Oscars 2019: ‘Green Book’ Wins Best Picture

A chaotic awards season ended Sunday night with Green Book winning the Best Picture Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards.

The film was one of eight nominated for the top prize, along with Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Roma, A Star Is Born and Vice.

Green Book also won Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali and Best Original Screenplay for Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga and Brian Currie.

In the end, all eight movies nominated for Best Picture won at least one Oscar.

Bohemian Rhapsody was won Oscars for Best Actor (Rami Malek), Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing.

Netflix’s Roma made history with as director Alfonso Cuaron won Best Director and Best Cinematographer. The film also won Best Foreign Language film, making it the first Mexican film to win the award.

The win came at the end of the first Oscars ceremony since 1989 without a host. Comedian Kevin Hart was originally set to host, but he resigned in December after old homophobic tweets resurfaced. The Academy never found a replacement in time, and chose to focus on getting major stars as presenters and securing Queen and Adam Lambert to open the show.

Throughout the awards season, the Academy also made questionable decisions, many of which they later backtracked on. Producers Glenn Weiss and Donna Gigliotti were under pressure to keep the show to three hours, so they first considered not having all five Best Original Song nominees performed, which they later decided against doing. However, Black Panther’s “All The Stars” was not performed after rapper Kendrick Lamar said he would not be attending.

The Academy also considered presenting four awards during commercial breaks, but that decision was also reconsidered after outrage from the Hollywood community. Another idea was a “Best Popular Film” award, which was scrapped.

While Gigliotti and Weiss knew it would be impossible to keep the show at three hours with all 24 awards presented during the broadcast, they told Good Morning America they were “really happy with how the show ended up.” They chose to focus on trying to limit acceptance speeches to 90 seconds.

“This is what we say: we’ve asked the people to stick to the 90 second rule from the time the name of call to the time they exit the stage they have 90 seconds,” Gigliotti, who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, said. “We are asking them to do that because it is a kindness to the people that are following them, so everybody else is going to fall into the same pattern.”

The most-nominated films on the night were Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, which were both nominated for 10 awards. Roma made history as the most-nominated Netflix film. A Star Is Born and Vice were nominated for eight each, while Marvel’s Black Panther was nominated for seven. Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler, became the first superhero movie nominated for Best Picture.

Back in November, actress Cecily Tyson, composer Lalo Schifrin and publicist Marvin Levy received honorary Oscars. The Irving G. Thalberg Award was presented to producing duo Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.

Thanks to the success of Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born, this year’s Best Picture field was one of the highest grossing in recent years. The combined domestic gross of the films — minus Roma, which never received a wide release per Netflix’s policy — reached $1.26 billion. By comparison, last year’s nine Best Picture nominees only grossed a combined $709 million in total. Last year’s winner, The Shape of Water, grossed $63.8 million during its theatrical release.

Photo credit: VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images