The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced today key dates for the 2022 Oscar season. The 94th Academy Awards will now take place on March 27, 2022, moved back from its originally scheduled date of February 27, 2022. The 2022 Oscar season will not be extended, however. The eligibility window runs from March 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022.
This is an exciting development as it gives the season a chance to breathe. People can actually see available films and judge on their own time, rather than lose a month and rely on so many other awards bodies to sift through potential candidates for them. Granted, much of that is still going to happen, but at least it’s not a mad rush to the end.
The Academy also released news on eligibility requirements regarding films whose distribution continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the Academy’s statement on these rules, and full eligibility rules will be announced in June:
Here is the full press release from the Academy, including major dates for the 2022 Oscar season.
THE ACADEMY AND ABC SET MARCH 27, 2022 AS NEW SHOW DATE
FOR 94TH OSCARS®LOS ANGELES, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC today announced the 94th Oscars® ceremony will move to Sunday, March 27, 2022. The show, which will air live on ABC from the Dolby® Theatre in Hollywood, was originally scheduled for February 27, 2022.
The eligibility period for Academy Awards® consideration will return to the standard December 31 deadline: a feature film must have a qualifying release date between March 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. This year, which is still impacted by the pandemic, eligibility requirements for the 94th Academy Awards will be consistent with the addendums made for the 93rd Awards season and can be found here. Complete 94th Awards rules and specialty category submission deadlines will be announced in June. Following this year, the Academy intends to expand the qualifying requirements for the 95th Awards.
Academy key dates for the 2021 Oscar® season are as follows:
- General entry categories submission deadline Monday, November 15, 2021
- Preliminary voting begins 9 a.m. PT Friday, December 10, 2021
- Preliminary voting ends 5 p.m. PT Wednesday, December 15, 2021
- Oscar Shortlists Announcement Tuesday, December 21, 2021
- Eligibility period ends Friday, December 31, 2021
- Governors Awards Saturday, January 15, 2022
- Nominations voting begins 9 a.m. PT Thursday, January 27, 2022
- Nominations voting ends 5 p.m. PT Tuesday, February 1, 2022
- Oscar Nominations Announcement Tuesday, February 8, 2022
- Oscar Nominees Luncheon Monday, March 7, 2022
- Final voting begins 9 a.m. PT Thursday, March 17, 2022
- Final voting ends 5 p.m. PT Tuesday, March 22, 2022
- 94th Oscars Sunday, March 27, 2022
All dates for the 94th Academy Awards® are subject to change.
The 94th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby® Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide.
I don’t honestly think it matters when they hold the Oscars as long as they avoid cannibalization from other big ticket events happening in the first quarter of the year.
The key is not in the timing. But in creating an entertaining show that people really want to watch. It is as simple as that.
The Academy spent so much time creating all these meaningless rules for no good reason. “Make sure show last 3 hours and not more!”, “Add some stupid random category like Most Popular Film or some s*** like that!” “Get young hosts like Anne Hathaway and James Franco so as to appeal to millennials!” “NO HOSTS’!” – All ideas that miss the point entirely.
If you have a fabulous show, it doesn’t matter if it last 3 hours or 4 hours. a fabulous show is a fabulous show is a fabulous show. And a shit show is a shit show is a shit show: even if it’s one hour long, it’s shit.
I think this is an excellent move on the Academy’s part because the awards show should be shown at the start of spring (late March) instead of late February. That’s how it was in the past. Experiencing it this year in April for the first time in 20 years really was nostalgic but the presentation was horrible. I am hoping that the Academy gets their act together and bring in the right people to help produce, direct and execute on presentation come Oscar Sunday March 22nd. They need to bring back a host, someone who relates to EVERYONE not just one specific group. The Academy should be universal and open to all views (good or bad; conservative and liberal), they’ve lost their touch because they’ve closed off their doors to certain stories. You have to have this and this now, you can’t have that in a film that qualifies to be nominated. That’s an example of closing your doors to all views.
What films did they close off that deserved to be nominated because of a particular point of view ?
I’m going to be more cynical here, I think that they are responding to ratings. With it not pulling in as many viewers, I think it’s a hard sell in February sweeps with so much competition (Olympics, NFL, etc.) It may bring the ratings up. Now if they ditch the new format….
Love it. If Cannes 2022 goes back to May, then we’ll only have two weeks between the Oscar winner and the first big lineup of the next season.
Rather about six weeks, but I like it too.
I think they mean “two weeks to the Cannes lineup being announced”.
Glad I have you both in here. That’s exactly what I meant.
