As regularly happens with the Academy and its practises, there are some changes coming to the Oscars that could positively impact upon Lucasfilm projects going forward. It seems clear that despite whatever innovations ILM create, they have as much chance of winning an Oscar these days as the UK does of winning Eurovision (Star Wars won in 1977, then ILM won every year of the 80’s apart from 1986 when Aliens won, 4 times in the 90’s up to 1995 and Forrest Gump and incredibly only once since then, in 2006 for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, despite being nominated every year since).
Skywalker Sound now improve their chances, regularly peppering the nominations at the Oscars in both the Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing categories.
From 2021, after recommendation from the Sound Branch of the Academy, the two categories are consolidated into one. Let’s hope Skywalker Sound nab more gold, along with ILM who by now should have won so many they hand them out at the company picnic.
