The fall season has typically been the time of year the Oscars prefer when selecting Best Picture winners. Even in the streaming era, the Academy suffers from “recency bias,” the phenomenon that favors recent movies over those released earlier in the year.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” has broken that spell, along with several other Oscar achievements. The fantasy comedy is the first film since 1991’s “Silence of the Lambs” to win Best Picture nearly a year after it opened in theaters. “EEAAO” was released by distributor A24 on March 25, 2022, eleven and a half months before this year’s Oscars ceremony.
And we’re talking about when it was released for the public to see, not its film festival premiere, which the error-prone IMDb often lists as a film’s official release date. Incidentally, “EEAAO” debuted at the South By Southwest Film Fest on March 11, 2022, becoming the first SXSW world premiere to win Best Picture.
“The Silence of the Lambs,” another film in an underappreciated genre that triumphed at the Academy Awards, opened on February 14, 1991, more than 13 months before it won Best Picture on March 30. from 1992. The film had been such a sensation that “Lambs” stars Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins they presented Best Screenplay together at the previous Oscars, in 1991.
In terms of Oscar history, this particular achievement by “EEAAO” is unprecedented. After all, classics like 1972’s “The Godfather,” 1977’s “Annie Hall” and 1969’s “Midnight Cowboy” were released in March, April, and May, respectively, of the years before they won Best Picture. .
But those examples are exceptions to Oscar’s unwritten rule. To an overwhelming degree, Best Picture is awarded to a fall release. Just limiting the list to Best Picture winners since 1992’s “Silence of the Lambs,” the number of movies released in the last three months of the year is huge: “Schindler’s List,” “The English Patient,” ”, “Titanic”, “Shakespeare in Love”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Chicago”, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “The Departed”, “No Country for Old Men”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “The King’s Speech”, “The Artist”, “Argo”, “12 Years a Slave”, “Birdman”, “Spotlight”, “Moonlight”, “The Shape of Water”, “Green Book”, “Parasite” and “Land of nomads”. That’s a 71 percent success rate for fall (and often late fall) movie releases that won Best Picture.
Last year’s Best Picture winner, “CODA,” the first film from a streaming service (AppleTV+) to win the top prize, was given a limited theatrical release in August 2021.
In this year’s ten-film Best Picture list, “EEAAO” joined two other films that were released in the spring or summer (“Top Gun: Maverick” and “Elvis”), but it is the multiverse saga that stands out. has made history. . And it has shown that, even in the age of streaming, Oscar voters have a good memory when it matters.