77th Academy Awards

News and recap

• As of February 27 2005, the field of Best Picture nominees did not include a bonafide blockbuster at the U.S. box office. For the first time in 20 years, and likely only the second time in history, none of the nominees for Best Picture was among the year's top ten releases in box office at the time of the nominations, and as a group they most probably had the lowest box-office performance of any Best Picture field in history. To date, The Aviator has been the highest earner with $93.7 million in domestic box office receipts. It ranks as the 24th highest grosser of 2004. This is followed by Ray at $74.9 million and Million Dollar Baby at $64.7 million.
• There was a considerable amount of controversy surrounding the omission of political-themed documentaries from the Best Documentary Feature Film category. However, this was not necessarily an oversight on the part of the Academy, as many of the candidates were rendered ineligible. The popular and controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 was intentionally withheld from submission in the Best Documentary Feature Film category by producer Michael Moore, in order to submit it for broadcast on network television. Popular political documentaries Control Room and The Corporation were rendered ineligible by the fact that they had been broadcast in their entirety on network television within 9 months of their U.S. theatrical release.
• The popular Motorcycle Diaries was not selected by any country as its official nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, as the crew, director, cast and filming locations were all affiliated with different nations. As it had no specific country of origin, no country was willing to make it their official selection for the category.