89th Academy Awards
Official poster
Date	February 26, 2017
Site	Dolby Theatre Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Hosted by	Jimmy Kimmel
Preshow hosts	Jess Cagle Robin Roberts Lara Spencer Michael Strahan Nina García Krista Smith
Produced by	Michael De Luca Jennifer Todd
Directed by	Glenn Weiss
Highlights
Best Picture	Moonlight
Most awards	La La Land (6)
Most nominations	La La Land (14)
TV in the United States
Network	ABC
Duration	3 hours, 49 minutes
Ratings	33.0 million[1] 22.4% (Nielsen ratings)[1]
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The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2016, and took place on February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, at 5:30 p.m. PST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd and directed by Glenn Weiss.^[2][3] Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the ceremony for the first time.^[4]

In related events, the Academy held its 8th Annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center on November 12, 2016.^[5] On February 11, 2017, in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California,^[6] the Academy Scientific and Technical Awards were presented by hosts John Cho and Leslie Mann.^[7]

In the main ceremony, Moonlight won three awards including Best Picture, after La La Land was mistakenly announced as a winner,^[8] and Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor award. La La Land went on to win six awards, the most for the evening from its record-tying fourteen nominations including Best Actress for Emma Stone and Best Director for Damien Chazelle. Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea won two awards each with Casey Affleck winning Best Actor for the latter. Viola Davis won the Best Supporting Actress honor for Fences. The telecast garnered 33 million viewers in the United States.^[9]

Winners and nominees[edit]

The nominees for the 89th Academy Awards were announced on January 24, 2017, via global live stream from the Academy.^[10]La La Land received the most nominations with a record-tying fourteen (1950's All About Eve and 1997's Titanic also achieved this distinction);^[11]Arrival and Moonlight came in second with eight apiece.^[12][13]La La Land's Best Picture loss to Moonlight meant it set a record for most nominations and wins without winning Best Picture since Cabaret in 1972.^[14]

The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on February 26, 2017.^[15]Moonlight became the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBT-themed film to win Best Picture.^[16][17] In an event unprecedented in the history of the Oscars, La La Land was incorrectly announced as the Best Picture, and, a few minutes later, the error was corrected and Moonlight was declared the winner.^[18]O.J.: Made in America, at 467 minutes, became the longest film to win an Academy Award, surpassing the 431-minute long War and Peace, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1969.^[19] Following the five-part documentary's win, new Academy rules barred any "multi-part or limited series" from being eligible for documentary categories.^[20] With Casey Affleck winning the Oscar for Best Actor, him and his older brother, Ben Affleck, became the 16th pair of siblings to win Academy Awards.^[21]Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.^[22]Viola Davis became the first black person to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting with her Oscar, Emmy, and Tony wins.^[23]

At the age of thirty-two years and thirty-eight days, Damien Chazelle became the youngest person to win Best Director; Norman Taurog was only two hundred and twenty-two days older than Chazelle when he won Best Director for the 1931 comedy Skippy.^[24][25][26]Kevin O'Connell finally ended the longest losing streak in Oscar history after 20 unsuccessful nominations for sound mixing, winning for Hacksaw Ridge.^[27]Moonlight's Dede Gardner became the first woman to win twice for producing, following her previous Best Picture win for 12 Years a Slave.^[28]

Awards[edit]

Damien Chazelle, Best Director winner

Casey Affleck, Best Actor winner

Emma Stone, Best Actress winner

Mahershala Ali, Best Supporting Actor winner

Viola Davis, Best Supporting Actress winner

Kenneth Lonergan, Best Original Screenplay winner

Barry Jenkins, Best Adapted Screenplay co-winner

Asghar Farhadi, Best Foreign Language Film winner

Byron Howard, Best Animated Feature Film co-winner

Ezra Edelman, Best Documentary Feature co-winner

Justin Hurwitz, Best Original Score winner and Best Original Song co-winner

Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger ().^[29]

Governors Awards[edit]

The Academy held its eighth annual Governors Awards ceremony on November 12, 2016, during which the following awards were presented:^[31]

Academy Honorary Awards

• 
  Jackie Chan — Hong Kong martial artist, actor, director, producer, and singer^[32]


• 
  Anne V. Coates — British film editor^[33]


• 
  Lynn Stalmaster — American casting director^[34]


• 
  Frederick Wiseman — American filmmaker, documentarian, and theatrical director^[35]

Films with multiple nominations and awards[edit]

Presenters and performers[edit]

The following individuals presented awards or performed musical numbers.^[37][38]

Presenters[edit]

Performers[edit]

Ceremony information[edit]

Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 89th Academy Awards

Due to the mixed reception and low ratings of the previous year's ceremony, producers David Hill and Reginald Hudlin declined to helm the Oscar production. They were replaced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd as producers.^[40][41] Actor and comedian Chris Rock told Variety regarding if he would return to host, "someone else will do it."^[42] On December 5, 2016, it was announced that Jimmy Kimmel would host the ceremony.^[43] Kimmel expressed that it was truly an honor and a thrill to be asked to host Academy Awards, commenting "Mike and Jennifer have an excellent plan and their enthusiasm is infectious. I am honored to have been chosen to host the 89th and final Oscars."^[44]

Due to his hosting duties, ABC did not broadcast a special episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! following the ceremony, as in past years. Instead, ABC aired Live from Hollywood: The After Party, co-hosted by Anthony Anderson, and Lara Spencer of Good Morning America.^[45] The stage set was designed by Derek McLane.^[46]

Box office performance of nominated films[edit]

At the time of the nominations announcement on January 24, 2017, the combined gross of the nine Best Picture nominees at the North American box offices was $483.8 million, with an average of $53.8 million per film.^[47] When the nominations were announced, Arrival was the highest-grossing film among the Best Picture nominees with $95.7 million in domestic box office receipts.^[48]La La Land was the second-highest-grossing film with $90.5 million,^[49] followed by Hidden Figures ($85 million), Hacksaw Ridge ($65.5 million), Fences ($48.8 million), Manchester by the Sea ($39 million), Hell or High Water ($27 million), Lion ($16.5 million) and Moonlight ($15.8 million).^[50]Moonlight became the second lowest-grossing film to win Best Picture award.^[51][52]

Thirty-five nominations went to 13 films on the list of the top 50 grossing movies of the year. Of those 13 films, only Zootopia (3rd), Moana (15th), La La Land (45th), and Arrival (48th) were nominated for Best Picture, Best Animated Feature or any of the directing, acting or screenwriting awards.^[53] The other top 50 box-office hits that earned nominations were Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (4th), The Jungle Book (5th), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (8th), Suicide Squad (10th), Doctor Strange (11th), Star Trek Beyond (24th), Trolls (25th), Passengers (30th), and Sully (32nd).^[54]

Racial diversity[edit]

In the previous two years, the awards had come under scrutiny for the lack of racial diversity among the nominees in major categories, which included no actors of color being nominated.^[55] After the nominees for the 89th Awards were announced on January 24, many media outlets noted the diversity of the nominations, which included a record-tying seven minority actors and a record-setting six black actors.^[56][57][58] For the first time in the Academy's history, each acting category had black actors, with three nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category and three black screenwriters nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category in the same year. Also nominated was one black director, the fourth in Oscar history.^[59][60][61]

The awards continued to be criticized by actors and media organizations representing non-black minorities. The National Hispanic Media Coalition stated that Latino actors were "not getting the opportunities to work in front of camera, and with few exceptions, in back of the camera as well." Daniel Mayeda, chair of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, stated that the omission of Asian actors from the nominations list (with only one actor, Dev Patel, nominated) reflected "the continued lack of real opportunities for Asians in Hollywood".^[62] A skit performed during the ceremony, in which a group of tourists enter the theater, led to criticism of host Kimmel over his mocking of an Asian woman's name.^[63]

Having previously been nominated for Doubt (2008) and The Help (2011), Viola Davis became the first African-American actress to garner three Academy Award nominations.^[64][65] She went on to win the award, making her the first African-American to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting: winning a competitive Emmy, Tony, and Oscar in acting categories. Bradford Young became the first African-American to be nominated for Best Cinematography, while Joi McMillon became the first African-American to be nominated for Best Film Editing since Hugh A. Robertson for Midnight Cowboy, as well as the first black woman to be nominated for that award.^[66][67][68]Octavia Spencer became the first African-American actress to be nominated after having already won before.^[69]Moonlight became the first film with an all-black cast to win the Best Picture award.^[17] Additionally, the ceremony had the most black winners of the Academy Awards ever.^[70]

Travel ban controversy[edit]

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who won the Best Foreign Language Film for The Salesman, was revealed to initially be unable to attend the ceremony due to President Donald Trump's immigration ban. He boycotted the event, saying, "I have decided to not attend the Academy Awards ceremony alongside my fellow members of the cinematic community."^[71] The Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs reacted to the travel ban, saying, "America should always be not a barrier but a beacon and each and every one of us knows that there are some empty chairs in this room which has made academy artists into activists."^[72]

Two prominent Iranian Americans – engineer Anousheh Ansari, known as the first female space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, a former director of Solar Systems Exploration at NASA – accepted Asghar Farhadi's Oscar on his behalf at the ceremony.^[73] Congratulations which had initially been tweeted to the Iranian people from the US State Department's official Persian-language Twitter account were deleted following the acceptance speech given by Firouz Naderi in which President Trump's travel ban was described as "inhumane".^[74]

Best Picture announcement error[edit]

