90th Academy Awards

The 90th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2017, and took place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was held on March 4, 2018, rather than its usual late-February date to avoid conflicting with the 2018 Winter Olympics. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony was televised in the United States by American Broadcasting Company (ABC), produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd and directed by Glenn Weiss. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted for the second consecutive year.

In related events, the Academy held its 9th Annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center on November 11, 2017. On February 10, 2018, in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the Academy Scientific and Technical Awards were presented by host actor Sir Patrick Stewart.

The Shape of Water won a leading four awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Guillermo del Toro. Dunkirk won three awards; Blade Runner 2049, Coco, Darkest Hour, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won two awards each. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor awards for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri while Gary Oldman won Best Actor for Darkest Hour. Allison Janney won Best Supporting Actress honor for I, Tonya. With a U.S. viewership of 26.5 million, it was the least-watched show in Oscar history.

Winners and nominees
The nominees for the 90th Academy Awards were announced on January 23, 2018, at 5:22 a.m. PST (13:22 UTC), at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, via global live stream, from the Academy and by actors Tiffany Haddish and Andy Serkis.

The Shape of Water led all nominees with thirteen nominations; Dunkirk came in second with eight and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri came in third with seven.

Awards
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).



Governors Awards
The Academy held its 9th annual Governors Awards ceremony on November 11, 2017, during which the following awards were presented:


 * Academy Honorary Awards


 * Agnès Varda – French film director, writer, editor and producer
 * Charles Burnett – American director, writer, producer, editor and cinematographer
 * Donald Sutherland – Canadian actor
 * Owen Roizman – American cinematographer


 * Special Achievement Academy Award


 * Alejandro González Iñárritu for his virtual reality project Carne y Arena

Presenters and performers
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or performed musical numbers.

Ceremony information


Despite the mixed reception received from the preceding year's ceremony, the Academy rehired Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd as producers for the second consecutive year. In May 2017, it was announced that Jimmy Kimmel would return as host for a second consecutive year. Kimmel expressed that he was thrilled to be selected to MC the gala again, commenting, "Hosting the Oscars was a highlight of my career and I am grateful to Cheryl [Boone Isaacs], Dawn [Hudson], and the Academy for asking me to return to work with two of my favorite people, Mike De Luca and Jennifer Todd. If you think we screwed up the ending this year, wait until you see what we have planned for the 90th anniversary show!"

On December 4, 2017, it was announced that the timing of the ceremony and its pre-show had been changed and both would be scheduled to broadcast a half-hour earlier than prior telecasts. In the first half of the nominations announcement, pre-taped category introductions were included that featured actresses Priyanka Chopra, Rosario Dawson, Gal Gadot, Salma Hayek, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, Molly Shannon, Rebel Wilson and Michelle Yeoh.

As per the tradition of the Academy, the previous year's Best Actor winner usually presents the Best Actress award for the next year's ceremony; in lieu of this, the previous year's Best Actor winner Casey Affleck reportedly decided not to attend the ceremony due to his sexual harassment accusations; Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence presented the award together in his place. The Best Actor award was presented by Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway returned to present the Best Picture Award for the second year in the row, after the previous year's announcement error. Sixth-year in a row Derek McLane designed the stage with forty-five million Swarovski crystals.

ABC scheduled a late-night "sneak peak" of its new talk show The Alec Baldwin Show after the ceremony and late local newscasts.

In a comedic acknowledgement of the length of the ceremony and acceptance speeches in particular, Kimmel announced that the winner with the shortest acceptance speech would receive a new jet ski (presented game show-style with Helen Mirren as a model). The shortest speech would be given by Mark Bridges for his Best Costume Design win.

