Academy Award for Best Picture

As of 2018, there have been 546 films nominated for Best Picture and 90 winners.

The Shape of Water won a leading four awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Guillermo del Toro.

Sam Spiegel and Saul Zaentz tie for the most wins with three each.

He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

1929/30–1940: Academy Award for Outstanding Production

Rebecca was the first American-made film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and the only film from him to win Best Picture.

1944–1961: Academy Award for Best Motion Picture

Legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini received his first Best Director nomination for his film La Dolce Vita, though the movie itself failed to garner a nomination for Best Picture.

Sam Spiegel and Saul Zaentz tie for the most wins with three each.

He was the first to win the Academy Award for Best Picture three times, and the only one to be the sole producer on all three winning films.

The Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director have been closely linked throughout their history.

The Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history.

The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously included among the four producers nominated for The Reader. the Producers Branch Executive Committee determines such exceptions, noting they take place only in "rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."

In addition, he received three more Academy Award nominations; he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both The English Patient (1996) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and was posthumously nominated for Best Picture for The Reader (2008), as a co-producer.

1941–1943: Academy Award for Outstanding Motion Picture

Citizen Kane, often later designated as the greatest film ever made in a number of polls, was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but won only one, for Best Original Screenplay.

On June 24, 2009, AMPAS announced that the number of films to be nominated in the Best Picture award category would increase from five to ten, starting with the 82nd Academy Awards (2009).

On June 24, 2009, Academy president Sid Ganis announced at a press conference that, in an attempt to revitalize interest surrounding the awards, the 2010 ceremony would feature ten Best Picture nominees instead of five, a practice that was discontinued after the 16th ceremony in 1944.

Only four films have been awarded Best Picture without receiving a Best Director nomination: Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and Argo (2012).

The film received seven nominations at the 85th Academy Awards and won three, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.

This rule was modified in 1998 to apply a limit of three producers receiving the award, after the five producers of Shakespeare in Love had received the award.

The film would go on to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench), and Best Original Screenplay.

The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929.

Since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies have ended with the Academy Award for Best Picture.

At the same time, the voting system was switched from first-past-the-post to instant runoff voting (also known as preferential voting).

The method is also used in local elections around the world, as well as by some political parties (to elect internal leaders) and private associations, for various voting purposes such as that for choosing the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 2017, at the 89th Academy Awards, presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty read La La Land as the winner of the award.

He has been nominated for fourteen Academy Awards – four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, three for Original Screenplay, and one for Adapted Screenplay – winning Best Director for Reds (1981).

Those films being: Hamlet (1948), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and The King's Speech (2010).

Hamlet was the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Only ten foreign language films have been nominated in the category: Grand Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and Whispers (Swedish, 1973); The Postman (Il Postino) (Italian/Spanish, 1995); Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin Chinese, 2000); Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006, but ineligible for Best Foreign Language Film, as it was an American production); Amour (French, 2012); and Roma (Spanish/Mixtec, 2018).

It received five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture (rare for a foreign-language film).

In 2017, at the 89th Academy Awards, presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty read La La Land as the winner of the award.

In the main ceremony, Moonlight won three awards including Best Picture, after La La Land was mistakenly announced as a winner, and Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor award.

Those films being: Hamlet (1948), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and The King's Speech (2010).

It was nominated for Academy Awards in eleven categories, winning eight, including Best Picture and Best Director for Attenborough, Best Actor for Ben Kingsley, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Briley.

Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was a companion piece to his film Flags of Our Fathers, released earlier the same year.

For his work in the Western film Unforgiven (1992) and the sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor.

No science fiction film or superhero film has won, and only one of the latter has been nominated, Black Panther (2018); only two fantasy films have won — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Shape of Water (2017).

The wins included the award for Best Picture, the first time a fantasy film had done so; it was also the second sequel to win Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (following The Godfather Part II). The film jointly holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a single film with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997).

Those films being: Hamlet (1948), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and The King's Speech (2010).

It was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

Only ten foreign language films have been nominated in the category: Grand Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and Whispers (Swedish, 1973); The Postman (Il Postino) (Italian/Spanish, 1995); Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin Chinese, 2000); Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006, but ineligible for Best Foreign Language Film, as it was an American production); Amour (French, 2012); and Roma (Spanish/Mixtec, 2018).

It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards, and was nominated in four other categories: Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Emmanuelle Riva), Best Original Screenplay (Michael Haneke) and Best Director (Michael Haneke).

Another nominee, Broadway Melody of 1936, was a follow-up of sorts to previous winner The Broadway Melody. But, beyond the title and some music, there is no story connection to the earlier film.

The Broadway Melody, also known as The Broadway Melody of 1929, is an American pre-Code musical film and the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously included among the four producers nominated for The Reader. the Producers Branch Executive Committee determines such exceptions, noting they take place only in "rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."

The film itself was nominated for several other major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Only ten foreign language films have been nominated in the category: Grand Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and Whispers (Swedish, 1973); The Postman (Il Postino) (Italian/Spanish, 1995); Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin Chinese, 2000); Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006, but ineligible for Best Foreign Language Film, as it was an American production); Amour (French, 2012); and Roma (Spanish/Mixtec, 2018).

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has won over 40 awards, and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Best Foreign Language Film (Taiwan), Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography, receiving the most nominations ever for a non-English language film at the time (Roma has since tied this record).