Shouldn’t the Oscars Have Happened by Now?
Social media loves an anniversary, and, earlier today, I kept seeing commemorations of something that happened exactly 12 years ago: The “Oscar selfie” featuring host Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts and all the rest was snapped on March 2. Now, this may sound somewhat strange, given that, here in 2026, the Oscars have not yet happened — and will not for another two weeks. That lateness is presenting a major problem for the ceremony. By the time they stagger onto ABC on March 15, the Oscars may feel like old news.
Why is this happening? In the 1960s, the Oscars were traditionally held in April, but that was when movies rolled out far more gradually, rather than hitting theaters all at once and leaving relatively quickly. They shifted back to late March by the 1990s, then skittered to late February (meaning that they’d already have happened by now) for the 2004 ceremony where “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” swept the night, as seen by 44 million viewers. Since then, every four years, the ceremony’s shifted slightly to avoid competing with the Olympics (as they did in the Ellen selfie year), but this shift feels over-the-top. The Games will have been over for three weeks by the time “Hamnet” star Jessie Buckley (probably) takes the stage. That’s three weeks during which the audience can grow still more tired of hearing about the same small set of movies.
After all, March 15 is an artificially late date to finally be honoring films that first got seen last August, at Venice, or May, at Cannes, or April, when contender “Sinners” hit theaters 11 months ago. And given how top-heavy the awards have been of late — with the 10 Best Picture nominees consuming most of the nominations across the board — there hasn’t been a ton to discuss. Everyone knows by now where they stand on “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Frankenstein” and “Marty Supreme,” and inasmuch as the conversation around these movies has recently grown rancorous (as with the ongoing fallout from an unfortunate Tourette’s outburst at the BAFTAs), it’s been given nothing but time and space to do so by the Academy.
The argument for moving the ceremony up to February, back in the 2000s, was to preserve the prestige and exclusivity of the Oscars. Back then, a representative of the Academy told the New York Times that it was a challenge to keep audiences engaged after a three-month awards campaign: “So the thought is that if you could move the show a little closer to the year that it is actually honoring, that might make things feel a little fresher in a lot of people’s minds.”
The clock got reset with the COVID Oscars, the ones held in a train station in late April 2021, and since then they’ve skittered around the month of March seemingly at random. I’d have advocated for treating 2021 as a one-time oddity and planting the flag back in February; why the Academy took a lesson that anything from that ceremony ought to be emulated is anybody’s guess. Are the Oscars more-watched today than they were before the ceremony shifted to February in the early 2000s? (Take a wild guess.) And are movies more or less central to the culture than they were back then? Asking audiences to hold in their mind a set of films that have long since moved onto PVOD and streaming deep into the third month of the new year is a choice that cuts against every trend in entertainment and culture.
The nominees have been everywhere — and it’s fair to worry that audiences may tire of them. (I’d argue that the long march to Oscar has dinged the public image and reputation of Timothée Chalamet, who — as a nominee who just anchored a box-office hit with “Marty Supreme” — would seem to have everything going for him, but who needs to be allowed some time out of the public eye after this is over.) The talent themselves certainly seem tired of the circus, or at least eager to return to the business of being an actor by the end of February. By the time she won her second Oscar on March 10, 2023, for instance, Emma Stone had completely lost her voice, and delivered a heartfelt but ragged and hoarse speech. This cycle, Leonardo DiCaprio, who had campaigned avidly for “One Battle After Another” earlier in the season, was conspicuous in his absence at the renamed Actor Awards March 1. The risk for the Academy is that viewers, in the end, may be the ones tuning out.
There is an argument to be made that, for true awards heads, the long run at least generates suspense. The currently unfolding race seems notably unsettled in three of four acting races, in stark contrast to relatively recent years where winners have enjoyed uninterrupted precursor streaks up until they got handed an Oscar in February. And perhaps having so much time to consider the slate of nominations allows for second thoughts (as may or may not be happening with Chalamet) or for seemingly quieter personal campaigns (this year, Amy Madigan, Wagner Moura and Delroy Lindo come to mind) to press their case in the home stretch.
But there’s no obvious reason why that’d be so. The biggest Oscar stunner this side of Olivia Colman’s win happened after a campaign whose brevity gave the campaign a fast-paced, riotous energy: “Parasite” won its Best Picture Oscar on February 9, 2020; the show had been moved even earlier, because the Academy perceived that audiences were too weary of awards season even to wait until late February. Those who recall the year 2020 will understand that, had the Oscars been held until mid-March of that year, they’d never have happened; the “Parasite” cast and crew, along with the rest of the world, would have been quarantining. Perhaps the Academy should heed the message, and put on a show before the audience decides to stay home.