Box office performance of nominated films
At the time of the nominations announcement on January 23, 2018, the combined gross of the nine Best Picture nominees at the North American box offices was $568.2 million, with an average of $63.1 million per film (although Dunkirk and Get Out were the only films with a gross above $46 million). When the nominations were announced, Dunkirk was the highest-grossing film among the Best Picture nominees with $188 million in domestic box office receipts. Get Out was the second-highest-grossing film with $175.6 million, followed by The Post ($45.7 million), Darkest Hour ($41 million), Lady Bird ($39.1 million), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ($32.2 million), The Shape of Water ($30.4 million), Call Me by Your Name ($9.1 million), and Phantom Thread ($6.3 million). From the date of announcements to the time of the ceremony on March 4, 2018, the total made by the Best Picture nominees at the North American box offices was $126.7 million, with an average of $14.1 million per film. The Post ($34.6 million) and The Shape of Water ($27 million) had the highest grossed during that frame, followed by Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ($19.8 million), Darkest Hour ($14.5 million), Phantom Thread ($13.8 million), Lady Bird ($9.2 million), Call Me by Your Name ($7.5 million) and Get Out ($353,795 from a one-week re-release).

Thirty-six nominations went to 15 films on the list of the top 50 grossing movies of the year. Of those 15 films, only Coco (12th), Logan (15th) Dunkirk (16th), Get Out (18th), The Boss Baby (19th), and Ferdinand (35th) were nominated for Best Picture, Best Animated Feature or any of the directing, acting or screenwriting awards. The other top 50 box-office hits that earned nominations were Star Wars: The Last Jedi (1st), Beauty and the Beast (2nd), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (8th), Kong: Skull Island (17th), War for the Planet of the Apes (20th), Wonder (33rd), The Greatest Showman (29th), Baby Driver (36th), and Blade Runner 2049 (41st).

Frances McDormand's Oscar theft
Right after her win at the Governor's ball, actress Frances McDormand's Oscar was briefly stolen for fifteen minutes by a man named Terry Bryant, who had a ticket to the after-party. Bryant filmed himself with the statue and reportedly telling other "guests he was a winner," before being apprehended by Chef Wolfgang Puck's photographer who did not recognize Bryant as a winner and retrieved the statue from him returning it back to the actress.

The Academy said in a statement, "Best Actress winner Frances McDormand and her Oscar were happily reunited after a brief separation at last night’s Governors Ball. The alleged thief was quickly apprehended by a photographer and members of our fast-acting Academy and security teams." Despite McDormand's consent to let Bryant go, he was arrested by the LAPD and was charged with grand theft, but was released without a bail following Wednesday's hearing after the judge ruled that "he did not pose a flight risk." He appeared in court on March 28, 2018, where without any consensus his hearing was rescheduled on May 1, 2018.

Critical reviews
The show received a mixed reception from media publications. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the show holds an approval rating of 43% based on 30 critics, and summarized, "The 90th Academy Awards played it safe and hit no major snags -- but by clocking in at over four hours, returning host Jimmy Kimmel and company wore out their welcome long before the surprise ending."

Hank Stuever of The Washington Post marked, "In his second year, Kimmel has shown that the telecast needn't be anything but sharp and sure, with a funny host whose bits are manageable, shareable and – best of all – forgotten. We're not making showbiz history here; we're just trying to get through another Oscar night." Chief critic David Edelstein of Vulture wrote, "This was the best, most inspiring, and most sheerly likable Academy Awards telecast I've ever seen. ... It was also – in terms of the actual awards – among the most disappointing." Vanity Fair's, Richard Lawson wrote, "As a host, Kimmel struck a careful, appropriately measured tone ... All told, Sunday's ceremony did an admirable job of recognizing all the turmoil surrounding it while maintaining the silly, chintzy trappings that so many of us tune into the Oscars for." CNN's Brian Lowry quipped, "The Oscars are a big, unwieldy beast, which invariably try to serve too many masters. Yet if the intent was ultimately to maintain a celebratory tone without ignoring either the outside world or the elephant in the room throughout this year's awards, host Jimmy Kimmel and the show itself largely succeeded."

