The final voting for the 97th Academy Awards, popularly known as Oscars, is set to begin today at 9am PT (10:30 pm IST) and end at 5pm PT on February 18 (6:30 am IST on February 19).
The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced on January 23. Emilia Perez received the most nominations with 13 nods, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked with 10 nods each.
The Oscars ceremony is set to take place on March 2 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Comedian Conan O’Brien will host this year’s edition of the award show.
Oscar nominees and winners are chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has more than 10,000 members at present. The nominees are selected by the members voting for their corresponding branch (actors voting for actors and so on). However, for the best picture category, all members can cast their vote.
Both the nominations and final voting are conducted through the online ballot. For the final round of voting, all categories are open for voting by the members. After the voting closes, the ballots are tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
“Only two partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers know the results until the famous envelopes are opened onstage during the Oscars telecast,” according to the Academy. In 2017, chaos ensued during the best picture announcement when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway received the wrong envelope.