And I thought you decided to cancel April 2022! (based on this years April, quite understandably…)
To tell you the truth, concerning French movie releases, March and April are usually the weaker months. The less time between Oscars and Cannes, the better !
Here in Germany, many Oscar films open around that time so I wouldn´t wanna miss those months. Usually its the summer when I take a cinema hiatus because the Blockbusters are dominating. But concerning French movies, even in summer we have a local arthouse theatre that premieres at least one French movie a month. So I don´t have to face serious withdrawal symptoms!
I’m guessing you meant to say:
“The eligibility window runs from March 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021,” for the next Oscars, because otherwise, this does not make sense.
The key dates listed clarify that 🙂
I believe the Oscars are back where they belong; in March. This is a positive first step.
Agreed.
3/27 seems fine.
I wonder. The date has seemed to be late Feb or late March or late April (last year) or early Feb (the year before). Is there a reason why it couldn’t be early-mid March?
Maybe they thought early March didn’t give enough time for nominated films to squeeze extra cash out of post-nomination bookings. March 20th would be a disaster because as I said below it would run into the basketball tourney that DOES schedule night games that weekend. And the ratings hit would lead to the show not even winning the night.
There is potentially one major landmine for this date. That Sunday is when the last two Final Four teams for the NCAA men’s basketball tourney are determined. Normally the Sunday Elite games are afternoon games, but if CBS wanted to be cheeky they’d turn around and schedule the games for prime time. The Academy better be prepared to move to a Monday date like they used to have.
I believe the Academy holding the 94th show on March 27 is reasonable for several reasons:
1) Avoiding big-ticket events such as the NFL and Winter Olympics. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had been scheduled for February 4-20. In addition, the NFL has extended its season by one more game resulting in Super Bowl LVI being slated for February 13. Bear in mind that ABC (who is sister stations with cable network ESPN) had recently signed a contract that resulted in the network return to the Super Bowl broadcasting rotation (it is pegged to broadcast the 2027 and ’31 games). It would be unwise for ABC to televise the Oscars opposite the Super Bowl or any of the playoff games in January not lest they want the ratings to suffer even further or face getting their Super Bowl broadcasting license revoked.
2) This gives more time for Oscar voters to see all the nominated films. Holding the Oscars in January or February results in voters not having enough time to watch the nominees and therefore relying even more on precursor guild awards. I strongly believe that Halle Berry would not have her historic win in 2002 if the Oscars were held in January or February. Time essentially gave her an advantage.
3) Allows the movie-going public to see the films were it was intended to be seen: the theater. I understand there is an increasing clout of movies being seen via streaming services. However, I feel that it is more respectful the the filmmakers that their films be seen in a theater (the way they originally wanted to be seen).
4) Holding the Oscars in late March allows the ceremony to proceeded without worrying about effects of flu season or another variant of COVID-19 in the event of some winter surge. Honestly, the pandemic is winding down here in the LA Metro area, and it looks like the vaccines are extremely effective even against variants. However, there are people still uncomfortable with attending a full-house ceremony in the doldrums of flu seasons even though February is when flu season is winding down. So the March 27 date makes sense from a health and safety perspective.
That’s my reasons.
You made really good points!
I kinda like the idea of longer seasons…the extra time allows for people to think more critically and not just go along with front runners.
For instance, if the Oscars this past year had been held in February, I think Chadwick would have won over Hopkins and maybe some other awards may have gone to a different movie. But that extra time allowed people to actually think and chose based off merit instead of going with the flow. It effects the outcome more than we realize. End of March is a good middle ground instead of late April or early February….it should always be like that, I feel.
At least the MTV Movie/TV Awards righted that injustice re: Boseman/Hopkins.
You would hail the MTV M/TV awards. Fleabag.
Drop dead, troll
Gentlemen, can’t we all just get along?
I can. He won’t. So he goes back into disqus limbo.
Are you guys gonna fight after school? Let me know so I can ditch 7th period.
Still drunk?
No.
Absolutely. And what actually happened at the Oscars is something that had not happened since the move to February/early March: precursors actually disagreed a lot. We had a lead acting winner (actually both of them) without Globe or SAG wins. Last time this happened was in 2003. I can’t think of another year in recent memory when GoldDerby had the actual best actress champ fourth in their odds. Usually they have 90% of the categories correct, with the other 10% going to the presumed runners-up. And the same happened in Original Song.
And this happens for a single reason: Voters have time to actually catch up. They have time to watch the films, they had time to actually see Hopkins’s brilliant performance. They have time to actually consider The Father in adapted screenplay.
The Academy should consider moving the Oscars to the end of March. The move to February was a big mistake.