Oscar committee members ‘feel this is the end’ of the award show as smaller movies were nominated over hit box office films for best picture because of DEI requirements, according to an expert.
The 97th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater, but many viewers and even voters, who determine the nominations, are not too excited.
Emilia Perez, The Brutalist and Anora – are all up for the best picture, alongside Wicked, The Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two.
But, according to podcaster and author Raymond Arroyo, many in Hollywood are not too happy with the choices – including the 9,945 eligible voting members.
Arroyo also noted ‘boxes’ that have to be checked in order for films to be nominated for an Oscar.
‘One of these Oscar winners pointed out to me, he said, “You know, my film probably wouldn’t qualify for an Oscar now because there’s so many boxes you have to check,” many of them DEI-related,’ Arroyo told Fox News Digital.
He also said that The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ‘representation and inclusion standards’, first introduced at last year’s ceremony, have had an impact as well.
The academy now requires that for films to be considered for best picture, they have to meet two out of four possible categories, which focus on underrepresented groups, including racial and ethnic groups, women, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community.
Karla Sofía Gascón, one of the stars in Emilia Perez, became the first transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award
Oscar committee members ‘feel this is the end’ of the award show as smaller movies are leading over hit box office films for best picture because of DEI requirements. (Pictured: All the movies nominated for best picture this year)
Podcaster Raymond Arroyo said many in Hollywood are not too happy with the choices – including the 5,500 voting members. (Pictured: Arroyo in 2024)
Some voters are so fed up with this year’s choices that they’ve opted not to vote, Arroyo told the outlet.
‘So many Oscar voters have told me the Oscars jumped the shark. They feel this is the end of Oscars in some ways,’ he explained.
In terms of the requirements films have to have, Arroyo said: ‘You have to have so many nontraditional casting here and so many non-white people working on this part of the film.
‘So it’s an interesting thing that we’re seeing that I think is disqualifying to a lot of films that we’ll never hear of at the Oscars, because they just couldn’t check those boxes.
‘They didn’t have the creative staff or the casting that could accommodate them,’ he continued.
Those who did vote this year have been branded ‘out of touch’ by those in Hollywood, he added.
‘They are not taking into account popular tastes when making these choices,’ he said of the nominees.
‘And you have a group of people acting in isolation from their audience, which is a huge problem. When you claim to speak as the cultural mouthpiece and center of the country, it’s a huge problem. And I think many people in Hollywood are acknowledging it and realize maybe they’re out of touch, and maybe the Oscars aren’t what they used to be.’
Arroyo insisted that if the voters ‘were in touch with the average moviegoer,’ they would have nominated Deadpool & Wolverine.
Emilia Perez is up for 13 nominations for this year’s Oscars. (Pictured: Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón in the film)
Some voters are so fed up with this year’s choices that they’ve opted not to vote, Arroyo said. (Pictured: View of the arrival area ahead of Sunday’s ceremony)
Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo (pictured), scored 10 nominations this year
The movie was not nominated at all this year despite being the second-highest grossing film of 2024, making more than $1.3 billion.
The Brutalist and Wicked are up for 10 Oscar nominations, Emilia Perez with 13, and Anora with six.
Arroyo said that voters are now ‘reflecting an industry’ that’s ‘been so shattered.’
‘You know, it’s sort of what happened to us in television. You went from three channels to a cable universe. Now it’s the wild west of the internet and every streaming show you’re competing with.
‘The world is changing, and it’s changed a lot for people in the film industry. These streamers are taking over. But the collective audience doesn’t necessarily gather around it. So, we’re in a new day.
He continued: ‘And film is no longer the defining touchstone of the culture that it once was. And that’s what I got from these voters, an acknowledgment that the ground has shifted, and maybe it’s time for [the Oscars] to shift with it.’
The Brutalist is up for 10 Oscar nominations. (Pictured: Scene from the movie, starring Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones)
Anora was nominated in six categories this year. (Pictured: A scene from the movie, starring Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison)
In terms of the movies that were nominated, Arroyo said he doesn’t think many people even saw them.
‘I think most people haven’t seen any of these movies to be excited about them,’ Arroyo said, referring to Emilia Perez, The Brutalist and Anora.
‘Wicked’s really the only movie that’s been a box office success that’s nominated for best picture. All these other films, they’re small arthouse movies at best,’ he added.
He also mentioned that the ratings the show gets on Sunday could also shakeup the future of the ceremony – hosted by Conan O’Brien.
‘They’ll bump up and down, depending if there’s a big movie that year. But this year you get the feeling, aside from Wicked, there was really nothing that captured the zeitgeist or that people were really inspired by or moved by or even went in droves to,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure if it has that same power any longer, given the rules, given the times, and given the isolation that the Academy works in.’
Arroyo also mentioned that the ratings the show gets on Sunday could also shakeup the future of the ceremony – hosted by Conan O’Brien (pictured holding an Oscar)
The 2024 award show drew 19.5 million viewers, up four percent more than in 2023, according to Variety. Those numbers reflected the 18-49-year-old demographic.
Overall, Arroyo said that he hopes the Oscars will ‘broaden’ and become ‘a little more Democratic’ in order for the audience to have a ‘voice.’
Drama has already shaken up the ceremony as Gascón continued her disappearing act when she skipped out on the star-studded Oscar nominees dinner on Tuesday evening.
The 52-year-old disgraced actress has been absent from awards-season events in recent weeks after racist and Islamophobic tweets — some quite recent — were discovered on her public account on X (formerly Twitter).
Her absence meant that she was missing from the official photo of the 2025 Oscar nominees class, which featured A-list stars including Wicked nominees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, Demi Moore, Timothée Chalamet, Mikey Madison, Sebastian Stan and many more.
Despite skipping the event, a source previously told People that Gascón still intends to attend the Oscars.
Gascón stars in Emilia Pérez as the title character, a transgender woman who once lived as a male drug lord in Mexico before faking her death and reinventing herself.
The film’s chances were thrown into jeopardy when Gascón’s old tweets were discovered. They included posts criticizing George Floyd that observers described as racist, along with anti-Muslim posts and tweets attacking the entire concept of diversity.
Gascón deleted her X account once the public posts received notice, but she didn’t help her case much with subsequent interviews featuring half-hearted apologies and denials that her posts were racist.
After Audiard appeared to criticize her in an interview for the film’s PR campaign, she wrote in an Instagram post from February 6 that she hoped her ‘silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, a beautiful ode to love and difference.
‘I sincerely apologize to everyone who has been hurt along the way,’ she added.
