The Oscars Are Introducing A New Category For The First Time Since 2002

For the first time in more than 20 years, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has added a new category at the Oscars. Beginning with the 2026 ceremony, which will honor films released in 2025, the Academy Awards will include a category that honors the best achievement in casting, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The new category will be part of the 98th annual ceremony.

This is the first new category introduced to the Oscars since Best Animated Feature in 2002, which honored the films of 2001. That makes it a pretty big deal. The Casting Directors Branch of the organization was first formed in 2013. It currently has nearly 160 members. Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang had this to say about it in a joint statement:

"Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate. We congratulate our Casting Directors Branch members on this exciting milestone and their commitment and diligence throughout this process."

Casting is, indeed, vital to the filmmaking process. Just imagine "The Dark Knight" without Heath Ledger as The Joker, "La La Land" without Emma Stone as Mia, or "Leaving Las Vegas" without Nicolas Cage as Ben Sanderson (all of which are Oscar-winning performances). It feels like a worthy inclusion to a ceremony that is billed as Hollywood's biggest night.

The announcement came as a surprise for several reasons. For one, ratings for the Oscars telecast have been down in recent years and there is much pressure to get those numbers up. Adding another category to present during the telecast will make it even trickier to make the show tight enough to air. Might this result in more categories being presented off-air? Let's hope not. Academy Casting Director Branch governors Richard Hicks, Kim Taylor-Colman, and Debra Zane had this to say about it:

"On behalf of the members of the Casting Directors Branch, we'd like to thank the Board of Governors, the Awards Committee, and Academy leadership for their support. This award is a deserved acknowledgment of our casting directors' exceptional talents and a testament to the dedicated efforts of our branch."

This category addition may also open the floodgates for calls to get other areas of filmmaking acknowledged. In particular, there has been a lot of interest in seeing a category to recognize stunts in films. "John Wick" director Chad Stahelski and his former co-director David Leitch, of "Deadpool 2" fame, have been vocal about getting The Academy to add such a category. Whether or not this casting category makes that more or less likely to happen any time soon remains to be seen.

The 96th annual Academy Awards are set to air on ABC on Sunday, March 10, 2024.