The Oscars Are Adding A New Category - But It's Not The One Everyone Wanted

On Thursday, February 8, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences unveiled its latest prestigious award. Starting at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026, movies will be able to compete for best achievement in casting. It's a long time coming for the film industry, as serious discussions of acknowledging casting directors have been going on since the 1990s, and the Academy's Casting Directors brand was formed in 2013 to move the initiative forward.

While an undeniable victory, the news has gotten moviegoers talking about another faction of the film industry that has yet to receive its dues from the Academy — the stunt team. Industry insiders and filmmakers alike have been pushing for the organization to acknowledge the mind-bending achievements of stunt coordinators and their teams for some time now, but the Academy has yet to give in.

Following the best casting category announcement, several movie fans expressed their frustration over stunt teams still being on the sidelines. Redditor u/typhoidtimmy was one of these vocal viewers, commenting, "Stunt work is LONG overdue." Similarly, u/Iron_Phantom29  said, "But still no achievement in stunts smh."  Many agreed, acknowledging the important role stunts play in the entertainment industry. "How is there no award for stunts and stunt actors?" another user asked. "It's one of [the] biggest parts of movie making. I don't understand how that was never a thing."

Like so many sections of the entertainment industry, it's easy to let the superhuman efforts of stunt coordinators, actors, and choreographers become invisible in the grand context of a film's achievements. But without these tireless individuals, these achievements wouldn't be possible. The high-octane entertainment value from such billion-dollar action-oriented franchises as "James Bond," "Fast & Furious," and the Marvel Cinematic Universe would not exist without the spectacular feats of these teams. 

With the Emmys, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Hollywood  Creative Alliance giving recognition to stunt teams, what's keeping the Academy from making a stunt-oriented award a possibility? The answers are varied. "It's just the Oscars themselves, they are very slow to change anything," stunt pilot Steve Stafford told Scripps News. Others believe the Academy fears that stunt teams will go too far to get an award, with Redditor u/roto_disc commenting, "There will never be a stunts category. They don't want people going out of their way to be dangerous to win a statue." 

Redditor u/scalablecory wrote that while safety is a valid concern, there is a relatively easy way to ensure that things don't go too far. "I think you do this by disqualifying a stunt if it was performed unsafely," they responded. "Bake it into the rules." It may not be clear why the Academy has yet to give stunt teams the awards they deserve, but a solution may not be too far away. 

The industry is becoming more vocal in pushing for a stunt category to be added to the Academy Awards.  "John Wick: Chapter 4" director Chad Stahelski, who has also racked up stunt credits on such blockbuster franchises as "The Matrix,"  "X-Men," and "The Hunger Games," told ComicBookMovie that he believes not enough people were speaking up in the past to make an impact. "In truth, from what research I've done, is that the conversation hasn't happened," he said. "No one from the Academy has sat down at a big table with a contingent from the stunt world and sorted it out." 

But it seems that change is on the horizon, Stahelski added. "So, in the last couple of months, we've been meeting with members of the Academy and actually having these conversations, and, to be honest, it's been nothing but incredibly positive, incredibly instructional," he shared. "I think, for the first time, we've made real movement forward to making this happen." 

It will still take some time, with the filmmaker predicting that such a category might take as long as three to four years to come to fruition. But he does not doubt that this dream will become a reality. "Both sides have been incredibly positive," he added. "There is no one that we've met so far that thinks antagonistically to this, like everybody on both sides wants this to happen. They want stunts at the Oscars. It's going to happen."