Men's Lifestyle May 1, 2026 0 Comments

Why The Oscars’ New Rule Changes Could Shake Hollywood to Its Core — And What That Means For The Future of Fame

Every now and then, the Oscars manage to throw us a curveball—yeah, sometimes it feels like they’re just spinning the golden statue like a roulette wheel. Stanley Kubrick’s got zilch for Best Director, Glenn Close keeps knocking but never opens the door, and don’t get me started on Green Book. But hold up, this time around, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made a bold move that actually makes sense. With the 99th Academy Awards approaching in March 2027, AMPAS just dropped a bombshell of new rules that shake up the whole game—finally drawing a line in the digital sand about AI, giving international films a real shot, and letting actors get their due when they’re killing it multiple times in the same year. Curious how they’re rewriting the playbook for Hollywood’s biggest night? Let’s dive into the three headline-making changes that might just keep the Oscars relevant in a world where even Marlon Brando might get an AI reboot — if the Academy doesn’t have its way. LEARN MORE

4 min read

Occasionally, the Oscars get it right. Sure, they never awarded Stanley Kubrick anything other than the golden man for Best Visual Effects. Glenn Close has been nominated eight times without a single win, and I don’t know what it would take to convince me that Green Book was the best movie of 2018. But as of Friday’s announcement, I have no problem stating that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) made a good decision.

Ahead of the 99th annual Academy Awards in March 2027, the Academy unveiled a slate of updated rulings that greatly improve the competition. The big headliner, of course, is that the Academy finally made a ruling on AI. (Spoiler alert: They don’t like it!) But that’s not all. International filmmakers and festival darlings received a huge bump, as well as actors with multiple award-worthy performances in the same year. So, to better explain the three biggest changes to the Oscars next year, let’s break down what the Academy just changed about AI, repeat nominations, and international eligibility.

First Line Films

Only Deep As the Grave features the AI-generated likeness of Val Kilmer.

First Up: Generative AI

Recently, a trailer for the upcoming film As Deep as the Grave made headlines because it stars an AI-generated performance from the late Val Kilmer. The actor’s family reportedly okayed the use of Kilmer’s voice and likeness, as the actor was set to star in the film before his health declined. Still, that doesn’t mean everyone in Hollywood was comfortable with normalizing the practice of reviving actors from the grave using AI.

So, the Academy’s weighed in by declaring that only performances by humans—and with their consent—are eligible for nomination. (Notably: the wording would still allow for some AI tweaks, like when Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist was briefly under fire for altering Adrian Brody’s voice.) The new rule won’t stop filmmakers from following in As Deep as the Grave’s footsteps if they chose to, but it’ll at least put AI-generated films out of awards contention for now. Plus, the new ruling includes that AI-generated screenplays are also ineligible moving forward.

Jafar Panahi Productions

After Iran rebuked It Was Just an Accident, France submitted the film for the 98th Academy Awards.

International Features

Great news! International features will no longer be penalized just for the simple fact that they were made outside the USA. Previously, each country could only submit one film for nomination per year. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, and I can provide a recent example to explain how silly this rule was. In 2023, France submitted The Taste of Things over Anatomy of a Fall for Best International Feature. The Taste of Things—even though it’s a great film—failed to secure a final spot on the ballot. That meant so did Anatomy of a Fall. Despite all this, Anatomy of a Fall went on to receive five nominations in major categories including Best Picture and Best Director, plus a win for Best Original Screenplay.

The same thing almost happened earlier this year. It Was Just an Accident, a film critical of Iran that would have never received a nomination from its host country, needed another country (France) to step up and submit it instead. Now, that’s all in the past. Plus, now the film itself will be credited as the nominee, instead of the country.

In addition, Variety reports that non-English-language films can now qualify by winning the top prize at one of six approved international film festivals: the Berlin International Film Festival (Golden Bear), Busan International Film Festival (Best Film Award), Cannes Film Festival (Palme d’Or), Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Grand Jury Prize), Toronto International Film Festival (Platform Award) and Venice International Film Festival (Golden Lion). That means that even if a single country didn’t submit a film like It Was Just an Accident last year, it would still be eligible because it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Michael Buckner/GG2025//Getty Images

Sebastian Stan was nominated twice for the same category at the Golden Globes in 2025—which was previously not possible at the Oscars, until now.

Power to the Actors

One last change worth mentioning involves eligibility for exceptionally gifted actors. Previously, if you produced two award-worthy performances in the same year, only one of those films could be nominated. This isn’t a rule at the Golden Globes, which is why Sebastian Stan was nominated for both The Apprentice and A Different Man in 2024. But at the 98th Academy Awards, the rules prevented something like this from happening—say, like Paul Mescal being nominated for both Hamnet and The History of Sound. His team worked around this rule by submitting him for Best Supporting Actor in Hamnet instead.

Now, actors won’t have to worry about finding the loopholes. But there’s two ways to look at it. If multiple actors should produce more than one awards-worthy performance in the same year, the rule change may result in less diversity. On the other hand, they won’t be penalized for turning in two great performances by having to choose one over the other.

We’ll see how the new rules actually affect the nominations when the films up for an Oscar at the 99th Academy Awards are announced in January 2027. Just be glad for now that any plans for an AI Marlon Brando to sweep the competition have been stopped dead in their tracks.