When the 98th annual Oscars arrives next year, it will come with the addition of one long-desired new category: an Academy Award for Achievement in Casting. Two years later, the 100th annual Oscars will include its own new category: Achievement in Stunt Design. After that? We’ve got a few ideas for some other additions.
Both the casting and stunt design awards arrive after years of campaigning from artisans, filmmakers, stars, and even the general public. Make a good enough case, it seems, and AMPAS just might grant you an Oscar statuette-sized wish. Still, it does take time: Before the casting award was announced, the ceremony had not added a new award since 2001, when the organization added Best Animated Feature Film.
Last week’s announcement of the new stunt design category inevitably got us wondering: What other categories should the Oscars add? From bringing back an old favorite, cribbing from other awards shows, and moving firmly into the future, we’ve got a number of picks for the next great Oscar category.
With contributions from Christian Blauvelt, Wilson Chapman, Veronica Flores, Proma Khosla, Harrison Richlin, Sarah Shachat, and Brian Welk.
Best Ensemble Cast
Yes, we’re suggesting a straight-up crib of another awards body’s signature categories: Best Ensemble Cast. While the Academy has attempted to beef up its Best Picture category in recent years, making it possible for a full 10 films to be nominated in just one year, the casting categories remain stuck in the old-fashioned four categories/five nominees configuration. Let’s change that.
A journey down the rabbit hole of the internet led to endless Reddit posts addressing the need for this very issue, tucked inside a recent example of when such an award would have proven useful and smart: the “Parasite” year. You remember that year, right? The year when Bong Joon Ho’s “giddy, brilliant, totally unclassifiable” black comedy walked away with wins for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film? Something’s missing, though? Like, any nominations, let alone wins for its incredibly talented cast?
While the SAG Awards did right by the ensemble at the center of director Bong’s film, giving their award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in Motion Picture to Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Jang Hye-jin, Jung Hyun-joon, Jung Ziso, Lee Jung-eun, Lee Sun-kyun, Park Myung-hoon, Park So-dam, and Song Kang-ho, the Oscars completely biffed it on all fronts, not even nominating a single “Parasite” star for an acting accolade. An oversight, surely? While we don’t debate here why all the stars of the year’s best and most winning-est film weren’t considered for their own awards, we’ll just point to the obvious need for a Best Ensemble Cast award. —KE
Best Young Actor or Actress
Lost in the very adult and time-consuming practice of awards campaigning is the opportunity for younger performers to mount the kind of serious run it takes to win an Oscar. When they’re not plying their craft (likely for less than what their older counterparts are getting paid), they’re attending school, and hopefully able to maintain as much of a normal childhood as possible. They’re also at the whim of their parents, who may wish to protect them from the competitiveness involved in such ventures. However, so many great performances by children deserve Oscar glory. And, at one point, the Academy knew this.
In 1935, for the seventh Academy Awards, a Special Honorary Oscar was instituted known as the Academy Juvenile Award. Over the next 26 years, the miniaturized statuette was presented intermittently 12 times, including to Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland for her performances in both “Babes in Arms” and “The Wizard of Oz.” This was the only Oscar Garland ever received, and rightfully so. Later, two actors under the age of 18 would go on to win actual Oscars, first Tatum O’Neal in 1973 for “Paper Moon” and then Anna Paquin 20 years later for “The Piano.” Others such as Haley Joel Osment, Abigail Breslin, and Quvenzhané Wallis have been nominated and were deserving of wins.
It’s been 13 years since a performer under the age of 18 has been nominated for an Oscar, but just look at all the talent on display during that time. Brooklynn Prince in “The Florida Project,” Jacob Tremblay in “Room,” Abraham Attah in “Beasts of No Nation,” Elsie Fisher in “Eighth Grade,” Frankie Corio in “Aftersun,” Elliot Heffernan in “Blitz,” the list goes on. If we truly value their work, we should not treat children as equals as the Academy does now, but set them apart and encourage them from where they’re at, rather than have them rise to its pedestal. It would also help bring down the stuffiness the Oscars seems to embrace and truly make it an affair for all ages. —HR
Best Voice Acting
One of the best performances of 2013 — Scarlett Johansson as the artificial intelligence in love from Spike Jonze’s beloved romance “Her” — came up almost entirely blank during awards season, scoring only a single Supporting Actress nomination at the Critics’ Choice ceremony. Sadly, it wasn’t much of a surprise for one maddening reason: Johansson never actually appears physically onscreen during the unconventional romance’s two-hour running time, instead communicating solely as a disembodied voice through a machine.
Nevermind that her work as a robot learning through a romantic relationship how to become more human is maybe her heartbreaking peak as an actress, voiceover roles just don’t get the respect they deserve from award bodies. In reality, though, voice work can be just as challenging as live-action acting, tasking the performer with conveying emotion and creating a three-dimensional person through speech alone.
