Members of the Academy won’t be the only ones voting for their favorite films ahead of the 94th Academy Awards.
Beginning this Monday, Twitter users will get to vote on their favorite films that were released in 2021 — regardless of if the film was nominated for an Oscar — using the hashtag #OscarsFanFavorite. The film that receives the most fan votes by March 3 will be recognized during the awards broadcast on March 27.
The Twitter love won’t end there, either. Three Twitter users who cast their votes during the Feb. 14 to March 3 period will be selected — along with a guest — to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles to present an Oscar at the 2023 ceremony.
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“We’re thrilled to partner with Twitter to help build an engaged and excited digital audience leading up to this year’s ceremony,” Meryl Johnson, vp digital marketing at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Through these activations, social media users around the world now have more opportunities to engage with the show in real time, find a community and be a part of the experience in ways they’ve never been able to before.”
The Academy originally toyed with creating a most popular film category during the 91st Academy Awards in 2019 as a means to encourage more mainstream moviegoers to watch the ceremony and boost ratings. But after significant pushback from critics and Academy members, the plan was ultimately scrapped and has not yet been reintroduced since then.
Though the fan-favorite film selected by Twitter users won’t be a formal Oscars category, it will give eager fans the opportunity to weigh in with their opinions of 2021’s best films, especially if they didn’t receive a nomination by the Academy, paving the way for a snubbed hit like Spider-Man: No Way Home to potentially find its way into the ceremony.
As part of the partnership between the Academy and Twitter, Twitter users will also be able to tweet about their favorite scene from a 2021 film using #OscarsCheerMoment. The winning scenes will be shown at the Oscars ceremony, alongside the fan tweets, and five users who participated in the campaign will receive a hefty prize pack that includes a full year of free movie tickets at the theater of their choice, subscriptions to streaming services and exclusive items from the Academy Museum store.
For both the fan-favorite film and cheer moment campaigns, Twitter users will be able to tweet out their submissions up to 20 times a day.
“Twitter is the place to be during award shows and the Oscars is one of the biggest conversation drivers every year,” said Sarah Rosen, Twitter’s head of U.S. entertainment and news partnerships. “The idea that a movie fan might see their tweet during the Oscars broadcast is pretty epic, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with the Academy to bring this to life.”
