For Your Oscar Consideration: 254 Films
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences won’t have to sit through as many films as they did last year.
For 2003, 254 films are eligible for consideration in the Oscar race’s major categories, including best picture.
That’s 25 fewer films than were eligible last year, when 279 releases qualified for Oscar consideration.
However, this year’s 254 films is almost exactly the average number of films that the Academy has been asked to consider the previous four years.
In addition to 2002’s 279 qualifiers, 2001 saw 248 films make the grade, 2000 produced 242 pictures, and 1999 offered up 244 films — an average of 253 films per year over the four-year period.
The 5,803 voting members of the Academy were mailed a complete list of the 254 eligible films along with their nominating ballots Monday.
Academy rules state that to qualify for consideration, a feature-length motion picture must have a running length of more than 40 minutes and have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film or in a qualifying digital format.
The films must open in a commercial theater, for paid admission, in Los Angeles County between Jan. 1 and midnight Dec. 31 and run for seven consecutive days. Films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards in any category, which in the past has disqualified films that ran on TV first. Official screen-credits forms and copies of the main and end title credits must have been submitted to the Academy by Dec. 1.
Films submitted in the documentary, foreign-language, animated feature and short-film categories have different eligibility requirements and are viewed and selected by special voting panels of Academy members.
Nominations for the 76th Annual Academy Award will be announced Jan. 27 at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
The Oscar ceremonies will be held Feb. 29 at the Kodak Theater at Hollywood & Highland and televised live on ABC.
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