Look at Robert Pattinson’s recent viral work in the dubbed version of “The Boy and the Heron,” in which he shifted his voice into an unrecognizable squawk to portray an avian spirit, as proof. Go back further in time, and you’ll find that certain stars like Robin Williams and Eartha Kitt have outright done career-best work via animation in “Aladdin” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.” A best voice acting category wouldn’t just be a consolation prize for roles that can’t hack the main acting categories: It would honor an entirely different but equally demanding form of performance. —WC
Best Choreography
Obviously, this award will apply primarily to musicals — but doesn’t the VFX Oscar mainly go to action movies, or the costuming award to period pieces? Genre division is already part of the Academy Awards, so why not spread the wealth and acknowledge the hard work of choreographers who bring beloved movie musicals to life?
With these movies back on the rise — and getting better, as Hollywood learns what does and doesn’t work — choreographers are essential to translating a Broadway show into a dazzling blockbuster, or creating an unforgettable original sequence like “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” (that “Best Original Song” Oscar is as much for the choreography and direction as the actual melody). There’s also ample precedent, including the Best Dance Direction Oscar category that ran from 1935-1937, a Choreographers Guild, multiple Honorary Oscars for choreography over the years, and Emmy Awards in the same category. —PK
Best Motion Capture Performance
To think that the entire history of motion capture performance began with a trailblazer widely and unfairly ridiculed: Jar Jar Binks, as portrayed by Ahmed Best in “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.” Just three years after the Gungan made his debut, audiences were wowed by Andy Serkis’ Gollum/Smeagol in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” a performance so acclaimed for its psychological depth and richness of feeling that even then, discussion about an Oscar nomination was had among movie lovers. Could it be a nom in the supporting actor category or some special one-off?
As the years have gone on, Serkis has continued to be a trailblazer in motion capture with his performances as the giant ape himself in “King Kong” and Caesar in the “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” trilogy, mining ever more degrees of soulfulness and sentiment out of performances that are, by any standard, collaborative with the digital animators who paint with pixels to add extra degrees of expression to the characters. Any Oscar category for Best Motion Capture Performance should thus then be given to both the performer and the lead digital artist who together bring the character to life. —CB
Best Music Supervision
Just as the Grammys have evolved to recognize musicians who are skilled with sampling beats to create something new, so too can the Oscars evolve to recognize movies not just for an original score but because of the soundtrack that powers it. Crafting the perfect needle drop in a film is a delicate art. The smartest writers incorporate a song’s lyrics directly into the script. These songs do not appear by accident.
The role of music supervision has long been its own unique discipline, with people required to source and license tracks while also being students of music history. It will surprise no one that many of the best ones are DJs on the side. The TV Academy has come around too; it added a Music Supervision Emmy in 2017. Bringing Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” back to the pop charts helped “Stranger Things” win the prize in 2022. If there were an Oscar in this category, “Baby Driver” comes to mind as an abundantly deserving film. But even a music biopic like last year’s “A Complete Unknown” needs someone to hand-pick and arrange those Bob Dylan and Joan Baez classics.
That film’s music supervisor, Steven Gizicki, is a three-time Grammy winner and Emmy nominee. Who wouldn’t want to welcome a new crop of EGOT-eligible folks? —BW
Best Marketing
The time has come for the Academy to recognize Best Film Marketing as an Oscar category, celebrating the essential role that promotional campaigns play in a film’s cultural and financial success. Take “Barbie” (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig), for example: with a production budget of $145 million and a marketing budget exceeding it at $150 million, the film’s global haul of $1.44 billion was fueled as much by its viral marketing machine as its epic storytelling. From Barbie-themed Airbnb rentals to pink billboards with nothing but the release date, the campaign turned the movie into an event. And we can’t forget about the What Was I Made for TikTok trend, which almost made the track feel bigger than the film — it became a cultural moment. That deep public connection likely influenced Oscar voters, boosting its chances for Best Original Song, making Billie Eilish the youngest two-time Oscar winner ever. The trend wasn’t just fan engagement — it was part of the film’s powerful, organic marketing.
Similarly, “Dune” leveraged the star power of Zendaya, whose every red carpet look became a headline and a strategic extension of the film’s futuristic aesthetic — that butt-baring Mugler robot suit will live rent-free in my mind forever. And most recently, the grassroots social media storm surrounding “Anora,” this year’s surprise Best Picture winner, proved that authentic, social media buzz can propel an indie to massive visibility and Oscar glory. Marketing is no longer an accessory to cinema — it’s a core part of the art and impact. It’s time the Oscars honored that. —VF
Best Animal Performance
Look, all the featured animals in films are the Best Boy and/or Girl in the world. Much like art itself, no awards process will ever be able to be truly objective about the talent and impact of our beloved actors who do not happen to be homo sapiens. But the work that goes into getting animals to perform specific scripted actions often requires months’ worth of training similar to the most complex stunts; it also requires the presence, sensitivity, and improvisational skills of the human trainers who partner with the animals we see on screen.
It would be fantastic to find a way to reward the team of humans around our favorite non-human performers in films where that animal’s contribution really is key to a film’s success. Whether it takes the form of an honorary award or a more regular category, if the Academy found its version of the Palm Dog, it would make the Oscars that much more fun. —SS