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway came onstage to present the award for Best Picture, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde.^[75] After opening the envelope, Beatty hesitated to announce the winner, eventually showing it to Dunaway, who glanced at it and declared the favorite for the award, La La Land, the winner.^[76] However, more than two minutes later, as the producers of La La Land were making their acceptance speeches, Oscar crew members came on stage and took the envelopes from those assembled, explaining to them that there had been a mistake. La La Land producer Fred Berger, having heard the news, concluded his brief speech by saying "we lost, by the way".^[77][78]

Beatty was then given the correct opened envelope as La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz stepped to the microphone, announced the error, stated that Moonlight had actually won the award, and took the card bearing the film's title from Beatty's hand and showed it to the camera and the audience as proof. The La La Land team, particularly Horowitz, would later be praised for their professional handling of the situation. Beatty returned to the microphone and explained that the envelope he had initially been given named Emma Stone for her actress performance in La La Land, hence his confused pause, and confirmed that Moonlight was the winner. The producers of Moonlight then came onstage, Horowitz presented the Best Picture award given to him to them, and they gave their acceptance speeches.^[18][79][80]

According to The Hollywood Reporter, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – the accounting firm responsible for tabulating results, preparing the envelopes, and handing them to presenters – creates two sets of envelopes, which are kept on opposite sides of the stage.^[81] It is intended that each award has one primary envelope and one backup envelope that remains with one of the PwC Accountants in the wings. Video stills from the broadcast show that Beatty and Dunaway had been given the single remaining still-unopened backup envelope for Actress in a Leading Role as they walked onto the stage.^[82]

PwC issued a statement apologizing for this error:

An article from The New York Times explained:

Brian Cullinan, the PwC accountant who handed Beatty the wrong envelope, had been instructed not to use social media during the event, but had tweeted a snapshot of Stone's moments after handing the wrong envelope to the official presenters.^[85]Variety published photographs of Cullinan that were taken at the time which showed him backstage while tweeting the image.^[86]

Critical reviews[edit]

The show received a mixed reception from media publications. Some media outlets were more critical and complained about the repetitive jokes which did not land; Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly complained that the show "didn't know when to stop and didn't know when to bail on stuff that wasn't working",^[87] and The Oregonian Kristi Turnquist agreed and especially noted the repeated segments featuring actors discussing their favorite films at length to be "tedious and ill-advised".^[88] Writing for Time television critic Daniel D'Addario bemoaned that, "It was unfortunate that the evening's host didn't seem to share the evening's general embrace of humanity."^[89]

Some media outlets received the broadcast more positively with praise directed toward host Kimmel. Variety television critic Sonia Saraiya praised Kimmel's performance writing that he "found a way to balance the telecast between that sensibility – the treacly self-satisfaction of sweeping orchestrals and tap dancing starlets."^[90] Chief television critics, Robert Bianco of USA Today and Frazier Moore from The Associated Press applauded Kimmel's hosting saying he "was up to the challenge" while Moore added that the ceremony's induction of the montage of moviegoers shows that "Hollywood can surmount its share of walls."^[91][92] Brian Lowry of CNN gave an average critique of the ceremony but acclaimed Kimmel's hosting.^[93]

Rating and reception[edit]

The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 33 million people over its length, which was a 4% decrease from the previous year's ceremony.^[9] The show also earned lower Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony with 22.4% of households watching over a 36 share.^[94] In addition, it garnered a lower 18–49 demo rating with a 9.1 rating over a 26 share among viewers in that demographic.^[95] It also had the lowest U.S. viewership since the 80th ceremony in 2008, which averaged 32 million viewers.^[96] Nonetheless, it was the eighth most watched television broadcast in the United States in 2017.^[97]

In July 2017, the ceremony presentation received six nominations for the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmys.^[98] The following month, the ceremony won two of those nominations for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media within an Unscripted Program and for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special (Glenn Weiss).^[99]

In Memoriam[edit]

The annual In Memoriam segment was introduced by Jennifer Aniston with Sara Bareilles performing a rendition of the Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides, Now" during the montage.^[100][101] Beforehand, Aniston paid verbal tribute to actor Bill Paxton, who died the day before the ceremony. The segment paid tribute to:

Errors[edit]

The slide for Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer, mistakenly used a photograph of Australian producer Jan Chapman, who is still alive.^[102]

See also[edit]

• 22nd Critics' Choice Awards


• 37th Golden Raspberry Awards


• 59th Grammy Awards


• 69th Primetime Emmy Awards


• 70th British Academy Film Awards


• 71st Tony Awards


• 74th Golden Globe Awards


• List of submissions to the 89th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

Notes and references[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Official websites

• Academy Awards official website


• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official website

News resources

• 
  Oscars 2017 at BBC News
  


• 
  Oscars 2017 at The Guardian
  

Analysis

• 
  Academy Awards, USA: 2017 IMDb
  


• 
  2016 Academy Awards winners and History at the Filmsite.org
  

Other resources

• 
  The Oscars (2017) on IMDb