The Oscars, the supreme awards of American cinema, announced on Monday the creation of an Audience Award which will celebrate next month the most popular film of the season and which will be chosen by a vote organized on Twitter.
The move is presumably intended to attract a new following of devotees as audiences for the televised ceremony have only plummeted in recent years.
The announcement also comes after nominations were unveiled last week, which snubbed big Hollywood productions like Spider-Man: No Return or the latest James Bond (Dying can wait), films that almost single-handedly saved the box office during a year of health restrictions.
Specialists fear that this absence will further distance the general public from the Oscar ceremony, including the 94and edition is held on March 27 in Los Angeles.
Hence this idea to promote this new category of Oscar by calling on fans to vote on Twitter for their favorite film of 2021 using the hashtag #OscarsFanFavoriteor directly on the Oscar Academy website.
Audiences for the ceremony have collapsed in recent years, with only ten million viewers last year for an edition which, due to the pandemic, mainly awarded independent films such as nomadland, by Chloe Zhao.
This figure was down 56% compared to the previous edition, itself at an all-time low.
For Meryl Johnson, vice-president of the Academy of Oscars in charge of digital marketing, the creation of an Audience Award will allow moviegoers to “participate in the spectacle in real time, to create a community and to be part of the experience like never before”.
Fans are allowed to vote up to 20 times per day and voting closes on March 3. Three lucky winners will be invited to present an Oscar during the 2023 edition.