Why is this happening? In the 1960s, the Oscars were traditionally held in April, but that was when movies rolled out far more gradually, rather than hitting theaters all at once and leaving relatively quickly. They shifted back to late March by the 1990s, then skittered to late February (meaning that they’d already have happened by now) for the 2004 ceremony where “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” swept the night, as seen by 44 million viewers. Since then, every four years, the ceremony’s shifted slightly to avoid competing with the Olympics (as they did in the Ellen selfie year), but this shift feels over-the-top. The Games will have been over for three weeks by the time “Hamnet” star Jessie Buckley (probably) takes the stage. That’s three weeks during which the audience can grow still more tired of hearing about the same small set of movies.
After all, March 15 is an artificially late date to finally be honoring films that first got seen last August, at Venice, or May, at Cannes, or April, when contender “Sinners” hit theaters 11 months ago. And given how top-heavy the awards have been of late — with the 10 Best Picture nominees consuming most of the nominations across the board — there hasn’t been a ton to discuss. Everyone knows by now where they stand on “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Frankenstein” and “Marty Supreme,” and inasmuch as the conversation around these movies has recently grown rancorous (as with the ongoing fallout from an unfortunate Tourette’s outburst at the BAFTAs), it’s been given nothing but time and space to do so by the Academy.
The argument for moving the ceremony up to February, back in the 2000s, was to preserve the prestige and exclusivity of the Oscars. Back then, a representative of the Academy told the New York Times that it was a challenge to keep audiences engaged after a three-month awards campaign: “So the thought is that if you could move the show a little closer to the year that it is actually honoring, that might make things feel a little fresher in a lot of people’s minds.”
The clock got reset with the COVID Oscars, the ones held in a train station in late April 2021, and since then they’ve skittered around the month of March seemingly at random. I’d have advocated for treating 2021 as a one-time oddity and planting the flag back in February; why the Academy took a lesson that anything from that ceremony ought to be emulated is anybody’s guess. Are the Oscars more-watched today than they were before the ceremony shifted to February in the early 2000s? (Take a wild guess.) And are movies more or less central to the culture than they were back then? Asking audiences to hold in their mind a set of films that have long since moved onto PVOD and streaming deep into the third month of the new year is a choice that cuts against every trend in entertainment and culture.
The nominees have been everywhere — and it’s fair to worry that audiences may tire of them. (I’d argue that the long march to Oscar has dinged the public image and reputation of Timothée Chalamet, who — as a nominee who just anchored a box-office hit with “Marty Supreme” — would seem to have everything going for him, but who needs to be allowed some time out of the public eye after this is over.) The talent themselves certainly seem tired of the circus, or at least eager to return to the business of being an actor by the end of February. By the time she won her second Oscar on March 10, 2023, for instance, Emma Stone had completely lost her voice, and delivered a heartfelt but ragged and hoarse speech. This cycle, Leonardo DiCaprio, who had campaigned avidly for “One Battle After Another” earlier in the season, was conspicuous in his absence at the renamed Actor Awards March 1. The risk for the Academy is that viewers, in the end, may be the ones tuning out.
There is an argument to be made that, for true awards heads, the long run at least generates suspense. The currently unfolding race seems notably unsettled in three of four acting races, in stark contrast to relatively recent years where winners have enjoyed uninterrupted precursor streaks up until they got handed an Oscar in February. And perhaps having so much time to consider the slate of nominations allows for second thoughts (as may or may not be happening with Chalamet) or for seemingly quieter personal campaigns (this year, Amy Madigan, Wagner Moura and Delroy Lindo come to mind) to press their case in the home stretch.
But there’s no obvious reason why that’d be so. The biggest Oscar stunner this side of Olivia Colman’s win happened after a campaign whose brevity gave the campaign a fast-paced, riotous energy: “Parasite” won its Best Picture Oscar on February 9, 2020; the show had been moved even earlier, because the Academy perceived that audiences were too weary of awards season even to wait until late February. Those who recall the year 2020 will understand that, had the Oscars been held until mid-March of that year, they’d never have happened; the “Parasite” cast and crew, along with the rest of the world, would have been quarantining. Perhaps the Academy should heed the message, and put on a show before the audience decides to stay home.