The nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were announced Tuesday. This year, Actors Zazie Beets and Jack Quaid will announce this year’s Oscar nominees via livestream.
Movies that held a strong presence at the box office this year, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, are being positioned as leading contenders for nominations. However, in an effort to push for more insclusivity and avoid #OscarsSoWhite trending on X (fka, Twitter) the nominations in categories have grown to be much more diverse than yesteryear. See below a list of Black actors nominated.
For Best Actor In A Supporting Role, Sterling K. Brown is nominated for his role as Clifford Ellison in American Fiction. The film is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Cord Jefferson’s writing) and Best Original Score. The star of American Fiction, Jeffery Wright, was nominated himself for Best Actor In A Leading Role. However, he shares this category with Colman Domingo for playing Bayard Rustin in Rustin.
Spider Man: Across The Spider-Verse, where Shameik Moore played the role of Miles Morales, the film received a nom for Best Animated Feature Film. The film shares a nomination with Elemental, who cast Mamoudou Athie as Wade.
For Best Actress In A Supporting Role, both Danielle Brooks (Sophia,The Color Purple) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Mary Lamb, The Holdovers) were nominated. The latter was also named in the category for Best Original Screenplay.
Best Picture was a packed category with 10 movies nominated. The nominations included American Fiction and The Holdovers.
The Barber of Little Rock was snagged a nomination for Best Documentary Short Film, alongside The ABCs of Book Banning, which included renowned poet and scholar, Nikki Giovanni.
Worthy of note, four movies cracked double-digit nominations, only the second time for it to happen in Oscars history. The first being 2019, (1917, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and Joker.)
The nominations were arguably more diverse this year, and for the second time, the Best Actor category included nominations of two Black actors other than Will Smith and Denzel Washington.
Oppenheimer came win with 13 nominations overall, Poor Things with 11, Killers Of The Flower Moon also with 11, and Barbie with eight.
The 96th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood hosted by Jimmy Kimmel for a fourth time. The awards show will also be televised live on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide.