The Big Picture
- Walt Disney Pictures is the only member of the Big Five to never release a Best Picture-winning movie at the Oscars.
- Disney’s delay in self-distribution and focus on family-friendly genres have hindered Best Picture chances.
- Despite numerous nominations and wins in other categories, Disney has never aligned its film choices with the types of movies favored by Oscar voters in the Best Picture category.
In North America, countless movie studios and outfits are responsible for delivering a variety of motion pictures to movie theaters, streamers, and physical media. While the likes of A24, Well Go USA, and Freestyle Releasing (among many others) are out there doing their thing, there are only five companies that constitute what is known as “The Big Five.” This distinction reflects the five American movie studios that wield the most power and historical influence. Those five studios are Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment (Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, TriStar, etc.), Warner Bros., and Walt Disney Pictures. The number of the Big Five has fluctuated since the 1920s, with this group being known as the Big Seven and Big Six over the years when this cluster included MGM and 20th Century Fox before those entities were sold off to bigger conglomerates.
Across all five of these companies, many similarities emerge. They’re all incredibly powerful at the annual domestic box office, for example. All five of these companies are also now just cogs in much bigger corporate wheels, with film studio operations existing alongside TV, video game, streaming, and other pop culture ventures. Something that isn’t shared by all five of these studios? Victory in the Best Picture category at the Oscars. Surprisingly, this is a feat shared by all five of these studios…except for one. Walt Disney Pictures, as of this writing, is the only one of the Big Five to never release a movie that’s won Best Picture.
Disney’s History Explains Why It’s Never Won a Best Picture Oscar
While Disney has been producing original shorts and projects since October 1923, Walt Disney Pictures technically got a much later start on being its own distributor than its companions in the modern Big Five category. Disney didn’t start distributing its own releases until 1953, with the company’s works previously being handled for theatrical exhibition by a variety of studios (such as Universal and RKO). Compare that to Universal Studios, which had been distributing movies in theaters since the 1910s! Missing out on nearly 30 years of Oscar history because of these external issues immediately helps explain why Walt Disney Pictures has never won a Best Picture Oscar. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the biggest studios (including now-defunct labels like RKO) were typically winning Oscars without even blinking. There were far fewer independent movie outfits in those days, which provided less competition for the big studios. If Walt Disney Pictures had broken into the live-action movie game in the 1940s (when Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox each took home two Best Picture winners across the decade), it’s likely the studio could’ve secured a Best Picture win.
By the 1960s, though, four of that decade’s Best Picture winners would be released by independent outfit United Artists. while smaller newly formed companies like Orion Pictures and DreamWorks SKG would dominate this category at the end of the 20th century. The age of the biggest American movie studios automatically having a leg up on other movies in the Best Picture category was a thing of the past by the time Disney got into the game of self-distributing live-action cinema.
Meanwhile, the 1950s were also when Walt Disney Pictures began producing live-action motion pictures, the type of cinema the Oscars favor for Best Picture recognition. For the preceding 15 years, Disney movies like Fantasia and Bambi were unlikely to secure Best Picture nods simply because they were animated features. Now, Disney’s primary style of movies has been a bit of a give-and-take situation when it comes to securing Oscar glory. While its emphasis on features aimed at family audiences has prevented Disney from scoring a Best Picture Oscar win, these kinds of titles have ensured Disney dominates other categories at the Academy Awards.
Per the D23 archive, Disney dominated the Best Original Song category in the 1990s (with titles ranging from Dick Tracy to Tarzan) while the studio has consistently secured Best Animated Feature Oscar wins ever since the category was established in 2002. Walt Disney Pictures releases have cornered certain Oscar categories thanks to Disney’s dominance over certain types of movies, like musicals and animated features. However, those very same titles are just the kind of fare the Oscars tend to overlook when awarding that fabled Best Picture prize.
Disney Just Killed Off One of the Last Ways to Collect Their Physical Media
The death of physical media in Hollywood is majorly depressing.
There’s also the simple fact that Walt Disney Pictures doesn’t produce many of the kinds of movies that Oscar voters gravitate toward for Best Picture. It’s not even a question of “objective quality,” but rather a reflection of how genres that dominate the Best Picture field are Disney’s bread and butter. Big period piece epics, for instance, weren’t typical live-action Disney fare in the 1950s and 60s. The default norm for Touchstone Pictures (the adult-skewing movie division of Disney) releases in the 1990s (high-concept star-studded comedies) weren’t destined for Oscar glory either. In the 2010s, Disney focused almost exclusively on superhero movies and assorted franchise blockbusters, which are certainly not a favorite of the Academy. Disney’s film choices and the Oscars have never quite aligned perfectly to give Disney a Best Picture Oscar winner.
When Has Disney Come Closest to a Best Picture Victory?
Walt Disney Pictures has never won a Best Picture Oscar, but the studio has been up for this prestigious Academy Award on four different occasions. The first came with Mary Poppins in the mid-1960s, while Disney would have to wait countless decades for its next chance at a Best Picture nomination. That event would come at the dawn of the 1990s with Beauty and the Beast, while the final two Walt Disney Studios titles to get nominated in this category (Up and Toy Story 3) would be the only other animated titles to score a Best Picture nomination. In addition to this quartet of projects, a handful of divisions within Disney have produced Best Picture nominees. Marvel Studios delivered Black Panther, for instance, while Touchstone Pictures delivered titles like Quiz Show in the 1990s.
Over the years, Disney (the parent company of Walt Disney Pictures) has technically claimed ownership of Best Picture-winning titles thanks to a pair of arthouse studios it purchased. Miramax and Searchlight Pictures (formerly Fox Searchlight Pictures) have several Best Picture winners in their library, with Miramax producing many of these titles during its time as an offshoot of the Disney empire. However, these outfits come with major asterisks, including Miramax getting sold by Disney in 2010. Meanwhile, Searchlight’s Nomadland (the sole Searchlight Best Picture winner released under Disney ownership) was technically acquired by the arthouse studio before the Disney purchase. Even these nuances aside, considering Focus Features Best Picture nominees aren’t considered the same thing as nominees for sister company Universal Pictures, it’d be unfair to lump in Miramax and Searchlight’s Oscar victories with Walt Disney Pictures.
For all intents and purposes, Walt Disney Pictures has never unleashed a Best Picture-winning movie onto the world. It’s a phenomenon that explains why Disney has often purchased arthouse studios that released Oscar-friendly titles (like Miramax, DreamWorks SKG, and Searchlight) or why the company spends so much on Oscar campaigns for movies like Black Panther. Being the only member of the Big Five American studios seems to torment executives at Disney. It’s a major mountain in the world of pop culture that Disney hasn’t been able to surmount — despite owning the network that airs the Academy Awards. Given that Disney executives have emphasized that the studio will be focusing on sequels and franchises for the foreseeable future, it’s doubtful that Walt Disney Pictures will be producing any movies that secure Best Picture glory anytime soon.
Mary Poppins is available on Disney+ in the U.S.
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