Rule changes for next year's 80th Academy Awards have been approved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The major change comes in reference to having more than three producers receive awards. In 2000, the Academy instituted a rule which would only allow 3 producers to be nominated for the honor and receive the award. This resulted in a lot of whining by some of those that thought they should have received the award, and sometime even lawsuits, as happened last year when Bob Yari sued for not being included as a nominee for the credits in "Crash."
While the basic provision remains, which say, "three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing functions" are those that will be eligible. The change will entail allowing the Producers Branch Executive Committee to "name any additional qualified producer" in "what it determines to be a rare and extraordinary circumstance."
Academy President Sid Ganis said, "It's very important to have a limit on the number of producers who can be nominated and potentially receive an Oscar statuette. But we also recognize that a truly unique situation could arise, and we want to have just enough flexibility to allow for that rare occurrence."
One other change made was in reference to defining what would be considered an animated feature film. Now it must be a minimum of 70 minutes long and use a frame-by-frame method when creating the movements of the characters.
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