Others were more critical of the show. Television critic Maureen Ryan of Variety said, "All things considered, the show had a more or less low-key vibe. Normally it takes about two hours for the numbing effect to set in, but despite host Jimmy Kimmel's best efforts, Sunday's telecast started to feel a bit languid and low-energy far earlier." Television critic James Poniewozik of The New York Times said, "despite the recent upheaval in Hollywood, the ceremony at large still focused mainly on celebration and glitter literally, in the case of the blinding set, which looked as if the ceremony were encased in an enormous geode. There's also the perennial problem of bloat. The hitch, of course, is that every part of the show has its constituency." Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "What fun we had at this year's Oscars! Long show, sure, but where to cut it?" Writing for Deadline Greg Evans said, "Did the nearly four-hour running time contain any moments for the Oscar ages? Probably not." David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Even the hope that the noise of clapping might keep the audience at home and in the theater awake, there was little of that for anything except the entrance of actors of advance age." The Oregonian columnist Kristi Turnquist wrote, "Was it respectful? Absolutely. Did it make for kind of a dull, earnest Oscars show? Yeah, kind of."

Ratings and reception
Attaining 26.5 million U.S. viewers according to Nielsen ratings, the ceremony's telecast had a 16-percent drop in viewership from last year's ceremony and had the lowest U.S. viewership in Oscar history. On March 6, after the final ratings were confirmed, President Donald Trump took to his Twitter account, saying, "Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don't have stars anymore – except your President (just kidding, of course)!". In response, Kimmel also tweeted, saying, "Thanks, lowest rated President in HISTORY."

In July 2018, the ceremony presentation received eight nominations for the 70th Primetime Creative Arts Emmys.

In Memoriam
The annual In Memoriam segment was introduced by Jennifer Garner with Eddie Vedder performing a rendition of Tom Petty's song "Room at the Top". The segment paid tribute to following forty-four artists in the montage:


 * John G. Avildsen – Director
 * Toni Ann Walker – Hairstylist
 * June Foray – Actress, animator
 * Walter Lassally – Cinematographer
 * Chuck Berry – Singer-songwriter
 * Robert Osborne – Columnist, television host, writer
 * Jill Messick – Producer
 * Harry Dean Stanton – Actor
 * Terence Marsh – Production designer
 * Rita Riggs – Costume designer
 * Mary Goldberg – Casting director
 * Anthony Harvey – Director, film editor
 * Thérèse DePrez – Production designer
 * Debra Chasnoff – Documentarian
 * Jóhann Jóhannsson – Composer
 * Jonathan Demme – Director
 * Michael Ballhaus – Cinematographer
 * Les Lazarowitz – Sound mixer
 * Idrissa Ouédraogo – Director, writer
 * Joe Hyams – Public Relations
 * John Heard – Actor
 * Martin Landau – Actor
 * Glenne Headly – Actress
 * Eric Zumbrunnen – Film editor
 * Roger Moore – Actor
 * Sam Shepard – Actor, writer
 * Allison Shearmur – Executive, producer
 * John Mollo – Costume designer
 * Jeanne Moreau – Actress, director
 * Loren Janes – Stuntman
 * George A. Romero – Director, producer
 * Rance Howard – Actor
 * Sridevi – Actress
 * Haruo Nakajima – Actor
 * Martin Ransohoff – Producer
 * Hiep Thi Le – Actress
 * Ron Berkeley – Makeup artist
 * Joseph Bologna – Actor, writer
 * Fred J. Koenekamp – Cinematographer
 * Murray Lerner – Documentarian
 * Don Rickles – Actor, comedian
 * Seijun Suzuki – Director
 * Bernie Casey – Actor
 * Shashi Kapoor – Actor, producer
 * Tom Sanders – Production designer
 * Danielle Darrieux – Actress
 * Jerry Greenberg – Film editor
 * Brad Grey – Executive producer, manager
 * Míriam Colón – Actress
 * Luis Bacalov – Composer
 * Jerry Lewis – Actor, comedian, director, writer

On the Academy's website, a gallery was posted focusing on several other artists who were not included in the segment. Adam West, Glen Campbell, Dorothy Malone, John Mahoney, Powers Boothe, Reg E. Cathey, Della Reese, Tobe Hooper, and David Ogden Stiers were left out from the section.