Which movie studio has won the most Oscars?
For many actors and directors, receiving the coveted Oscar statuette represents a definitive career highlight. But it’s not just talented individuals who aspire to win an Academy Award. When it comes to the most respected prize in the movie industry, film studios are also in it to win it.
Of course, studios are ultimately businesses that run their operation with the bottom line in mind. However, aside from hankering after box office smashes, many movie companies crave the prestige and recognition that come with Oscar success. Not least, the sole Academy Award that primarily credits a movie’s overall production. The jewel in the crown of any film’s award season success: the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’.
On that front, six studios whose history dates back to the decade the Academy Awards were founded dominate the rest. It’s interesting to note that Walt Disney Studios is not one of these six. Incredibly, despite 13 nominations in the category, Disney has never won Best Picture for one of its movies.
Meanwhile, two of today’s “Big Five” major studios, Universal and Warner Bros, sit alongside Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on nine ‘Best Picture’ wins. 20th Century Fox, which is now known as 20th Century Studios since being bought out by the Walt Disney Company in 2019, is one ahead of them with ten awards. Their last victory was for Titanic in 1998, more than two decades before Disney bought them out.
Interestingly, Titanic was actually a joint venture between Fox and Paramount Pictures, which comes in second place with a total of 11 ‘Best Picture’ Oscars. However, not even Paramount can stop another industry giant from claiming the crown.
Another of the Big Five?
The studio that’s claimed more ‘Best Picture’ victories than any other is the big-screen flagship production company of the only member of cinema’s Big Five we haven’t yet mentioned. Columbia Pictures, now owned by Sony, is the studio behind some of the most decorated movies in film history.
Columbia’s record of 12 Oscar wins is yet to be broken, even though their last award came all the way back in 1988 for Bernardo Bertolucci’s historical epic The Last Emperor. Their victories prior to that film include an incredible run of five Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ in 13 years between 1950 and 1963, most of which are for movies now recognised as all-time greats.
On the Waterfront, the finest collaboration between Marlon Brando and Elia Kazan, is among them, as are World War Two classic The Bridge on the River Kwai and David Lean’s revolutionary biopic Lawrence of Arabia.
Two years after its most recent Oscar win in the 1980s, Columbia Pictures was bought out by Sony. It’s since pivoted increasingly towards franchise filmmaking, with the likes of Men in Black, Spider-Man, James Bond and 21 Jump Street accounting for much of its budget.
Among the studios now owned by the Big Five, only Universal Pictures has continued to churn out Oscar-winning pictures. It’s produced two of the six most recent ‘Best Picture’ winners, including this year’s victor Oppenheimer. Still, it has some way to overtake the top dog, which is testament to the historic value of Columbia Pictures to cinema as an art form.
