The newly annoucned Oscars category is a great addition to the historic slate of Academy Awards but only scratches the surface of other necessary accolades. Beginning in 2026, the Academy Awards will include a new award and category of nominees for Best Casting. The 98th Academy Awards will be the first Oscars to include the new category, in which films from 2025 will be competing. The award for Best Casting marks the first time that the Academy Awards have added a new category since 2001 with the addition of Best Animated Film, an award that first went to Shrek at the 74th Oscar ceremony.
With the addition of the Best Achievement in Casting Oscar, the Academy Awards will finally shine a spotlight on one of the most unsung areas of the pre-production process which is an integral part of every professional movie and television show. The decisions, intuitions, and acumen of Hollywood’s Casting Directors can easily make or break a television series or film before filming even begins. The new Oscar category is set to offer a long-awaited accreditation to the industry’s top casting talents and level their contributions to those of other key behind-the-scenes players such as editors, cinematographers, and composers.
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The Oscars’ Best Casting Award Is A Good Change For The Ceremony
Casting Directors will finally be given the recognition they’ve deserved for decades
The inclusion of the new Oscars category for Best Casting is a landmark move in the history of the Academy Awards, one that could pave the way for more categories to also be included in the coming years. Prior to the addition of 2025’s Best Casting award and 2001’s Best Animated Feature Film, only one Oscar category was added between 1948 and 2001, which was Best Makeup and Hairstyling in 1981. This remarkable period of stagnation in the awards categories at the Oscars keeps its rich history and lineage of nominees and winners intact while continuing to neglect other worthy potential categories.
Some of the greatest films ever made have been elevated to such a prestigious status due to the efforts of the casting personnel, including but not limited to the 2023 ensemble juggernaut of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. While there are certainly more factors that go into casting than just the discretion of the Casting Director alone, such as director influence and appeal, the category at large deserves this new heightened platform. The recognition for Best Casting would celebrate the people responsible for assembling a winning ensemble, as opposed to something like the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast.
The Oscars Still Really Needs Awards For Best Stunts & Voice/Mo-Cap Work
An Oscar category for Best Stunts had been rejected for more than 20 years straight
While the addition of Best Casting is a major move in the right direction for the Academy Award that should be celebrated, it raises the question of why other worthy categories have yet to be integrated despite years of proposed interest. The fact that there’s still no award for achievement in stunt work is shocking, especially when you have one of the biggest Hollywood actors who ever lived, Tom Cruise, performing death-defying stunts in his Mission: Impossible franchise. The anticipated Oscar for Best Stunt Coordination has been proposed and rejected every year from 1991 to 2012.
In the same vein as stunts are voice acting or voice/motion capture performance, two areas that have felt neglected during awards season for years. While voice acting work is considered to be on par with live-action acting, voice/motion-capture performances have never been nominated for Oscars in their respective acting categories. These roles are eligible for contention but are as a whole unlikely to break through in the main acting ones despite deserving the recognition. For example, it’s quite disappointing that Andy Serkis has never been nominated for his legendary performances as Gollum or Caesar.
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What Other New Categories Do The Oscars Need?
A Best Popular Film could celebrate box office achievements of each year
Along with the continued proposal and rejection of Best Stuntwork, a new proposed category for Best Popular Film has not yet been integrated into the Oscars awards pool. Similar to the newly added Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, an Oscar for Best Popular Film would celebrate the biggest blockbuster of the year. While the Oscars have historically focused on the artistic achievements of the year in film, excluding an award for Best Box Office/Popular Film leaves out the major financial element of Hollywood.
The addition of a Best Casting Oscar in 2025 could inspire the implementation of a Best Ensemble or Best Cast Academy Award as well. Other possible categories for future Oscars could have a more specialized focus on different genres of movies, such as Best Horror Film, Best Action Film, and even Best Independent Film. Horror and action movies have historically been overpowered by dramas, musicals, and historical epics in major categories. More behind-the-scenes plays could be highlighted as well by the Oscars, such as Assistant Directors, for whom there was an award from 1932 to 1937.
Oscars
The Oscars, also known as The Academy Awards, is an annual awards show celebrating workers in the film industry for their artistic and technical abilities. The Oscars are often considered the most prestigious awards show in the industry and date back to 1929. The 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10, 2024, and be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on ABC.
- Dates
- March 10, 2024
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
- Network
- ABC
