And the winner is… nobody: the only Oscar no one has ever been nominated for
At long last, the Academy has listened to reason and introduced an Oscar for ‘Achievement in Stunt Design’, which will be handed out for the first time at the 2028 edition of the Academy Awards and marks the second new prize in quick succession after next year’s debut of ‘Best Casting’.
If his ego is as big as everyone thinks it is, then don’t be surprised if Tom Cruise makes a play to win the maiden stunt Oscar, and it would certainly do wonders for the trophy’s immediate visibility. Taking the stage to claim the industry’s most prestigious accolade is something every filmmaker dreams of, but what a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a secret Academy Award that nobody’s ever won.
In fact, despite being an official part of the roster since 2000, nobody’s even been nominated. It’s fair to believe that only two Oscars recognise specific genres because they get handed out annually: ‘Best Animated Feature’ and ‘Best Documentary Feature Film’. However, as Yoda said, “There is another.”
For the last quarter of a century, ‘Best Original Musical’ has been an official part of the Oscars lineup. Born from a complicated history, the Academy went to an awful lot of effort to establish a separate category that recognises the best original song-and-dance spectaculars that Hollywood has to offer, only for the small print to rule anybody out of actually competing.
‘Best Original Score’ and ‘Best Original Song’ are dished out to the cream of the musical crop, but since its introduction, there haven’t been enough musicals released in a calendar year to justify ‘Best Original Musical’ fielding a list of nominees, never mind an Oscar.
According to the Academy, “An original musical consists of not fewer than five original songs by the same writer or team of writers, either used as voice-overs or visually performed.” What’s also helped to render the category completely irrelevant is that “an arbitrary group of songs unessential to the storyline will not be considered eligible.”
It doesn’t help that if “nine or fewer qualifying works” are submitted before the Oscars, the award doesn’t get handed out. Basically, there needs to be at least ten original musicals that aren’t adaptations or don’t feature pre-existing songs put forward for ‘Best Original Musical’, or it doesn’t happen. It’s never happened, so the award has been sitting on the shelf gathering dust since the turn of the millennium.
Most of any potential field is instantly eliminated by either being based on pre-existing material or incorporating known songs, and if there hasn’t been a single nomination since 2000, it’s hard to imagine a year where at least ten original musicals will be released within between January and December of any given year to justify the Oscar being awarded for the first time ever.
