Two musicals forced the Oscars to change their rules

before “La La Land” caused chaos at the Oscarsmusicals were putting the party in another mini-crisis in 2008. That was the year that saw Box office hit “Enchanted” (Disney children’s film starring Amy Adams) was nominated for three songs: “Happy Work Song,” “So Close” and “That’s How You Know.” Lost to those tunes is a paean from the lesser-known Irish film “Once,” called “Falling Slowly.”

The previous year, another popular musical in the form of “Dreamgirls” (which is about musical trio and 1960s superstar Beyoncé) was also nominated for three songs (“Listen,” “I Love You,” and “Patience”), all of which also lost to a film with a nomination. Only one. This time the winner was Davis Guggenheim’s “I Need to Wake Up” and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” This was the first time that a documentary film won the award.

Both results were somewhat controversial at the time, mainly because they were clear examples of a popular, mass-approved film losing to a film that most people had either never heard of (as was the case with Once) or had divided thoughts about. (In the case of “An Inconvenient Truth”). The results also raised an important question: Is it wise for a film to be nominated for three different songs in the first place?

Not only does multiple song nominations for one film seem unfair to any other films hoping to take home an Oscar, but it also doesn’t seem like a great strategy for the film itself. The Academy doesn’t release its voting data, so we’ll never know how things turned out, but there’s a chance both Dreamgirls and Enchanted fell victim to vote-splitting — because even though Oscar voters have to be perfectionists when judging each song individually, there’s There’s always a risk that they’ll put all the songs from one film together in their mind. The fear of this is Partly why Disney chose not to nominate the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the movie “Encanto” for the 2022 Oscars, even though that song… One of Disney’s biggest hits ever.

“Dreamgirls” and “Enchanted” aren’t the only movies to have three songs nominated for an Oscar (the same happened with Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” in the 1990s), but they go back to helping losses. Feedback in highlighting the problem. The controversy happened twice in a row and the Academy was not interested in it happening a third time. So, in June 2008, I announced a new base: film A maximum of two nominations can be received for Best Original Song.

This rule has remained in effect ever since. Not only were the nominations limited to two, they also seemed to encourage films to base their Oscar hopes on just one song. Since the 2008 rule change, the only film to have two songs nominated was “The Princess and the Frog” in 2010, both songs again losing to a film with only one nomination. (This time it was “Crazy Heart” for her song “The Weary Kind.”) In the subsequent 15 years, Academy voters have consistently been given a much larger selection of films to choose from in the category. It’s a change that very few longtime Oscar fans can argue with.