How TBD Became Most Prolific Producer In The Best Picture Oscar Race

deadline.com:

Thursday’s unveiling of nominations for the 97th Oscars by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott was about as seamless an affair as we’ve seen in a long time.

Until, that is, they got to naming the 10 Best Picture nominees. That’s the moment where producers who actually made the movie see their names broadcast globally.

Only, this time, fully half of the 10 nominees had a credit list with “nominees to be determined.” A lot of kicking, screaming and lobbying goes into the Producers Guild of America‘s arbitration process that results in the producer’s mark, the standard the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences follows to put the right people on stage when that last category is announced in the Oscarcast.

That process has become increasingly important since the embarrassing Shakespeare In Love stage stampede. Why wasn’t that vetting process finished in time for Thursday’s big morning event, especially since the nominations got pushed back not once but twice because of the wildfires that wreaked havoc on Southern California? RELATED: Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Back To The Beginning In 1929 Deadline is told that the high number of TBD films — Emilia Pérez, Nickel Boys, I’m Still Here, The Substance and The Brutalist — was highly unusual.