The Oscars may be the biggest (and oldest) awards in the film industry, but they're also the most mysterious for many outsiders. For those of us in the audience who just love movies and want to see them celebrated, it's not always clear how the dozens of nominees are selected, classified, and voted on. It turns out the process is much simpler than you might think.
For many of the individual awards, there are a handful of guidelines that the project must meet in order to be eligible for consideration—though many of these guidelines have changed since 2020 to help create a more diverse selection of films.
As long as the film meets all the necessary criteria, studios submit their films for awards consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—and then spend millions of dollars on popularity campaigns in attempt to win the votes of registered Academy members, who select their favorites via official ballots. Some categories, like Best Picture, are decided by preferential ballot, where voters rank the nominated films in the category by order of preference.
Theoretically, these methods of voting and campaigning are meant to ensure that the most widely liked films and performances are recognized, but the process isn't perfect. Often, what most cinephiles think of as the most deserving or popular projects still don't win. In fact, there have been a number of instances over the years where films have garnered an impressive number of wins or nominations, but lost out on the biggest prize of the night: Best Picture. Sometimes, this is because a film is more appreciated for its technical achievements—think "Life of Pi" and "Gravity"—or for its stylistic choices, like Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Other times, as with now-classic films like "Citizen Kane," many would agree that the Academy simply gets it wrong.
Stacker used data from the Academy Awards to look at the films that won the most Oscars at each of the past 90 Academy Awards ceremonies and highlighted 25 that were up for Best Picture but didn't take home the award, despite their dominance across the rest of their respective ceremonies. The films are ranked by least to most overall wins, with ties broken by the film with the most nominations. In the case of ties between films nominated the same year for most Oscar wins, all films were included on the list. Some of the films included on the list tied with the eventual Best Picture winner for the most wins from their ceremony.
Between box office hits like "Inception" and perennial favorites like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," there are sure to be a few titles on here whose Best Picture losses still make fans' blood boil.
