The Oscars Award New Category for Popcorn Movies

The Academy Awards don’t just want to be liked by a niche audience, they want to be loved by the mainstream. And the Oscars are willing to throw some significant twists into the traditional script in order to win that mass appeal. On August 8, The Academy tweeted out a few upcoming changes—key among them a new award category for “achievement in popular film”.

Will the addition of the “popular film” category help the Oscars better connect with moviegoers and provide a better snapshot of each year in movie history (according to our calculations, over the past 40 years the Oscars have got best picture wrong at least 25% of the time)? More importantly, will these changes help clot bleeding ratings for the awards broadcast and build more positive buzz for the program moving into the future? Time will tell.