launches, campaign budgets, screening circuits, guild precursors, branch voting rules and the preferential ballot math deciding Best Picture. Predictions get argued rather than asserted. Written for voters, publicists and viewers who treat the race as a competitive event.
The full awards run: fall festival launches, campaign spending, guild precursors, branch voting rules and the arithmetic of a preferential final ballot.
Major Acting Awards Explained: Who Votes, Who's Eligible and What Each Trophy Means for a Career
The Oscar, the Emmy, the SAG Award and the rest are decided by very different voting bodies, and the differences shape which wins move careers.
Why the Producers Guild Uses Preferential Ballots Too, and What Its Rare Best Picture Tie Means
The PGA votes the way the Academy does, and when its top two finish dead even, the season's Best Picture race is officially a split field.
Why the SAG Awards Acting Winners So Often Repeat at the Oscars
The industry's biggest actors' group votes early, and its picks have a habit of showing up again on Oscar night.
Lynette Howell Taylor Re-Elected Academy President by Board of Governors
The Oscar-nominated producer keeps the top job at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after a vote of the Board of Governors.
How the Best Picture Preferential Ballot Works, and Why It Rewards Admiration
Since the field expanded, the Academy's ranked-choice count has favored the film fewest voters dislike — a different contest from most votes.